Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Harper
I am happy to take interventions, but let me at least answer the right hon. Gentleman first. Then, of course, I will take the hon. Gentleman’s point.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about Wales, he is quite right that Wales’s share of the House of Commons will fall from 6% to 5%, but we debated the issue in this House, the other place debated the representation of Wales, and both Houses decided that the current over-representation of Wales is not acceptable. All parts of the United Kingdom should be treated equally—
Mr Harper
In response to that debate, which—from memory—was about whether to include in the Bill a power to direct those counting the votes, I said that that would be out of scope and I confirmed that that was the case. If the hon. Gentleman is right in what he says about some returning officers in Scotland, there is nothing in the Bill that has caused them to take that decision. It is a decision that they have taken of their own volition. Some returning officers in Scotland have confirmed that they will count overnight and that there is no problem in doing so. Some returning officers have said that they do not propose to do so, but that is nothing to do with the combination of the polls. It is to do with their judgment about how they want to conduct the count.
As I was saying, similar provision about the combination of polls and postal votes has been made for those registered for other forms of absent vote. I believe that the raft of changes made to the Bill, which the Government have accepted, demonstrate that we have been willing to listen and engage constructively with both Houses of Parliament and to agree to all the proposed changes to our proposals that we believe were merited.
Chris Bryant
I am afraid I completely disagree with the Minister’s interpretation of events over the past few months. I wholeheartedly congratulate their lordships on the process they have engaged in, and I make no apologies for the fact that Labour MPs have been holding the Government to account in this House, or for the fact that in the House of Lords there are people who were elected previously and who are able to bring a degree of expertise to the debates when discussing elections.
I note that yesterday Sky News was reporting that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, would take revenge on Labour peers. Bring it on. In legislation on the reform of the national health service, the reform of schools and public services that everybody depends on, Labour peers down the other end will do as robust a job as they have done on the Bill. If there was anything that showed that the Government have not been acting entirely in good faith, it is today’s programme motion, which allows only four hours for 104 amendments to be considered, including the time taken for votes.
I am not sure that my interpretation of what has happened is the same as the Government’s. I say to all hon. Members in all seriousness that I fear that many Members who end up voting for the Bill will regret the day that they did so. The Government have bulldozed their way through every convention so far, ludicrously combining two pieces of legislation that should never have been in one Bill—only because that was a way of keeping the coalition together—pushing forward with no pre-legislative scrutiny of a measure that had no electoral mandate, curtailing debate in this House, for the first time ever threatening the guillotine in the House of Lords, then packing the Lords with pliant new Conservative and Lib Dem Members every day and suspending all the normal rules in the House of Lords.
We will rue the way in which the Bill was pushed through and the legislation itself, because we are not legislating on the basis of long-term democratic health for this country, or on the basis of sound principle, but solely so as to meet the partisan needs of the coalition.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman seems to be suffering from a certain amount of amnesia. When his party was in office in the previous Parliament, there was guillotining all over the place.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman sometimes suffers from amnesia himself. I was talking about guillotines in the Lords. It has been a fundamental principle of the constitutional settlement in this country that the House of Lords is a self-governing House and never has a programme motion.
When there was a Labour Government of just one political party, we never had a majority in the House of Lords. By virtue of how the Government are progressing at the moment, with a large number of new peers being appointed—117 since the general election—they are approaching the point at which they will have an absolutely majority in this House and the other House.
Chris Bryant
I am not going to give way to the Minister on that point, because I know what he is going to say—that it will not give the Government a majority. However, the coalition’s statement says that they intend to keep on appointing Members of the House of Lords until the percentage share of the vote in the general election is matched there. That will give a majority to the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. If the Minister wants to intervene now, I am happy to give way.
Mr Harper
I want to make it clear that we have appointed a number of peers, but that a number of them in the resignation honours list of the former Prime Minister were, of course, Labour peers. Even with the new peers who have been appointed, the coalition Government have 40% of peers, well away from a majority.
Chris Bryant
The Minister knows perfectly well that the Government are getting very close to the stage at which they will end up having an absolute majority in both Houses. The vast majority of peers who take part in the daily business of the House and vote with the most regularity are those who take a party Whip. Among those, there is already a majority for the governing coalition. The Labour party never had that when in government. My main point is that we have to have some brake on the Government, especially if we go forward and have an elected second Chamber. Otherwise, government becomes autocracy.
Lords amendment 104, so the Minister would have us think, effectively introduces a real opportunity for local people to have their say on proposals from the Boundary Commission. It was a Government amendment tabled in the Lords, but it was introduced in a way that was not quite as the Minister suggests. In fact, Lord Falconer had tabled an amendment and was prepared to waive it because the Government said that they would return on Report with a full process that would embody the ideas behind public inquiries. In fact, Lord Wallace of Tankerness said specifically that
“the Government’s position has been that we are open to considering reasonable improvements to the process, provided that they do not compromise the fundamental principles of the Bill, and that still remains our position.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 January 2011; Vol. 724, c. 1069-1070.]
I do not know what fundamental principles of the Bill might mean that local people cannot have an effective voice, but that is what we have ended up with.
Let us be absolutely clear that what the Government propose does not meet the objections made by the Cross Benchers, Labour peers or many others who believe that local people should be able to have a proportionate say after the Boundary Commission has made proposals. For a start, the inquiries will not be local. There will be five at most across the whole of Wales and five in each region. I look forward to going to one of the five in the south-west, covering an enormous region with wide diversity. Each hearing will probably cover about 10 constituencies. I say to the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), who spoke earlier about Cornwall, that I do not think there is a chance in hell of local people in Cornwall having their views heard properly in the process. In addition, because of how the Bill is constructed, it will be impossible for the Boundary Commission to do anything about it even if it says that Cornwall should not be split up. The principle of the Bill to which the Minister is so adherent in some parts of the country, but not in all, is that the size of parliamentary constituencies should be equalised—too aggressively, I believe.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman define “local people”? Is he talking about unelected local people, local councillors or everybody?
Chris Bryant
I mean all those. There is an important distinction, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who is not in his place, said earlier, was discussed in the evidence that was given to the Select Committee last week. Political parties have their views to express—in the past, some have employed a barrister to express it for them, and that is perfectly legitimate. Sometimes, local councils want to take a view because they have a role in electoral registration and so on, but often local people in a small village, such as Much Marcle or Midsomer—if anyone is still alive in Midsomer—who are independent of any political affiliation, want their voice to be heard. They want to say, “No, frankly, we in Acton Burnell don’t”—or do—“want to be in Shrewsbury constituency.” We need a process whereby the people of Acton Burnell, where Parliament was held at Michaelmas in 1283, can express their view, and that will be impossible if there are only five hearings across the whole region. There will not be a hearing for each constituency. It is not each constituency that will be considered right or wrong. That is one of the problems.
Daniel Kawczynski
The hon. Gentleman is being cynical. If the people of Acton Burnell, who are in my constituency, wish to remain there, they can feed that information through to me and I will put that view at the public meeting.
Chris Bryant
I am impressed by the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that all views expressed by anybody in his constituency should undoubtedly, at all times, be expressed solely through him. However, there is another version of democracy, whereby sometimes people disagree with their local Member of Parliament and might want to adopt a different position.
Mr Winnick
The Minister said that public inquiries are discredited—we obviously disagree with that. However, is not it interesting that in previous Parliaments, we heard no such condemnation of public inquiries from the Conservatives, whether in government or in opposition? It is the first time that that has happened.
Chris Bryant
Much as I would love to agree with my hon. Friend, I recall previous comments: when people lost the argument at a public inquiry, they tended to hold forth against them; when they won the argument at a public inquiry, they tended to support them. However, in many cases, the Boundary Commission’s original proposals were overturned through public inquiries because of the voices of local people, such as the people of Acton Burnell, of Much Marcle and so on. Sometimes it happened because of the intervention of political parties. None the less, the end result has been constituency boundaries that, in the main, are accepted by the people who are represented.
Paul Murphy
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for boundary inquiries. My constituency was preserved 27 years ago by a long public inquiry. However, I am not sure whether the Minister grasped my earlier point. In Wales, there will be a 25% reduction in the number of seats—I was not arguing about the principle, but making the point that the disruption to the political and constitutional landscape in Wales is hugely greater than in other parts of the country. We should therefore have more public hearings in lieu of the public inquiries.
Chris Bryant
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In addition, there are some specific concerns. For example, it is possible that, as a result of the boundary changes, we would end up with no single constituency in Wales with a Welsh-speaking majority. That is not of particular concern to my constituents in the Rhondda, but it is of concern to the British Parliament that that voice could be lost.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
One of the reasons for my losing faith in the old system of public inquiries is that, for all the arguments that the Conservative party presented for a fairer distribution of constituencies, we finished up with a manifestly unfair distribution. We need a speedier system, which can use fresher and more up-to-date data to deliver a fairer distribution of constituencies. That should happen.
Chris Bryant
It might be that the Conservative party lost because it did not advance good arguments, which goes back to my earlier point.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman just said something that simply is not true. He said that no one will weigh up the arguments that are put at the public hearing, but that will happen. The boundary commissioners will look at the oral evidence and the written representations, weigh them up and make a judgment. Mr Speaker is of course the ex-officio chair, but the deputy chairman of the commissions is a High Court judge—someone who is legally qualified and perfectly able to chair a process that makes such decisions.
Chris Bryant
Lord Pannick made similar points to the ones I just made. He said:
“It is absolutely inevitable that the introduction of such a procedure will exacerbate rather than diminish the sense of grievance that has led people to make representations in the first place.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 February 2011; Vol. 725, c. 143.]
People’s sense of grievance will be exacerbated because they will make their arguments not to an independent person who weighs them up and submits a report to Boundary Commission, but third hand to the Boundary Commission, which, as the Minister says, will then make the decision. That will lead to a greater sense of grievance about the structure of parliamentary constituencies. I say this to Government Members: every single one of you will go through that process, and you will rue the day if you do not change the proposed system.
Mrs Laing
I am sure the hon. Gentleman realises that his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) exactly explains why the old system was dominated by clever lawyers and barristers, and clever political argument, and why it must be changed—it had nothing to do with local people. The hon. Gentleman just admitted as much.
The hon. Gentleman’s point on judicial review is a strong one. Does he agree that judicial review, and therefore delay and uncertainty, will be stopped if the Bill is certain and precise? That is why we cannot allow, for example, Lords amendment 19, which mentions circumstances of “an exceptionally compelling nature”. That is imprecise, but it is our duty to produce precise legislation, and thereby to obviate the necessity for judicial review.
Chris Bryant
Large parts of the Bill are not sufficiently precise, and the Opposition have tabled amendments to improve the quality of the legislation. The hon. Lady is a member of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, but I am not sure whether she heard Professor Johnston’s evidence last week—[Interruption.] I see that she is brandishing a document, like Excalibur. My reading of his evidence is that he felt that, in certain situations, the Acton Burnells of this world could effect change. We want that to be possible under the new system. We want the people of Cornwall, if they want to, to say categorically, “We do not want to cross the Tamar in the creation of a constituency.” However, there is no provision in the Government’s Bill, either for that voice to be heard effectively and transmitted to the Boundary Commission, or for the commission to act upon it. The commission can do absolutely nothing to act upon it because it is bound by the 5% rule, which is why I hope that the hon. Lady will support the 7.5% rule. If she has a way of improving the provision so that it is more precise, I would be delighted to sit down with her later and draft a new version.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Is not the problem with the process that, in principle, after the public hearing, the High Court judge chairing the original boundary commission is effectively the appeal judge to his own decision? I cannot think of any other process in administrative or public law in such an unsatisfactory situation.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend makes a perfect point. He is absolutely right. Someone cannot be judge, jury and appeal judge of their own decision. The danger is that people will go to court to try to resolve the problem. That is inevitable. All the Cross-Bench lawyers who spoke in the Lords debate made that precise point. That is why we have tabled an amendment to a Lords amendment—I hope that we can divide the House on it, unless the Government are minded to accept it—that would make it clear that public inquiries are intended not just to allow somebody to make a representation, but to effect change if necessary.
Chris Bryant
I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because we are on a time-limited debate and I have already given way to him once. He knows that I nearly always give way to everybody.
We have also tabled amendments to Lords amendment 27, which would allow for the creation of a committee after the next general election in June 2015 to consider the effects of the reduction of seats from 650 to 600. It is our fundamental assertion that it would make far more logical sense first to consider the role of MPs, what their job is and therefore how many MPs we need, and then to draw up the boundaries, rather than the other way around. That is why we have tabled amendments to that effect. As we have suggested many times before—Conservative Members have said this as well—there is no electoral mandate for the reduction from 650 to 600. There is no logic behind it and no Minister has ever been able to come up with a reason that figure has been chosen, other than, we suspect, the fact that if we went down to the original Conservative manifesto proposition of 585, we would lose another wodge of Liberal Democrat seats, and consequently—[Interruption.] I merely suggest to hon. Members that they might choose to table amendments to take us down to 585. However, we do not accept the way in which the motion has been advanced.
I want to refer briefly to two other issues. One is the matter to which the Minister referred in his swift run-through of minor amendments made: the issue of postal voters which was raised when we discussed the matter in Committee of the whole House. If someone is registered for a postal vote for an election in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland, will they automatically get a postal vote for the referendum? As I understand it, that is now to happen—[Interruption.] Actually, I know because I read the Electoral Commission’s report on it. Some people are concerned that others will by dint of that receive two postal votes for the referendum, because some people are registered in two places, including many MPs, who might be registered at their flat in London as well as in their constituency. They might be registered in both of those for postal votes and might then get two referendum ballot papers. That is obviously an issue that needs to be addressed. It was discussed in Committee.
Mr Harper
That is no different from the existing system, in which those on two electoral registers might get two ballot papers, but it is very clear—Members of Parliament will be as aware of this as anyone else—that voting twice in the referendum would be a criminal offence, as would voting twice in a general election, and I am sure that no Member of this House would want to do such a thing.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is being querulous. I was not suggesting that anybody wanted to do that, but there are some unscrupulous people out there who are not Members of this House who might want to do such a thing. The danger is that we will open ourselves up to an element of fraud.
My final point is about Lords amendment 18, tabled by Lord Tyler, which adds a criterion that the Boundary Commission can look at when considering the new boundaries that it draws up, namely the boundaries of existing constituencies. I am sure that all hon. Members think it a sensible idea for the boundaries of existing constituencies to be borne in mind when drawing up new constituency boundaries. I am delighted that on that, if nothing else, we agree with the Government.
Mr Harper
I think the difference is the strength of view in the other place on the matter. [Interruption.] That view was also consistent and cross party. The Labour Lords who voted in the Division in the other place all supported Lord Fowler’s amendment. It is therefore extraordinary that Labour Members are making so much noise now. The Government have acknowledged the debate at the other end of the corridor. Given my hon. Friend’s previous comments about their lordships, I would have thought that he saw more strength in the case. On the basis of the arguments that I have set out, I hope that that case will be supported.
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but I think that that was the shabbiest speech I have heard from a Conservative Member. The Parliamentary Secretary appeared to suggest that Labour Members are now arguing against what we supported in the House of Lords. We support what was carried in the House of Lords: we would prefer the amendment that was carried there to be accepted here. It is absolutely shoddy that the Government, to give themselves an extra parliamentary seat, will provide for two seats for the Isle of Wight. It is not so much a gerrymander as a ferrymander.
As the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) effectively said, the Parliamentary Secretary has driven a coach and horses through his own argument. His argument so far has been that there must be equalisation at all costs. It has been, “Don’t recognise local ties, county boundaries or ward boundaries.” He tries to insist on mathematical perfection, but when it comes to this one place, there must be an exception.
We agree that there should be exceptions. We believe that there should be some other exceptions, too. The argument that the Parliamentary Secretary makes could and should apply to Cornwall, Somerset and all the counties—and, indeed, ward boundaries. We should recognise more exceptions.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
I wish that the hon. Gentleman could have presented that argument precisely and briefly when the Bill was previously in the House, then perhaps we could all have had the chance to debate the subject at an earlier stage. However, does he agree that the debate about Cornwall in another place focused on cultural issues rather than geographical considerations? Sadly, the Government’s approach does not address those factors.
Chris Bryant
Absolutely. Some specific geographical issues need to be borne in mind. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will hate any reference to my constituency, but a former Member of Parliament for the Rhondda, Alec Jones, was once presented with a suggestion that the Cynon valley should be included in the Rhondda constituency, even though for much of the year it is almost impossible to get from one to the other. Alec Jones wisely said, “Bloody hell, somebody’s got hold of a flat map.” Those are precisely the sort of arrangements that we will end up with.
Chris Bryant
I will not, because the hon. Gentleman voted for the programme motion. There is a short time left and we ought to hear from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who should be the only hon. Member for the Isle of Wight.
The argument that has been adduced in favour of the Isle of Wight should surely apply to Anglesey, too. There is no argument against that—except for the fact that it is represented by a Labour Member, and happens to be in Wales.
There is an additional problem with the Government amendments. Because they are trying to force two parliamentary seats on the Isle of Wight—I suspect that that does not reflect the view of the people of the Isle of Wight; they think that it should be separate from Hampshire, but they have not argued for two seats—it will be difficult to draw the boundary. We are more likely to end up with one constituency of 60,000 or 65,000 and one of 30,000 or 35,000 than an exact divide.
Chris Bryant
No, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, too, voted for the programme motion, so I shall not give way.
Someone of cynical mind could look at the list of parliamentary constituencies for which exceptions are being made and draw conclusions: one, by virtue of 13,000 sq km, to the Liberal Democrats; one, for Orkney and Shetland, to the Liberal Democrats, one, for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, to the nationalists—at the moment, but I hope for not much longer—and two for the Isle of Wight. Some have suggested that that means two Tory seats in the Isle of Wight. It may be one Tory and one Liberal Democrat: perhaps that is the rescue seat for the Deputy Prime Minister come the next general election.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I had a speech prepared to deliver today, but I do not think that I shall need it; I am using another.
Let us go over what happened. When I first heard of the proposals, I got together with the County Press, the island’s weekly paper, and Isle of Wight Radio, our local radio station, to see how “we” could fight “them”. It was energising to do that. We all met representatives from the island’s Labour party and Liberal Democrats—and, of course, the Conservatives—as well as the chamber of commerce, and the One Wight campaign was formed.
We appointed a non-political spokesman, Richard Priest, who has done an admirable job of fronting the campaign.
Mr Harper
We have already discussed what constitutes the appropriate level of turnout, and the issue arises constantly when elections are held. However, when a general election produces a Government who may make significant changes, we do not say that a Member of Parliament has not been elected because the turnout was low. Indeed, when we debated the issue on another occasion, it was observed that a fair number of Members of Parliament would not be here if that had been the test. That is not the way in which we make judgments in this country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said that, as the Electoral Commission had pointed out, leaving the provisions in the Bill risked rendering the outcome of the referendum unclear both in law and on the ground. We think that the public should make the decision, and that the referendum should be binding and not subject to the turnout threshold. Our colleagues in the other place debated this proposal with their usual consideration and care, but, having done so, voted for it by the slimmest of margins—a majority of one. Having considered both the practical difficulties and the issues of principle, I believe that the arguments for overturning the decision in the other place are compelling. I ask the House to oppose both these amendments and the consequential amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.
Chris Bryant
The Minister’s last few words were something of a giveaway. He suddenly introduced a threshold of his own: a special threshold for votes in the House of Lords, which must secure a bigger majority than one for the Government to take them seriously. That is an interesting innovation.
I will vote yes in the referendum in May, although I hear what is said by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), and I pay tribute to him. I recognise that the first occasion on which the House of Commons sat on its own was in his constituency, but that was only because it had been summoned to Shrewsbury first to see the hanging, drawing and quartering of the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd—and that really was a shame.
I will support the alternative vote, which is why, in Committee, I strongly opposed what I considered to be wrecking amendments in respect of thresholds. However, I believe that this is an exceptional referendum for two reasons. First, unlike the vast majority of referendums that have been held in this country and many others, it will not just advise, but will implement legislation. That means that, if there is a yes vote, we will not have a second opportunity to consider all the elements of how the alternative vote will be implemented.
Secondly, as we have asserted from the outset, we do not believe that this referendum should be combined with elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and with local elections, because that will produce very different turnouts in different parts of the United Kingdom. There might well be deep resentment in one part of the United Kingdom because another part, on a very different turnout, had ended up with a different result.
Chris Bryant
I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, although there is very little time and he voted for the programme motion.
Stephen Williams
No threshold was involved in the referendum to create the National Assembly for Wales in the summer of 1997. The area represented by the hon. Gentleman, Rhondda Cynon Taf, voted yes in that referendum. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the votes of his own constituents should have been invalidated because the turnout was not above 40%?
Chris Bryant
No, I am not saying that at all, but that referendum was not an implementing referendum; nor was it held at the same time as other elections. That is a completely different matter therefore, and I think we behaved entirely properly in introducing our legislation for Wales. Incidentally, in the 3 March referendum I shall also be voting in favour.
Mr MacNeil
Is the hon. Gentleman really saying, “These are my principles on referendums, but I don’t like them so I’ve got some other ones”? He says one thing on the one hand, and another thing on the other. There is no consistency at all from those on the Labour Front Bench.
Chris Bryant
No, that is not true. [Interruption.] Yes, it is interesting to hear an argument for consistency from a Scottish nationalist. That is almost as interesting as hearing that argument from a Liberal Democrat. [Interruption.] I note that the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) was already laughing before I said that.
The Minister cited me, and claimed that I was going to say all sorts of things. Actually, in Committee in this Chamber I said that
“there is no fixed determined policy that we are completely and utterly in all cases implacably opposed to thresholds. Nor, for that matter, is there a belief that we ardently should have thresholds.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 847.]
My point is that there are times when thresholds might be suitable, and there are times when thresholds will not be suitable. Indeed, the Minister quoted a bit of my speech, but I went on to say that
“I fully understand that there are others who say that because of the way in which the Government are pushing forward with this legislation and because it is an implementing referendum, a threshold would be appropriate.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 849.]
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
I ask the hon. Gentleman to cast his mind back to 1979, when we had a Scottish referendum under the 40% turnout rule. A majority voted yes, the whole issue festered for 18 years, and when the Labour party came back to power and it had another referendum, it rightly learned the lessons of the past and did not have a 40% threshold. Will he please learn the lesson of the past?
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That was why I was opposed to the versions of thresholds that were brought forward in Committee. There were two different versions. One was that it was necessary to get 25% of the electorate to vote yes, as well as more people voting yes than voting no. The other was a 40% threshold. If neither of those two conditions were reached, the result was to be an automatic no and we were to stick with first past the post.
That is not what this amendment’s threshold would do. This is a very different referendum, and consequently needs a very different style of threshold. All this threshold would do is say that Parliament ought to have a second thought. It would say that if we do not get up to 40%—if, for instance, the turnout in England is 15% or 20 %, whereas in Scotland and Wales it is closer to 43%, 44% or 45%—there ought to be a moment when Parliament thinks again about the implementing process in going forward.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman is a distinguished constitutionalist, and I wonder whether he thinks that in the context of referendums being used more frequently, and for deciding on European matters and constitutional issues, it would be a good idea to settle on a threshold for all referendums, so that people knew where they stood.
Chris Bryant
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am very grateful to be called distinguished about anything, but I do not think he would carry the House on that point. I am not a fan of referendums generally at all, because I think the whole point of parliamentary democracy is that Members are elected to take decisions, provide leadership and represent the people in our constituencies. I think that is the best way of advancing policy. However, where there are referendums, I think it is better if they are advisory ones rather than implementing ones. That is the point I would make about the whole referendum issue before us.
I think this is a special referendum and I therefore think it needs a special threshold. That is precisely what Lord Rooker’s amendment provides for, which is why we will be supporting it tonight.
Stephen Williams
I will be as brief as possible, as I know that many Members want to speak.
My basic point is that we have many elections in this country where we do not require a threshold in order to give legitimacy to the result. We know that this referendum is very likely to be taking place on the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and local government, and because of the historical pattern of those elections we also know there is likely to be a low turnout in them. In 2009, only two of the 23 wards that elected councillors in the city of Bristol had a turnout of more than 50% and only six had a turnout of more than 40%, and 15 had turnout percentages in the 30s or 20s, yet we do not say that the councillors elected to represent Bristol were not legitimate. We know that turnout usually dips in the year after a general election, and the turnouts in 1998 were even lower. In May 1998, I was last elected as a member of Bristol city council, in Cabot ward, on a turnout of 18%, although I received more than 53% of the vote. Nobody said that I was not fairly elected to represent the electors of that ward.
Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As a new Member, I drew No. 7 in the private Members’ Bill ballot. Some might think that it is great foolhardiness to have chosen to raise the knotty constitutional issue of the West Lothian question in the House today, but it is with a great sense of privilege and trepidation that I today present a Bill that is designed to be extremely helpful to you, Mr Speaker, if you were ever asked to certify whether a particular piece of legislation applied to a particular part of the United Kingdom.
Mr Speaker, you will be very aware that the question of Members voting on issues that do not affect their own constituencies has vexed many minds much more learned than mine for well over a century.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Why on earth would Mr Speaker be asked to adjudicate on whether something applied somewhere or did not?
Harriett Baldwin
That is an extremely important question. Mr Speaker has the ability, under Standing Order No. 97, to certify whether a particular piece of legislation applies only to Scotland. He already has the powers, and it will be extremely interesting today, during the debate on this legislation, to discuss whether those powers ought to be extended to further parts of the United Kingdom.
The West Lothian question has vexed constitutional experts since the time of Gladstone, who first perceived the difficulties when Irish Home Rule was being discussed. At various times in the last century, the topic has been raised in the Chamber and in the other place, but it has always been parked in the car park for questions that are too difficult to resolve under our unwritten constitution.
However, the following question is often raised with me by residents of my constituency, which I like to think represents the heart of middle England. How can it be right for it to be possible for potentially decisive pieces of legislation to be voted on in this place by, and carried by a majority of, Members of Parliament who are not legislating on behalf of their own constituents? That is not a question that we can carry on parking in that car park for ever. It is my intention with this Bill to edge the West Lothian question slightly closer to the car park exit.
The Conservative party manifesto, on which I stood, said:
“Labour have refused to address the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’: the unfair situation of Scottish MPs voting on matters which are devolved. A Conservative government will introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”
Of course, the Conservative party did not win an overall majority, but in the coalition programme for government, the section on political reform states:
“We will establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question’.”
On 26 October last year, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister in this Chamber when the commission would be established, and I was told that it would be established by the end of 2010. However, it became apparent on the final sitting day of 2010 that the commission had not been established, and I again put the question to my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the Minister on duty, who said that
“the Government will make an announcement on the commission in the new year. I am happy to confirm that we do indeed mean 2011. That is very much part of our programme for next year.”—[Official Report, 21 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 1338.]
If nothing else, given the fragile life chances of private Members’ Bills, I am pleased to use today’s debate to encourage the Government to advance their own business.
Over the last decade, devolution to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which I wholeheartedly support, has meant that more and more legislation coming before the House affects different constituent parts of the United Kingdom in different ways. For example, at the moment the Health and Social Care Bill will apply essentially to England.
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point about how difficult it is these days to identify which parts of the United Kingdom Bills will apply to, a problem that this Bill is intended to address. The hon. Gentleman will clearly support it.
Harriett Baldwin
My hon. Friend asks an important question, pointing out that devolution is an ongoing process. Indeed, the referendum in Wales on 3 March and the Scotland Bill will potentially change the decision-making process in this Chamber, so it is all the more important that the Bill is carried today.
Chris Bryant
Will the hon. Lady tell us whether she voted on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which contains many provisions that will apply solely to Wales?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman is making extremely important points about how legislation currently before the House can mix up different issues and have different impacts on different parts of the United Kingdom. My Bill would make things clearer, with the result that parliamentary draftsmen would automatically start to make it clearer and much more distinct which parts of the United Kingdom Bills apply to. In addition, the Bill would allow legislation to continue to apply to different parts of the United Kingdom—all it says is, “Let’s state that on the face of the Bill.” Why should we not do that?
Harriett Baldwin
I thank my hon. Friend for adding those supportive words from her constituents. I am sure that many hon. Members have had the issue raised with them from time to time.
As I mentioned, the question has been looked at by many heads wiser than mine over the years, and I have benefited from extensive analysis from history of what has not worked. Therefore, I have avoided in the Bill any sense that I want to create two categories of MP at Westminster, which is where the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter)—the House of Commons (Participation) Bill—ran into difficulty in the previous Parliament. Parliamentary privilege, which is MPs’ ability to speak out or vote on any issue, is at the heart of our Parliament.
I am a passionate supporter of the Union, and do not want to undermine it in any way with the Bill. My grandmother, of whom I have fond memories, was called Flora McLean McLeod Morison. She was born in Dunbar to a general practitioner who came from the Isle of Mull, so I am a flesh-and-blood embodiment of the Union myself. It is because I believe that not resolving this question would cause long-term harm to the Union that I urge the Government to support the Bill.
What I found most helpful in preparing the Bill was the Conservative party’s democracy taskforce, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who prepared a pamphlet called “Answering the Question”. The Leader of the House, who was in the Chamber earlier, and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) were also on the taskforce, so we are talking about some impressive brainpower. The taskforce’s report looked at five main options for addressing the West Lothian question.
The first option is the one that the previous Government took for the last decade, which essentially was to do nothing. That approach was best summarised by Lord Irvine’s argument—that the best way to answer the West Lothian question was to stop asking it.
Chris Bryant
I think I saw a little partisanness sweep across the hon. Lady’s eyes. To say that it is only the Government of the last 10 years who have done nothing about the issue is to ignore the last seven centuries, when no Government did anything about it.
Harriett Baldwin
I fully accept that the issue has been out there and unsolved for at least 100 years. However, I think that it was a deliberate strategy by the previous Government, as evidenced by Lord Irvine’s statement. The do-nothing approach risks causing the same English alienation that Scottish devolution was designed to address for Scotland.
A second approach to address the issue is through under-representation at Westminster for the parts of the UK that have their own Parliament, which is often known as the Stormont solution. During most of the 20th century there was a Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont, and Northern Ireland sent only 11 Members of Parliament to Westminster when its population would have justified 17. That is another possible approach, but I do not think it is the right one. Also, it is completely at odds with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which brings a welcome equalisation of constituency sizes.
A third option that people have mentioned is an English Parliament. There is a campaign group for this solution, but that approach leads to a plethora of questions. Would it require separate elections or a separate building? Would we have a First Minister for England? What if the First Minister for England was different from the Prime Minister? That solution would also be extremely expensive, and I do not think that the mood in the country is in favour of an additional layer of politicians. That approach could also lead to the formal break-up of the United Kingdom, so I have completely rejected it. A fourth approach, which, to be fair to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), was the one initially taken by the previous Government, is devolution to regional government, giving the English regions more constitutional power. However, that was rejected decisively in the 2004 referendum in the north-east.
A fifth option, which has been on the table for some time, is something called English votes for English laws. Unfortunately, however, that would create two categories of MPs, leaving the Executive powerless to win votes on important public service issues. That was the approach taken by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset in his private Member’s Bill, and was also the approach outlined in the 2001 and 2005 Conservative manifestos.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on what she has said today. This is an historic moment. West Worcestershire has taken up the cudgels on the West Lothian question, and I very much welcome her comments. I have taken an interest in these issues for a long time. I first entered the House in 1974, and when Margaret Thatcher became leader of our party, she was kind enough to appoint me as a junior spokesman on devolution. I have therefore had to take some views on these matters. I am now the Member for Kensington, but my primary home remains in Scotland, outside Edinburgh in East Lothian. Later, I will offer what might immodestly be referred to as an East Lothian answer to the West Lothian question.
I have no doubt that the consequences of devolution represent unfinished business. Over the past 12 years, we have witnessed the single biggest constitutional change in the United Kingdom since the Act of Union in 1707—
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
It was far more important than what happened in 1801, which turned out to be a blip in the constitutional history of the UK. What we are seeing now is a permanent change. It has not destroyed the United Kingdom, but it has undoubtedly created a new kind of United Kingdom. That has constitutional implications, as well as implications for fairness. I suspect that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) would suggest that, since Stormont, we have lived with the fact of Members from Northern Ireland being able to vote on all the measures in this House despite the fact that their own constituencies might not be affected by them. There is a de minimis issue that we can sometimes live with, but we now have something quite different, particularly if the Welsh approve an extension of the legislative powers of their Assembly in their referendum.
We will have a situation in which not 11 but approximately 100 Members of this House from three of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom will be able to vote on issues that do not affect their own constituents. There will be only one part of the UK that does not have that right. Rather curiously, having dominated the United Kingdom, by numbers, since the Act of Union in 1707, England will become the one part of the UK whose elected representatives do not, by themselves, have the final say on matters that affect purely their constituents. That will no longer be the case for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but paradoxically it will have become so for England. Talking about 100 Members, rather than 11, is not a minimal side issue; it goes to the very heart not only of constitutional propriety but of fairness. My remarks today will be about fairness rather than constitutions, because that is the fundamental principle of our political system, and the implications of these arrangements are significant.
We must not get this out of proportion, however. I do not believe that it is right to imply that, as a consequence of devolution, this place has effectively become an English Chamber because the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish have very little continuing involvement here as a result of the big areas that have been devolved to their own Parliaments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That is a gross exaggeration. If we look at the whole scope of government, we see that the UK Government and Parliament still have either sole or predominant responsibility for massive swaths of policy. The most important issues facing any Government are those of taxation. At this moment, virtually all tax powers reside with the United Kingdom Parliament, and all Members of Parliament from every part of the kingdom have an equal interest in and responsibility for those matters. The largest budget of the British Government is the social security budget, and that is a United Kingdom budget. It does not differentiate in any material way between north and south of the border.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Yes, that is indeed one approach. We are always reminding ourselves that this country has a sovereign Parliament. The idea that a sovereign Parliament cannot determine that certain classes of legislation will not go through unless there is a double majority of the kind that I have described is absurd. Of course it can do that if it wishes; it is entirely within its power. It is simply a political judgment as to whether that is the right way forward.
I shall not speak for much longer, but I want to address one fundamental challenge that will be made—it has already been made—to any of the solutions that have been described. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Rhondda will raise this suggestion. It is constantly said that the problem with all these approaches is that if a Government were denied the use of all the votes of their supporters that would usually give them a majority, the whole business of government would become unworkable and the Government would be unable to get their programme through, which would create some sort of constitutional crisis. To be fair, that argument is not made only by Labour Members. Mr Vernon Bogdanor, for example, who we are often told is a great constitutional expert, has constantly opined that that is a fundamental flaw in any such approach. Although I can understand why the Labour party adopts that view, because there is a political interest in putting forward such an argument, I find it very difficult to understand why such a learned gentleman has come to this conclusion—and I hope that he reads this speech.
Chris Bryant
The right hon. and learned Gentleman might like to know that Mr Bogdanor was the tutor of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
I have no doubt that he was. Eric Anderson was the headmaster who taught Tony Blair, but I do not think that either could be held responsible for the other; each must come to their own judgments on these matters.
I come to the central point about the accusation that government would become unworkable. It is not just my view, my opinion or my theory that that is nonsense. We know from our own history that it is a ludicrous argument; it is exactly what happens every time we have a hung Parliament. When there is such a Parliament, as there was between 1974 and 1979, there will be many occasions when Governments cannot get their legislation through. It does not necessarily mean the collapse of the Government unless it is on some fundamental issue of confidence. What happens is that Governments either have to withdraw the proposal or discuss it with their opponents and table amendments to make it more acceptable. That is also exactly what happens between the House of Commons and the House of Lords from time to time. It is what happens in the United States all the time. The current President of the US does not have a majority in Congress, so he can never be certain of getting any legislation through. The argument that a British Government would somehow find themselves in an unworkable and unacceptable situation because not all but some of their English-only legislation was so controversial that a majority of English Members could not be persuaded to vote for it and that that would create chaos in the workings of government is manifestly ludicrous. That argument cannot be put forward in any credible way.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who has not been in the House long and yet already has managed to grasp firmly with both hands the nettle of one of the more complicated constitutional matters that has faced the country, I would say, for considerably longer than she suggested. It achieved a name, and once something has a name it achieves greater prominence—because of Irish Home Rule. However, when we first started binding together the different bits of the Union, there were profound discussions about how many Members of Parliament of both Houses should be from each of the constituent parts. To all intents and purposes, that was a very similar debate.
I was with the hon. Lady for part of her contribution, but then she took us to the Welsh Grand Committee. Anyone who suggests that that is an answer to anything, I am afraid, has completely lost me. My experience of the Welsh grandstanding Committee is that, for the most part, it is not as useful as it might seem to those who do not have to attend it.
Harriett Baldwin
Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that the Bill stops well short of such Committees, and would be a simple and innocuous piece of legislation that he could wholeheartedly support?
Chris Bryant
Was it Socrates—I cannot remember—who said that a small book was always a bad book? Sometimes a simple and innocuous-looking piece of legislation can do the most pernicious damage. I will come on to whether I think it is innocuous later.
It is always great to hear the right hon. and learned—and gallant, and doubtless many other things besides—[Laughter.] Other words, which he might not like so much, are coming to mind now. It is always difficult not to think of the right hon. and learned Member for East Lothian—sorry, for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—as a Scottish MP, and I suppose that in many regards he still is, but he is a Scottish MP for an English seat. Several hon. Members think that I am an English Member for a Welsh seat, but I am thoroughly Welsh, and Jeremy Paxman had to apologise when he maintained, in his latest book, that I was not.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to maintain that Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members of Parliament have no diminished role just because of devolution. In many debates, they bring a specific interest and point of view that adds to the whole equation. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who has departed the scene, said that Wales and Scotland MPs must, by definition, have less casework, which is certainly not my experience. If anything, many constituents, in the process of trying to achieve redress for their individual concern, try to play the Assembly Member off against the Member of Parliament. As the Welsh Assembly also has regional Members, my experience is that those from other political parties who failed to be elected in constituencies end up trying to play a semi-constituency role. Often, that leads to a considerable enhancement of the amount of work done. I make no complaint about that, but I think that those who assume, from their English seat, that a Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament result in Welsh and Scottish MPs having less casework, are wrong.
There are many different kinds of casework. There is casework such as a miners compensation scheme, with which thousands of people want help going through the legal process. Then there is casework such as, “I think it’s an absolute outrage that you ever thought of voting for this piece of legislation.” I get very little of the latter and a lot of the former. In different constituencies around the land, some Members have a lot of immigration cases. I have had only about three immigration cases during my time as a Member of Parliament. Casework varies between constituencies, and it is not appropriate to legislate directly in relation to that.
Mr Stewart Jackson
Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that, with constituencies in Scotland and Wales having significantly smaller electorates than those in England, list system Members, devolved Parliament Members and MPs, such MPs have the same work loads as English constituency Members? If so, does he have any academic evidence to support that, because I am quite sceptical?
Chris Bryant
I think “Sceptical” might be the hon. Gentleman’s middle name. I see he is smiling—I have managed to get a smile out of him; that must be a first. He is now trying not to smile. Now he is laughing.
The only point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that there is no academic evidence, and probably never will be. All that we have is anecdotal evidence. I merely offer my own evidence—I have not seen my work load diminish compared with that of my predecessor, who did not have a Welsh Assembly to contend with. The hon. Gentleman is right that a constituency with a smaller number of people might mean that the Member concerned has fewer people contacting them, but it might also mean that access to the Member for constituents is more difficult and that it involves considerable travelling around the constituency. Anyway, that is a matter for a different debate.
The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington referred to the issue of whether there should be an English Parliament. He is right to argue that there is a danger that we would end up with two Governments. Who would take possession of Downing street? Presumably, we would have a set of English Ministers, in addition to British Ministers, and so on. I am not sure that is the direction in which British voters want to go. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire referred to the fact that on the one occasion when we had a referendum on whether there should be devolved responsibilities within the English regions, people decided, largely because they did not want more politicians, not to go down that route.
In parenthesis, let me say briefly that I hear regularly, not from the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington but from others, that this is the mother of Parliaments. I again say that John Bright meant that England was the mother of Parliaments and that it was a very difficult and complicated birth. The effortless English superiority that sometimes arises in these debates is unfortunate.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to Wales, and I was reminded of a story, which may not be apocryphal, of Charlotte Church singing before George W. Bush when he was President—a meeting of two great minds, obviously.
When Charlotte Church was introduced to the President, he asked, “Where are you from?” She said, “Wales.” He asked, “What state is that in?” , and she said “Terrible.” Discussions about issues such as this are not always informed by great intelligence.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the possibility of an English Grand Committee. It has been suggested in the past that such a Committee should sit in the Chamber, because it would obviously have a significant number of members. During the last Parliament we discussed the possibility of regional Grand Committees and arguments were presented both for and against the idea, but it has fallen by the wayside.
I am not convinced by the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s argument in favour of a requirement for a double majority. Neither House has ever operated a system of secondary mandates.
Chris Bryant
It is true that innovation is sometimes a good thing, but I think that it would lead to confusion in this instance.
I am afraid that I am going to disappoint the right hon. and learned Gentleman now. He expected me to argue that a Government who lost a piece of legislation would fall, but I am not going to argue that at all. In fact, the danger is that as we move towards an elected second Chamber—and over the past few weeks we have seen both sides of the second Chamber behaving almost exactly like an elected Chamber—we will reach a point at which there will be absolutely no check on the power of the Executive. There will be no check by virtue of the time that the second Chamber can take to delay legislation, and no check in this House because, by definition, the Government have a majority. We may have to address that problem through the way in which we interpret the Standing Orders of the House.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
The hon. Gentleman has been kind enough to say that he does not think that a double-majority requirement would create an unworkable situation for the Government. The only argument—in fact, it is not even an argument, but just a word—that he has used to indicate his reason for opposing such a requirement is that it would cause “confusion”. What does he mean by that?
Chris Bryant
I shall deal later with an issue that relates directly to the point of the Bill, and I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will then understand why I believe there is a problem. [Interruption.] He is now confused, but I hope that I shall be able to rescue him from his confusion in a moment or two.
As I said to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, this is an age-old issue. There is a meretricious argument, which the hon. Lady steered away from today—although she dangled it in front of us a little bit—that it is patently absurd for Members whose constituents will not be affected by an individual piece of legislation to be able to vote on it. That is, at any rate, a paraphrase of something that she said. My response is “All that glisters is not gold.”
If we decide that Members can vote only on matters that affect their constituents directly—or even indirectly, I suppose—we end up with the question of who runs the country. At any one moment, on any one piece of legislation, there is uncertainty, and in the case of Finance Bills in particular there is a real problem. The issue is not just what the Government propose, but what Members can or cannot amend. Some money Bills have effect only in England, but the danger is that a money Bill could be amended in a way that caused it to have an implication elsewhere.
Harriett Baldwin
Can the hon. Gentleman give me an example of a money Bill that might affect only England? I am not sure that my research has identified one.
Chris Bryant
There are money Bills attached to many pieces of legislation. There will be money Bills in relation to the education Bill and the national health service Bill, for instance. However, I think that the hon. Lady is referring to Finance Bills. It is true that the vast majority of Finance Bills have implications throughout the United Kingdom, although obviously there will be modifications in relation to Scotland if the Scotland Bill is passed. Elements of a future Finance Bill would not apply in Scotland. Indeed, elements of a Finance Bill today already do not apply in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales.
My second point is that it is phenomenally difficult to be clear about what constitutes the territorial extent not just of a particular piece of legislation, but of its transition through the House. It would seem on the face of it that, for instance, the Bill that became the Health Act 2006 was purely an England Bill. Most people would consider that to be the case. The Bill made provision in relation to smoke-free premises, the purpose being to ban smoking in public places in England. On 14 February 2006 the House debated new clause 5, which replaced the original clause 3. It provided that
“The appropriate national authority may make regulations providing for specified descriptions of premises, or specified areas within specified descriptions of premises, not to be smoke-free”.
It then listed a series of places that might be exempted. Subsection (5), for example, stated:
“If both a club premises certificate and a premises licence authorising the consumption of alcohol on the premises have effect in respect of any premises, those premises are to be treated for the purposes of this section as if only the premises licence had effect”.
Andrea Leadsom
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Given that the whole purpose of the Bill is to make clearer in legislation exactly what different legislative proposals relate to in terms of the geographical area of the United Kingdom, surely his argument is one in favour of the Bill.
Chris Bryant
No, it is an argument against it. I remember clearly the rows that took place in both the Chamber and the Clerk’s Office about whether the way in which the amendments to a health Bill were being selected would mean that Wales was or was not covered. Because most Members wanted to remove the provision that would allow the Secretary of State to exempt private members’ clubs in England, they actually removed the provision that allowed an exemption for private members’ clubs in Wales. It may well be that the Welsh Assembly would have wanted to do that itself anyway, but it had no choice. It could not make such a provision. I can tell the hon. Lady that that row was quite vociferous.
My point is this: I do not think it is possible to be clear. The original legislation might be clear, but people might want to amend it, and why should they not be able to do so? If the parliamentary draftspeople say, “This Bill will cover only England”, the number of Bills going through the House will have to be doubled, if not trebled, because there will have to be a separate Wales Bill and a separate Scotland Bill.
Harriett Baldwin
With the greatest respect, surely in such circumstances it would be necessary only to say, “This Bill applies to all three areas.” My Bill provides for flexibility in order to avoid precisely the kind of row that the hon. Gentleman has described.
Chris Bryant
But who gets to decide the interpretation of what applies and what does not apply? That is the problem. A series of issues arises. A decision is made by parliamentary draftspeople, or Clerks, or the Speaker. That would bring them into the debate, which would be a mistake.
I want to give the reason why I think the Bill is being introduced. Although it is fascinating to know the territorial extent of any Bill or clause, the only purpose of knowing that must surely be, as the hon. Lady said, to ensure that Members of the House vote only on legislation that directly affects them. That is a misguided intention. In practice, that would mean that we ended up with more Bills, and Second and Third Readings and Committee stages. If we decide that English MPs can vote only on English legislation, who will vote on Welsh clauses? Just Welsh MPs? Would only Welsh MPs be able to attend the Committee to take the Bill through? I think that we have never had a Welsh Secretary of State for Wales under a Conservative Government, although I may be wrong. We would have to allow the Minister to sit on the Committee but they would not be able to vote on their own legislation, which seems patently absurd.
Harriett Baldwin
With respect, the hon. Gentleman is missing the whole point. Obviously, legislation will have different effects in different parts of the UK. That will be spelt out in the legislation. All the issues that he is raising are complete red herrings that the Bill would address.
Chris Bryant
No, I honestly think that the hon. Lady is completely naive in relation to this matter. She said at the beginning of her speech that she thought that it was a fundamental principle that MPs should be able to vote only on those things that affect their constituents. That is the only purpose of having such a provision in any legislation. If she introduces a piece of legislation or a Standing Order—I will come to parliamentary privilege in a moment—that would require MPs not to vote on a piece of legislation, or that would shame people into not voting on a piece of legislation, she will create a real problem. If we assert that only English MPs can take part in the proceedings on English legislation, table amendments, amend Bills, seek to speak and vote on that legislation—that is where her Bill is driving us—there will be a problem for English legislation, not least because large numbers of Scottish and Welsh MPs have been English Ministers dealing with largely English matters. There are and have been Scottish and Welsh Ministers in, for example, the Department of Health and the Department for Education who have largely dealt with matters that refer only to England.
Andrea Leadsom
People in the country do not want to see Scottish MPs voting as Ministers on English-only legislation. Surely the hon. Gentleman can see that there is a fairness issue. It is surely not a bad thing if people might be shamed into feeling that they cannot represent English-only issues if they are a Scottish MP, and by the way, the Bill is not proposing that.
Chris Bryant
I think that the hon. Lady has just let the cat out of the bag. That is the whole point of her argument, is it not? There is no other reason to introduce such as measure. The only reason is to shame people. That is what the hon. Lady wants to do. I think that she is effectively saying that she does not want me as a Welsh MP to vote on anything that she believes to be an English-only matter. Is that what she believes?
Andrea Leadsom
Is the hon. Gentleman asking me or my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)?
Chris Bryant
Sorry, I am slightly cross-eyed. I meant the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom).
Andrea Leadsom
This is obviously my hon. Friend’s Bill. She is not proposing any such legislation. She is merely proposing to clarify the territorial extent of any Bill that goes through the House. For my own part, in direct answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, I think that it is unfair to you, as a Welsh Member representing Welsh interests, voting on English-only interests, or indeed being a Minister for English-only interests. That is my personal opinion and I would not like you to attribute that to my hon. Friend whose Bill this is. She is not making that proposal.
Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently point out that I have been accused of many things but not of being a Welsh Member?
Chris Bryant
Although I am sure that you would not mind, Mr Speaker. It is not a libel. It is not like being called an English Member when you are not an English Member. [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] We lost badly in the rugby last week so we are still somewhat wounded on these matters.
I recognise that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire has dressed her Bill up so that it does not look like it is moving in that direction, but many Members might only support the Bill because they want it to move in that direction. As I said earlier, I understand that some people are concerned about the issue in the country. However, I cannot think of a single Parliament in the world, including Spain and many other countries—this is not the only argument that I would use in relation to this—where there is asymmetric devolution and MPs cannot vote on every piece of legislation that is brought before them. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, to go down that route is a nationalist argument—not as in British nationalist, but as in Welsh, Scottish or Irish nationalist—and will unpick the Union in the end. Therefore, if the hon. Member for West Worcestershire really believes in the Union, it is a bit difficult to advance that argument.
Harriett Baldwin
As I said earlier, it is because of that belief that it is important that we have clarity in our legislation about which parts of the UK it affects. Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that we have to just continue to park the issue and not address it, thus undermining the Union?
Chris Bryant
I would like to see the issue addressed in different ways—as it has been addressed in other countries. For example, the role of the second Chamber needs to be looked at. It has been embarrassing that the vast majority of people who have been appointed to the second Chamber in the past few years have been from London and the south-east of England. That is almost inevitable when we have an appointments system. I would prefer to move to an elected system, where we had more people representing the whole of the UK. It might be possible to devise a better answer to the West Lothian question through reform of the second Chamber on an elected basis.
However, as the hon. Lady has said, the whole business of parliamentary privilege comes into play. It has been a fundamental assumption from when the first commoners were allowed to attend parliamentary proceedings under Simon de Montfort in 1258 that grievances that they presented on behalf of the people should be able to be presented without any difference between one and the other Members.
Chris Bryant
I thought that going back to the 13th century might stimulate the hon. Gentleman.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The right of shires to send people for address of grievance pre-dates Simon de Montfort. It is the boroughs that came in at that point.
Chris Bryant
Simon de Montfort invited four knights from each of the shires and six from Yorkshire in 1258 to present in Parliament their grievances on behalf of others. We do not know that all the knights attended. Of the ones who did attend, we only know that because they presented expenses and had them paid, so this problem has been with us since Mauge Vavasour had his payments made in Michaelmas 1258. It was a significant moment. The burgesses obviously arrived after 1258, though earlier in the 13th century there were occasions when some burgesses from the Cinque ports were invited, and some from those cities where there were a large number of Jewish residents were brought to Parliament to debate specific issues.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The knights of the shires came much earlier than that—they come from the reign of Richard I. That is attested thoroughly.
Chris Bryant
Well, not all 37 shires had representation, and they certainly did not have that as of right. I am perfectly happy to debate this at another time, but for now Mr Speaker has got that slightly fascinated but also slightly irritated face on.
It would be very dangerous to dismantle the fundamental principle of the equality of all Members of this House. That is why I think that, in the end, the direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is moving in with this Bill is an unfortunate one.
Harriett Baldwin
Let me reiterate once again that none of the concerns the hon. Gentleman is raising apply to the Bill.
Chris Bryant
As I have said, legislation is about not just what it does, but the declaratory effect that it has. The hon. Lady referred to the intended consequences of her Bill, but it would also have unintended consequences. As her colleague, the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, has already in effect told us, press releases will be sent out the moment the Bill comes into force condemning some Members for taking part in debates and votes on matters that the Bill declares as being for England only. I presume that there would also be condemnation of English MPs taking part in debates and votes on legislation that applies only to Wales. If we are going to reduce the number of Members of Parliament for Wales to 30, it will be difficult to take such legislation through effectively if there are not enough Back Benchers to be able to make proper informed decisions about the measures under discussion. The direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is taking us down is unfortunate.
I also think there will be unfortunate direct consequences, in that the number of Bills will increase, which will make things more difficult for us, and the number of clauses will also increase. We will end up with worse legislation because, as the hon. Lady has said, draftsmen will be required to try to provide absolute clarity that measures apply specifically to England, for example, or to Wales alone.
Chris Bryant
That was going to be my last sentence, but I will allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene.
Damian Hinds
Have any of these adverse effects arisen as a result of the current statement of territorial extent?
Damian Hinds
I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means by “declaration” as I am relatively new to all this, but Bills currently have a statement of territorial extent, yet I am not aware of certain Members being shamed into not commenting on them.
Chris Bryant
Such declarations do not specify whether a Bill is exclusively English, Welsh or Northern Irish, or applies to all four territories or just two—or whatever. There has not been a problem thus far, and that is why I do not think there is any reason to make changes through legislation. I am even more sceptical about this Bill than the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) normally is about everything. If it proceeds to Second Reading, we will want to scrutinise and amend it robustly. As other Members have revealed, there are major problems with these measures that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire has not considered.
Iain Stewart
My hon. Friend raises an intriguing possibility. I hope that the commission does report, but we cannot move to a new arrangement without the agreement of those in the existing system; that is part of our process of constitutional evolution. I hope that we do get that commission and I gently encourage my Front-Bench colleagues to speed it up, because I will wholeheartedly support it.
I wish to discuss an intriguing point made by a former Secretary of State for Scotland in the previous Government, Helen Liddell. It relates to a separate issue but it makes the argument well. When we were debating whether the United Kingdom should join the euro, the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), set out five tests by which we should judge whether it was appropriate for the United Kingdom to do so. She made the point that a sixth test should form part of the overall considerations, which was the opportunity cost of not joining: was there a cost to the United Kingdom of not joining the euro? Similarly, we should consider the opportunity cost of not addressing the West Lothian question because if it is left unchecked at some point it will come back to undermine the Union. As a Unionist, that is the last thing that I want. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) was correct to say that this is an evolutionary process. I did not have the benefit of being tutored by Professor Bogdanor, but I was always taught by the equally eminent Professor Michael Rush at the university of Exeter that the British constitution is a product of evolution, not revolution. We should proceed on that basis, but that should not preclude us from turning our minds to this issue.
Theoretically, there are three perfect solutions to the West Lothian question, although I believe that we should reject them because they have other consequences that are either impractical or undesirable. The first option is that the Union ends, which is the wish of the Scottish National party, whose Members are clearly here in excessive number to debate this matter. They do have a perfect option, because under their solution the number of Scottish Members in this House would be zero and the West Lothian question would therefore not arise. However, for all sorts of economic, cultural and social reasons, I do not wish the Union to end.
The second option is to go back to the arrangement that was in place before we had the Scottish Parliament, either by abolishing that Parliament or by following the intriguing suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) that Members of this House who represent Scottish constituencies should then form the Scottish Parliament and on certain days—for example, Wednesdays and Thursdays—only English Members would debate in this place. I fear that that is not a practical option at the moment. There is certainly no appetite in Scotland for reversing the Scottish Parliament, and as it was set up by a referendum it can be undone only by a referendum. That may become an option at some point, but I do not see it as a viable option now. Nevertheless, the suggestion would provide a neat solution to the West Lothian question.
The third option is to move to a fully federal United Kingdom, with one United Kingdom Parliament legislating on the big national issues—the economy, international affairs, defence and so on—and the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and a body for England then dealing, on an equal basis, with the issues affecting those areas. Such a system works perfectly well in Germany, Australia, Canada and many other countries, but the problem would be how to solve the “English question” in a federal situation.
One option would be to have a separate English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington said, and as others have argued, the difficulty with that is that England would represent more than 80% of the population and more than 80% of the gross domestic product in one unit. I cannot think of a stable modern democracy with an advanced economy where there is such an overwhelming dominant part in a federation. Any other country with a federal system contains two or more big states that balance each other out. For example, Canada contains Ontario and Quebec, and Germany contains Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. If England were to be a separate entity in a federal system, the arrangement would have too much of an imbalance.
The other option would be to atomise England into regions—for example, the north-east, the south-west, Greater London and so on. There may be various permutations, but there is simply no appetite in England for that, even in the part of England where there was, allegedly, the highest demand for a regional government—the north-east. When people there were given the option of a regional government a few years ago, they overwhelmingly rejected it. In addition, we would face enormous difficulty in dividing England up. Our debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill have included an argument about a cross-border constituency involving Cornwall and Devon. Goodness knows what would happen if we tried to draw a boundary involving Gloucestershire, Cornwall, Dorset and other areas to constitute “the south-west of England”. I simply do not believe that federalism is a viable option in this country.
All that brings us to an imperfect answer, as we are not going to create a perfect solution to the West Lothian question unless we go down one of those three avenues. The Bill is a helpful first step in paving the way to finding that answer. I have looked at all the options over many years, although not for as long as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington. I have ruled out some and I do take seriously the comment made by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that we would encounter difficulties if we started excluding Members from voting on particular bits of legislation. I strongly hold the view that every Member in this House is equal and when we start tinkering with that, we enter dangerous waters.
I do believe, however, that there is a solution and I am happy to endorse the one proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend: some form of a double majority. In such a system no Member would be excluded from participating in a debate or voting on a particular Bill or part of a Bill, but there should then be a requirement that if that Bill applied wholly or exclusively to one part of the United Kingdom, an additional majority would be required among Members from that area.
Chris Bryant
But is the difficulty not that, for the most part, Governments introduce legislation in our system and a Government who were nervous about their majority would simply ensure that Bills contained separate clauses relating to Wales, to Northern Ireland and to Scotland, so we would not be any further forward?
Iain Stewart
I would answer that by saying that a Government who do not command the majority in all parts of the kingdom should approach with caution legislating against the will of a part where they do not command a majority. For example, one of the main arguments for devolution was that this place would legislate against the wishes of Scotland, if the Government did not command a majority in Scotland. If the Government do not command a majority, they should approach with care legislating for the whole kingdom, if that does not command support across the board.
Chris Bryant
One should assume that Governments will be unscrupulous. Hon. Members are always scrupulous, but Governments, in their corporate management of taking business through the House, might be unscrupulous. There is the myth that the previous Labour Government did not have a majority in England, but they had the majority of seats in England. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the Bill will not solve the problem.
Iain Stewart
I will not comment on the previous Government’s approach to legislation.
Iain Stewart
I beg to differ.
As I have said, there is an opportunity cost to not addressing the issue. My contention is that doing nothing carries a greater price than doing something, which is why I strongly welcome the Bill.
Andrew Bridgen
The previous Government may well have had the majority of seats in England, but they did not have the majority of the votes.
Andrew Bridgen
Once again, the hon. Gentleman comments from a sedentary position. The previous Government did not have the majority of the votes in England. I am a Unionist, and I wholeheartedly support the Union. The biggest risk posed by not addressing the West Lothian question is that the dissatisfaction of English voters, rather than the dissatisfaction of Scottish or Welsh electors, will force the Union apart.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Surely this is all about fairness for constituents who have a Member of Parliament. It is also about a Member of Parliament’s right to represent their constituents.
I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that it will be difficult to sort out the problem. As we have heard, the problem goes all the way back to Simon de Montfort. Equally, we must remember the problems with the Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century, which were solved—kind of. We had Stormont until 1972, which I can recall operating when I was a soldier.
The issue will become increasingly important as power, particularly the power to raise taxes, is dissipated down. As I understand it, the Scottish Parliament might be able to raise 2p in the pound on income tax. Is that correct? I think that it is. The Scotland Bill may allow more discretion on that. When one starts talking about money as well as issues such as health, education and prisons, there is a big difference. It is important that we find a way ahead, but it will not be easy.
I have had a few tangles with the Table Office, when I used what I thought were plain words in a question. I have had to go there several times after my homework was sent back, but I am sure that the clever people in the Table Office can design a form of words that will help. Surely it should be possible to identify whether a Bill concerns England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Chris Bryant
That has not always been my experience of the Table Office, which is often directional and forceful in saying that one cannot table a particular question in, for example, Welsh questions. In such cases, it is often drawn into rows.
Earlier, I suggested that Labour won more votes than the Conservatives in the 2005 election. Actually, we were 70,000 votes short but 92 seats ahead.
Bob Stewart
I thank my hon. Friend—well, not my friend, but he could be, if he is nicer. I thank the hon. Gentleman.
It will become increasingly important that we address this problem. I am sure now, too, that that problem will be helped by some sort of solution, such as that suggested by my right hon., learned and former Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who is not in his position, but whom I shall make it up with. Before you were here, Madam Deputy Speaker, I called him “old friend”, and he said, “Not as old as you.” [Interruption.] I am so sorry; I am getting into more trouble now. Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was referring to my right hon., learned and somewhat gallant Friend the Member for Kensington, who produced an elegant solution that would not be a big problem to sort out: the double vote, which my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who shares the same name as me and who must be slightly Scottish, as I am, suggested that he endorsed as well.
Chris Bryant
I keep on thinking up more reasons why I dislike that double mandate, so I will suggest another one: one of the reasons why, traditionally, we have granted that a Bill should be given a Second Reading is so that it can be amended. Quite often, hon. Members will allow a debate on Second Reading to proceed because they want to amend something. That is the danger. Many hon. Members might want to amend a Bill to include Welsh or Scottish provisions, but they might have been prohibited from taking part in the debate on Second Reading, and that rather conflicts with the whole purpose of such a debate.
Bob Stewart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for, once again, being so perceptive as to pick a few little holes. I accept that this is not an easy problem; there is no easy fix. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is suggesting a gradual, slow change, which I support. But I also support the idea that, when the commission sits this year, as we learn, it considers a solution. I prefer evolution, rather than revolution. I would prefer that we start to address this problem, and I am attracted to the idea presented by my new friend, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, who has departed for a coffee. I endorse in the meantime my hon. Friend’s Bill.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on presenting the Bill. The contributions so far have shown
“what a tangled web we weave”.
I support devolution as far as it has gone, but I am a great supporter of the Union. That is why my hon. Friend has done a service by promoting further debate.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman started the quotation but did not finish it:
“Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive”.
I am sure that he is not suggesting that the Bill is deceiving.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, but I was rather hoping she would not, because there is a desperate tendency on Fridays towards motherhood-and-apple-pie Bills that say nothing very much about anything in particular. If her Bill is that type of Bill, what on earth are we doing discussing it? If it just says that the Minister, out of the kindness of his heart, will say a few words about where an Act applies, it is completely and utterly pointless, and the House should not discuss things that are pointless. We do that on Fridays, and Madam Deputy Speaker is amazingly patient in listening to some of these discussions.
My hon. Friend’s Bill has to be an important stepping-stone in answering the West Lothian question, or it is nothing. I give her credit for having the courage to begin to address that question, rather than just detaining us here when we could be doing work in our constituency on a Friday. I hope that she will not try to hide behind the minutiae of the Bill instead of looking at the bigger picture, because that bigger picture is crucial.
My hon. Friend is right to put pressure on the Government to come up with a solution that can be debated in Government time. In that respect, the Bill is really noble, because the Government do have to think about the issue. It is unfair on the British—the English; I apologise for using those two words synonymously, as I know the English do a great deal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that illuminating point. I always thought that the auld Alliance meant that they were rather keen on the Scots, but that may be a slight diversion.
What ought the Government to do and to think about as they approach a solution to the West Lothian question? They have to think about the practicalities. We have had learned discussion already today about how difficult it would be to have an English Parliament, because one would then have an English Government, and that would be simply too big. That is the problem that Balfour identified when first discussing Home Rule. He asked what we do about England, when we have Ireland, Scotland and Wales as nations. Do we chop England up, or simply have it swamping the whole new system that is being established? If there is an English Prime Minister and a UK Prime Minister, who does the President of the United States visit when he comes? He sees the English Prime Minister, because the UK Prime Minister would have peripheral powers. He might have a slightly better house, but that would be the extent of it. There is not an easy solution to the English Parliament issue.
There is then the question of English votes on English issues, but the more one discusses that superficially hugely attractive option, the more one discovers that it does not work, because there would be two tiers of MPs, and a Whitehall Government that could not get a major part of its legislation through and would therefore begin to fail. One would then begin to try to chop up the procedures, so that the Government could decide which MPs debated which bits of legislation, but that would not work either, for reasons that we have discussed. There was mention of the Welsh Grand Committee and how little that was able to succeed in doing; and when the Conservatives were last in government, they thought that a sop to devolution would be to have a Scottish Grand Committee. The fact is that the governing party has to be able to get its parliamentary business through. Whatever schemes it sets up will not work if that fundamental principle is not followed, and will be changed to the extent that they cannot be used.
So what do I suggest that the Government do? That is the nub of it. We will have an election at some point in which the Conservatives have a clear majority in England but are not the major part of the governing group. At that point, there will be squeals of anguish from the English electorate, and the Conservative party will use that all it can for political advantage. We will find that the Union comes under fundamental attack. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) that any attack on the Union is likely to come not from the Scottish nationalists but from English nationalists, fed up with the way that they are being treated.
I would like the Government to consider the proposal that we heard earlier about allowing the two Parliaments and the one Assembly to come together to some extent, but I accept that that is difficult: As a result of how they were set up, it would be problematic to change them at this stage, but it may be that something could be done along those lines. Alternatively, the thing will simply have to be done in the best form of British fudge—that is, Labour Members, when in government, will have to be enormously responsible and self-denying about what they do in England, and conventions will have to become very important in our constitutional settlement. If it becomes a convention, but is not formalised, that English representation will have a majority, or will at least accept a veto on extremely controversial measures, that may be a fudge that would work.
It is interesting and worth noting that on both big constitutional issues—reform of the House of Lords and the West Lothian question—after 100 years of the best brains trying to find a solution, no obvious solution has come up. With every solution that does come up, after one has thought about it for a week or two, one sees any number of holes in it. I therefore see absolutely no reason to oppose the Bill when we come to vote on it. There is nothing objectionable in it, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire has been very sensible to ensure that that is the case. It is good to push the Government, but I would not hold my breath—I do not think that I can breathe in for the next 100 years —waiting for a solution to this almost intractable problem. However, we have to recognise that, as my hon. Friend says, the English may get deeply fed up with the current situation, and when they do, that is when the Union will be most at risk. That is, I think, what most Government Members, and at least one Member on the Opposition side of the Chamber—the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley)—would be extremely keen to avoid.
Ian Paisley
I do not think that the view is necessarily commonly held, but we should caution ourselves. When we speak in this place on behalf of the Union and such points are made—not in jest, but seriously—that seriously undermines the standing of the House and its Members. That is not what we should be about. We should bear that in mind.
Chris Bryant
Has the hon. Gentleman had the following experience, as I have had in the past couple of weeks? As a Welsh Member of Parliament, I have had a lot of e-mails and correspondence from my constituents on the issue of selling off forests. That does not apply in Wales, but the issue is deeply felt by many in my constituency.
Mr Harper
That is an interesting question. This is one of the key differences—not the only one—between me and the Prime Minister. He got a first, but I only got a 2:1, which probably explains why he is the Prime Minister and I am just the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington made several good points. Despite the attempts by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) to put my right hon. and learned Friend’s name forward to serve on the commission that we will set up, I noted carefully that he declined the opportunity, saying that he would be happy to give evidence to it.
Chris Bryant
I hope that I am not breaking a private confidence when I say that Vernon Bogdanor told me that he thought that the Minister, when he was his student, was very clever and bright and clearly destined for greater things, but that it was a shame that he had fallen among thieves of late.
Mr Harper
I have just looked at the expression on you face, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I think that I am going to be generous and describe the hon. Gentleman’s use of the word “thieves” as an attempt at humour. I do not think that it was a very successful attempt, but this is perhaps the best way to get him out of the difficulty that he might otherwise have got himself into.
Mr Harper
In view of what I think the hon. Member for Rhondda was saying about the way in which the Committee had behaved from time to time, I think he was making it clear that he felt it was a Welsh grandstanding Committee. I think that it is helpful to get that point on to the record.
Chris Bryant
Well, this is a grand debate, isn’t it? The truth is that, all too often, the Welsh Grand Committee has been a pretty futile body. It is all the more futile when the Government give it matters to discuss that its members do not want to discuss, and when those decisions are made only by the Government and not by the Committee’s members.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. It comes back to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that the Bill does nothing harmful, but nor does it take us much further forward. I start from the position, as do the Government, that we should not legislate for unnecessary matters that do not add anything.
Chris Bryant
A clear example is to be found in the explanatory notes to the next Bill that we will consider. In relation to the territorial extent and application, the notes state:
“The Bill extends to (that is, forms part of the law of) England and Wales. The terms of clause 1, however, mean that it will only take effect within England.”
Often, there is not the clarity that an ordinary person might want and seek, even when we put something on the face of a Bill.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the fact that, even when something is required, it is not always executed brilliantly. Even if the requirements in the Cabinet Office guidance on drafting legislation were put into statute, that would not necessarily mean that they would be better executed than they are currently.
In practice, the financial aspects of the Bill would also have little consequence, because the present arrangements already require all new UK-wide legislation to specify the financial impact and to be drafted within a Department’s existing funding plans. Therefore, no new Barnett financial consequentials would arise, as a matter of course. Bills that deal with reserved matters have no Barnett consequentials attached and do not have significant impact on different Administrations.
In relation to how legislation is drafted, the Bill does not take us much further forward. Effectively, it puts into statutory form what the Government currently intend and do, thus losing a little flexibility. However, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset put his finger on it when he observed that the West Lothian question is complicated. While the Bill may lead us to a potential solution, it may not be the one that the commission comes up with.
Finally, let me do what I was invited to do by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and remind the House that the Government have made a commitment to set up a commission to examine the West Lothian question. Although the coalition parties approach the issue from different angles, they have made a common commitment to resolve the question. In the Conservative party manifesto, we promised to
“introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”
The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto said that they would
“Address the status of England within a federal Britain, through the Constitutional Convention set up to draft a written constitution for the UK as a whole.”
Although the coalition parties came up with very different solutions to the West Lothian question, both parties consider it important to attempt to answer it, and neither party believes that it is possible to answer it by ceasing to ask it. We consider it a serious question that will be best tackled when we can tackle it in a calm and reasonable manner rather than waiting for a crisis.
I can confirm that we will set up the commission this year, as, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire established through her perceptive questioning. We had hoped to make announcements to the House at an earlier stage, but I look forward to making them in the not-too-distant future, and the commission will then be able to consider the ideas that have been advanced today. Hon. Members have effectively made bids to participate, either as members of the commission or in giving evidence to it. I hope that it will arrive at solutions that we can subsequently debate.
I urge my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire to withdraw her Bill, to participate in the commission in whatever way proves appropriate, and to continue to take part in this important debate. The Government are keen to answer the question and deal with this important matter, but I am not sure that my hon. Friend’s Bill provides the right way of going about it, and I think it right to test the opinion of the House.
EU Council and North Africa
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
It is for Ministers to explain what they said and what they did not say. Clearly, they can rely on what is in the report about not being contradicted, but I think they have to look—and I hope they will do it fairly—and ask themselves, “Given that I was receiving memos about a game plan of facilitating contact and given that I was signing off those memos, shouldn’t I have really said to the House of Commons and elsewhere that it was not just that we didn’t want this man to die in a Scottish jail but that we were working actively with the Libyans to try to secure his release?” I think they should have said something more along those lines. I have genuinely tried to approach this by asking what is fair in terms of what we should have been told when those questions were asked.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I do not think that trade should ever be the sole determinant when it comes to our foreign policy, which is why I hope to persuade the Prime Minister to adopt more of his muscular liberalism, to coin a phrase, in relation to the Russian Federation. Sergei Magnitsky was tortured and murdered in a Russian jail when he was working for a British company in Russia. The United States Congress is now considering banning from the USA anyone who was involved either in the corruption he uncovered or in his torture and murder. Will the Prime Minister consider doing the same here and will he make sure that those views are expressed to Foreign Minister Lavrov when he visits next week?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I am glad that the phrase “muscular liberalism” is catching on. That is exactly the approach we have taken with Russia and we do raise questions such as those that the hon. Gentleman asked when we hold meetings with President Medvedev, as I have done, or with Foreign Minister Lavrov, as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has done, and we will go on raising those issues. Some countries have not taken that approach, but we think it is the right approach.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. May I just very gently say to the right hon. Gentleman, whose mellifluous tones I always enjoy—
Mr Speaker
Yes, I shall try to nudge him. What we want is an answer, not an essay.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend speaks for many in supporting the opening up of our education system and saying to academies and free schools, “You are welcome to come in and provide a great education for free to children and parents in our country.” I have to say that it is a very big choice for the Labour party whether it sticks with the programme of reform and opening up education, or whether it sides with the trade unions.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Q2. Leaked figures that I have managed to get hold of show—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Calm down. The leaked figures show that police forces in Wales must cut their numbers by 1,600 police officers and staff. The South Wales police force told me this morning that in that one force 688 officers are going to have to disappear. The Prime Minister said on 2 May last year that he would outlaw any front-line cuts. Why is he backing down on his promise?
The Prime Minister
I find that the best way of calming down is by reading the hon. Gentleman’s poetry—I find that very instructive. All police forces are facing a difficult financial settlement. I accept that. The context for all this is the vast budget deficit that we were left and the huge mess that we have to clear up. I have the figures for the South Wales police force. Next year, it must find a 5% cut. That will take it back not to some figure of the 1980s, but to the spending it had in 2007-08. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has said that it is quite possible to make those sorts of reductions—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman asks a question, he should have the manners to listen to the answer. The fact is that HMIC said that it is possible to achieve those reductions while not losing front-line officers. That is what needs to be delivered.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course it is. It has been a principle for political and democratic reformers of all parties for generations that all votes should be valued in the same way. It simply cannot be right, for instance, that right now Islington North has an electorate of just over 66,000, and yet 10 miles away in East Ham the figure is 87,000. Voters in a constituency just 10 miles away have less value attached to their votes than those up the road. That is wrong. That is what we are seeking to remedy. It is a simple principle: all votes should be worthy of the same value wherever they are found in the country.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I know that the Deputy Prime Minister gets in a terrible lather whenever anybody has the effrontery to contradict him, but may I suggest to him that he could perfectly easily have his referendum on the day that he wants it by splitting the Bill? It is perfectly straightforward. He said that the main reason for cutting the number of MPs is to save money. How does he reconcile that with the fact that it is costing £12.3 million extra every year for the 117 extra peers he has appointed, that it is costing £11.2 million extra for bringing the boundary review forward, and that he is to double the cost of the boundary commissions by making them every five years rather than every eight?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Cutting the number of MPs will save about £12 million every year, and holding the referendum on the same day as other elections saves us about £30 million. I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman wants to incur greater costs for the taxpayer—
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is the choice of the coalition Government to say that we want to reform politics not in a piecemeal fashion, but in a meaningful way. To introduce both the right for people to have a say over the electoral system and to ensure that constituencies are of roughly the same size seems a perfectly sensible way to proceed. That is what we will do, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman should be whipping up the dinosaurs in the Labour party in the other place to stop us from doing so.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I would have hoped that the hon. Lady would welcome and support the proposal to hold a referendum on the alternative vote system, not least for the reason that it was in her party’s manifesto at the last general election.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman keeps saying “Split the Bill” from a sedentary position. We believe it is right to proceed together on reforming—[Interruption.] No—[Interruption.]
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Mr Cash
I do not deny for a minute that that is one of the consequences, but if we were to carry this new clause, it would effectively be the end of the Bill. As I look around the House and see the huge number of people attending this debate, I do not believe that there is the slightest chance of my winning the Division—
Mr Cash
Oh, I see. I am extremely grateful to hear what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), that fierce defender of British liberty—when it suits him—has to say. In the light of what my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) has said, it would not cause me any concern if my new clause were passed simply because it would require a rethink, when there would be a completely new situation. Does my hon. Friend want to intervene again on that? No.
Mr Cash
I can only repeat what that Committee has said: it states that the appropriate length of a fixed parliamentary term should be no more than four years. The position is, therefore, that that powerful Committee has given that advice to the House of Lords, which has yet to be given the opportunity to vote on these proposals. I think we are moving into territory where there will be proper scrutiny, as it has been described—although the word “filibuster” nearly slipped out—as has proved to be the case in respect of provisions in the alternative vote Bill currently before the House of Lords. There may yet be the possibility of similar activity with regard to how long the fixed parliamentary term should be.
For all those reasons, I believe that the provisions I have felt concerned to raise through tabling new clause 5 are merited. They are consistent with proper constitutional practice and good sense. The attempt to, let us say, fix the next fixed-term Parliament ought to be prevented at all costs.
Chris Bryant
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on his amendment and the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on his amendment, which I shall address in a few moments. I should, of course, have called them “new clauses”; Mr Speaker corrected the hon. Member for Stone on that earlier. However, I think that the hon. Member for North East Somerset rather misled the House. He did not do so in any dishonourable way, but he suggested that he was not here in 1911. I do not believe that any Member of this House believes that he was not here then or, for that matter, in 1832 and 1641. If it was not exactly him, on each of those occasions it was certainly his predecessor who made almost identical speeches. So I congratulate him on his consistency, which has lasted not only for the length of a Lib Dem manifesto, but through the centuries, and I am sure he will be here for many generations to come.
Mr Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman rightly points out that someone just like my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset was doubtless here in 1911, just as there was probably someone just like the hon. Gentleman and someone just like me. This House represents a continuity in this great kingdom of ours. He adverts to it with regard to only one Member, but it applies to all of us.
Chris Bryant
I am not sure that that is right because, for example, there were no women in this House or in the other House for many centuries. So changes have taken place, and change is just as important as continuity—that was going to be my argument.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset praised the House of Lords and the job of work it is doing at the moment down the other end of the building, where I hope his father will be stoutly defending not the Government but the cause of freedom and democracy—I am sure he will be. I wish to sound a slight note of caution to the hon. Gentleman. I have long supported an elected second Chamber, but over the past few years the Second Chamber has become far more partisan, because a higher proportion of its Members now take a party Whip. That applies in all parts of that House. [Interruption.] The Minister says from a sedentary position that Labour Members do, but what I said is true of all political parties in the House of Lords. I hope that there will be an elected second Chamber, and if there is the relationship between the Chambers will have to be written down in statute. Otherwise, either there will be permanent gridlock or, even more dangerously, we will face the problem of the Government having absolutely no check on them because they will enjoy a majority in this House and down the other end of the building. I can think of no other system in the world containing no such check. I say to the hon. Member for North East Somerset that although one praises the House of Lords, where Labour and Cross-Bench peers are doing a good job of scrutiny, some dangers are coming down the road.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset also relied on the Salisbury convention, whereby the Lords would not stand in the way of something adumbrated in a general election manifesto on which a Government were elected. In the previous Parliament the Liberal Democrats said that they believed that the Salisbury convention no longer held. I suspect that a convention written in a gentlemen’s club and redrafted several times during the 20th century probably will not stand the test of time and we will need something rather more secure for our constitutional settlement.
As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Bill extends Parliament’s life beyond the five-year period that, thus far, has been allowed; clause 1 allows the Prime Minister to extend or shorten the five-year fixed term by two months, although that is reliant on motions in this House and in the second Chamber. That is one of the many reasons we have argued that the Bill will lead to fewer general elections. That is so particularly because the Bill provides for a five-year term, rather than a four-year term, as the hon. Member for Stone said, but also because of the special provision allowing for the extra extension of two months. We believe that that is a problem and that the voters of this country probably want us not to have the longest fixed-term Parliaments in the world. If we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, voters would probably prefer us to adopt the policy of the Liberal Democrats before the general election and the policy that Labour has pursued ever since the Plant commission, when we were mired deep in opposition many years ago, which is for four-year fixed-term Parliaments. Unfortunately, that is not available to us in the Bill.
Mr Cash
I have been increasingly impressed over the months by the manner in which the hon. Gentleman has tackled these constitutional questions. He is putting the House in a far better position by the manner in which he explains many of his points. Having got over that bit of flattery, I point out that it might have been a good idea if, at this point in his speech—perhaps he is coming on to it—he had referred to the comments of the Clerk of the Parliaments. The Bill will go to the House of Lords, as I have pointed out, and we do not quite know what their lordships will make of it. Not only did the Constitution Committee come to a certain conclusion on the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) has raised, but so did the Clerk of the Parliaments. He said:
“It is...clear that the [Fixed-term Parliaments] Bill does contain provision to extend the maximum duration of a Parliament beyond five years, and that it cannot, therefore, be passed under the Parliament Acts procedure unless, before it leaves the Commons, the [relevant] provisions...are amended.”
Professors Bradley and Oliver agreed. That is an important point. Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for making rather a long intervention, but I wanted to get it on the record that this is not just a minor matter but something on which the House of Lords appears largely to have made up its mind.
Chris Bryant
I am always a bit reluctant to presume what the House of Lords’ final view might be, not least because three new Members of the House of Lords are being introduced every day at the moment—it is something of a moving feast down the far end of the corridor. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the Clerk of the Parliaments, and incidentally I want to pass on congratulations to Mr Beamish, who has just been appointed the new Clerk of the Parliaments. It is also true that the Clerk of this House has made it clear that there are significant concerns about clause 2, which I shall come on to when I discuss the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Stone. I am also always very grateful for any oleaginous support I can get.
The point I hope to make about new clause 3, tabled by the hon. Member for North East Somerset, is that I think that there is already adequate provision in the Parliament Act to ensure that Parliament cannot be extended. His new clause would apply to the whole of clause 1, so we would not be able to amend any of the elements of it, even if they had been adumbrated in a manifesto commitment and a single party won the next general election with a majority and legislated in that way. We would not be able to use the Parliament Act even to shorten the length of a Parliament.
If we win the next general election, notwithstanding the fact that we will have won, in a sense, the right for a five-year fixed-term Parliament—I hope we will— want to reduce the number of years from five years to four. As the hon. Member for North East Somerset has shown, historical consistency across the years is a good political attribute rather than a failing.
Thomas Docherty
Does my hon. Friend agree with my assessment of the Parliament Act that the purpose of stipulating that parliamentary terms cannot be lengthened was to ensure a democratic check against the powers of the Prime Minister? Would not the hon. Member for North East Somerset’s new clause, regrettably, act as a check against democracy by stopping the right of the democratic House to shorten the length of a term? That is not the spirit in which the Parliament Act was intended.
Chris Bryant
Yes, although as the hon. Member for North East Somerset said at the very beginning of his speech, all this will become rather unnecessary once we have legislated for an elected, whether fully or substantially, second Chamber. At that point, elements of the Parliament Act, or even the whole Act, will almost certainly have to be reshaped.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I absolutely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that a Government elected on a manifesto for four years would not want to be obstructed by the House of Lords, and I doubt whether the Lords would obstruct them in those circumstances. Does he have any sympathy with the view that constitutional issues ought to have greater protection than ordinary Bills, particularly as judges have decided that there is a category of constitutional Acts? Should we decide that rather than the judiciary?
Chris Bryant
My general approach is that we should always seek to take decisions ourselves, rather than leave them to judges to take for us, because we are elected. However, the history of English common law and the way in which it has developed is such that judges have, by the precedents they have set, elaborated on that law. We have sometimes then decided to incorporate those interpretations into statute law, so there has been a constant relationship between the two. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is muttering about Scottish law, but I am being very careful because I know much less about Scottish law than I do about English law, which also applies in Wales, so I am going to the edge of my knowledge and not a step further.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset is right that we will need, at some point, to put into statute law the relationship between this Chamber and an elected second Chamber, as we will want to establish that more firmly. Perhaps, as has happened in every other constitution that has been written in the world, special provision will be made for changing the constitution itself. In Germany, there has to be a vote of a certain majority in both Houses both before and after a general election. That was enforced by us in the writing of the German constitution after the second world war. In Spain, changes have been made to the constitution since the death of Franco, but the Spanish, too, can proceed only if there is a significant majority within the Cortes and the Senate. In short, my answer to the hon. Gentleman is yes.
In essence, my argument regarding new clause 3 is that it is not necessary and that it could be problematic for a new Government, because they might not be able to get their way even on a manifesto commitment that had been clearly laid down. The real danger concerns the extension of parliamentary terms—something that has always worried people in relation to the freedoms and rights of the British people, or rather the people of the United Kingdom. That is already protected in the Parliament Act, which will stand until we revise all these measures. Parliament has been extended in the past. That happened during the second world war when extensions were agreed on an annual basis. I am not sure whether that was voted on every year, but the hon. Member for North East Somerset might know.
Let me move to the new clause of the hon. Member for Stone. I note that the hon. Member for North East Somerset said that we have a choice between Scylla and Charybdis—he being Scylla and the hon. Member for Stone being Charybdis. My uncertain memory of Homer is that Odysseus chose to surrender a few sailors to Scylla rather than a whole ship to the whirlpool that was Charybdis, but I am in favour of Charybdis this afternoon.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. We are now going to the end of my knowledge, and I think it would be very useful if we returned to new clause 5.
Chris Bryant
Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I am not sure that we really have got to the edge of your knowledge; I think your knowledge is boundless, and consequently I agree with you. [Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, is talking about the pillars of Hercules, which is a rather fine pub I have sometimes frequented in—well, north London somewhere.
The new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Stone seems quite sensible, because we believe that section 2 has a series of elements that, as the Clerk of the House has pointed out, are problematic. We think that because the provision has been put into statute rather than included in the Standing Orders of the House, there is a real danger that elements could be questioned in the courts, and one would then have a dramatic constitutional crisis. Consequently, we understand that, as the hon. Gentleman said, those elements are there entirely to bind together the coalition. We understand why the coalition would want to maintain that element, but we certainly do not believe that a future Government should be bound by it.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that no Parliament is bound by its predecessor and no Parliament can bind its successor. However, there is one sense in which it can delay its successor, because it makes it have to re-legislate if it wants to take away a part of statute law. It seems to me that since it is clear that this piece of constitutional—
Chris Bryant
I was thinking of jiggery-pokery. Section 2 is being proceeded with not on the basis of consensus across the House, but on the basis solely of an agreement between the two coalition partners, so it would seem to us to make sense to make an allowance in the Bill that the section would die at the next general election. I note that the hon. Gentleman has crafted his new clause carefully so that it does not say 2015; it simply says that section 2 expires when the Parliament that was elected in 2010 comes to its end. At that point, whatever new Government had been elected could choose whether to continue with the provisions or to let them lapse. If it were a Labour Government, I am pretty confident that we would want to ensure that the provisions lapsed. However, what other parties may want to do is for others to determine.
The key point is that we would not want to have to introduce primary legislation to repeal this element of the Bill. For those reasons I am keen to support the hon. Member for Stone. I do not think his new clause quite throws the whole of the ship into the whirlpool, but I think that the throwing of a few sailors into the mouths of the demon in North East Somerset would be inappropriate, and consequently we shall support new clause 5 but not new clause 3. I very much hope that we shall be able to divide the House on this matter.
Mr Jenkin
That was the purpose of my referring to Lord Phillips’s recent obiter dicta, in which he implied that later Acts of Parliament can effectively repeal the parts of the 1689 Act that protect Parliament’s privileges. I do not think that that is satisfactory, and Parliament needs to think clearly about how we remain in democratic control of this country’s constitutional settlement.
Using legislative techniques, such as those suggested by my hon. Friend, is the direction in which we ought to move. Some people will say that means moving towards a written constitution, but that is to misunderstand our constitution. It is partly written and partly not written. The point is to determine who is in charge. Parliament should be in charge, with the necessary checks and balances between the two Houses. So I very much welcome the debate that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset has initiated on this topic. This debate will run and run, even though we might not be able to agree or divide on his new clause.
I put my name to new clause 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, partly because it provides an opportunity to remind ourselves of how bad the Bill is. I am afraid that I am appalled that it was introduced in this way. I cannot recall any Government ever introducing a Bill to manipulate the constitution for their own purposes in such a nakedly self-interested way. Clause 2 is simply a fig leaf to ameliorate the problems that arise from fixed-term Parliaments.
Let us remind ourselves of the provisions of clause 2. The two-thirds provision is obviously open to manipulation—assuming that the mechanism does not drag us into disputes with the courts—because if the Government of the day tabled a motion of no confidence in themselves, it would hardly be likely that the Opposition would oppose it, so a general election would still be available at the initiative of the Executive. In a coalition arrangement, the smaller partner might decide not to take part in such a process, meaning that the motion would be opposed and, by arrangement with the Opposition, perhaps passed by only a simple majority. Under the Bill, we are therefore creating arrangements by which a junior coalition partner may switch horses halfway through a Parliament.
I believe that the Liberal Democrats wanted a fixed-term Parliament so that they could swap coalition partners halfway through the Parliament. Lo and behold, we now read in the papers that the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister seem to be striking up a new friendship—perhaps that heralds the switch. Of course, I am talking hypothetically—the subject is theoretical—but, constitutionally, the possibility exists. It is extraordinary that we are contemplating putting in place arrangements that could bring about a change of Government, Prime Minister and Administration without a general election, but that is what the Bill provides for. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) seems to be looking at me quizzically.
Chris Bryant
I am looking at the hon. Gentleman quizzically, because, under the existing arrangements, there have been many changes of Prime Minister and Administration without a general election. Although I recognise that the hon. Gentleman stood at the general election on a manifesto that said that a change of Prime Minister should be followed by a general election within six months, I note that he has not tabled an amendment that would have that effect.
Mr Jenkin
Privately, I can confide to the House that I always thought that that proposition was a bit daft—it seemed like ingratiation. Whenever the ruling party changes its leader, meaning that there is a change of Prime Minister, the Opposition always cough and splutter loudly, and express the view that, in all justice, there should be a general election. The newspapers usually join in the fun, because they like general elections, too, but, in reality, we all know that there is absolutely no need for an election. There is usually a degree of continuity when there is a change of party leader because the same party is in charge and it is unlikely that a lot of the predecessor’s policies would be overthrown. One or two things usually change, but generally there is continuity.
We are considering, however, the possibility of a change of Administration involving a different party. We know that the Labour party attempted to form some kind of rainbow coalition with the Liberal Democrats after the last election—[Interruption.] That was what we were told, anyway. Later in this Parliament—perhaps if the balance of power has shifted a bit towards the Opposition following by-elections—the Liberal Democrats could abandon the Conservatives in a vote of no confidence. In such circumstances, the Conservatives might be clever enough to join in that vote of no confidence to ensure that there would be a general election, but it would be far more likely that the vote would be followed by a reordering of the Executive, which might well involve the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats.
Let us suppose that the maths in the House were slightly different and the two main parties were more evenly balanced. The Liberal Democrats then could genuinely choose which partner they wanted. Through the Bill, we are creating constitutional circumstances under which the third party could change the Government at will without a general election.
Chris Bryant
I am slightly flummoxed by the hon. Gentleman’s charming naivety about what might have happened after the general election. The Bill does many things that are inappropriate, but I do not think it does that, and the truth of the matter is that there have been many changes of Administration over the centuries under the existing arrangements, not least in the first and second world wars. Having a fixed-term Parliament does not in itself mean what the hon. Gentleman has described will happen. It is perfectly possible that we will win a significant number of by-elections over the coming years, or that some Liberal Democrats or others may change their party affiliation, and—[Interruption.] It is possible; I said only that. The Minister should do the nice bit again. In such circumstances, the mathematics would change.
Mr Jenkin
Inevitably, these debates always depend on speculation about what might happen, which is the one rather unsatisfactory thing about debating the future of the constitution. I have always been regarded as a bit of a pessimist about the European Union, but I did point out to a colleague that, so far, I have been proved right, and if these arrangements remain the same indefinitely, sooner or later I will be proved right again.
The point is that the Bill—except for this new measure in clause 2—is intended to remove the safety valve that allows for an early general election. However, that clause is the worst part of the Bill. As we were told by the Clerk of the House in his memorandum, before the Bill was considered in Committee:
“The Bill brings the internal proceedings of the House into the ambit of the Courts, albeit indirectly by the route of Speaker’s certificates.”
The procedures of the House, votes of confidence, Speaker’s certificates and two-thirds majorities all become potentially justiciable, notwithstanding the Bill of Rights. For that reason, I fully support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.
A vain attempt to remove the courts from considering those matters is made in clause 2(3), which states:
“A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes.”
Unfortunately, clause 2(3) is itself justiciable by the courts, because we are putting this into statute. That part of the Bill, which attempts to ameliorate the problems that arise from having fixed-term Parliaments, creates the biggest constitutional headaches for Parliament itself by inviting the courts to intervene in those matters.
Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), but I shall talk about the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) invoked Homer. In the case of my hon. Friend’s new clause, I would invoke Cicero:
“Those who know nothing of the time before they were born shall forever remain children.”
That is what I feel is happening to this Chamber. We forget our past, our history and the continuity of our constitution. There was an affirmation there that was important and required addressing.
I understand the hon. Member for Rhondda being concerned about the increased politicisation of the House of Lords, and the “gridlock”, or however he described it. I grew up in an age when the Standing Orders of the House of Lords—this was before my time in the House of Commons—were not so dissimilar from the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. They dealt with, among other things, delay. Very important it is, too. If there is such a thing as gridlock, there comes a point, as we sometimes see in the United States, when the people whom we are elected to represent grow increasingly angered that the business of government comes to a halt because horns are locked. That becomes the grounds for compromise and discussion as the route forward.
As I understand it, in the Lords a proposition has been offered to the Government to separate the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill into two parts, with one part going forward. So there were grounds for compromise. At the moment that is not acceptable to the Government and there is therefore gridlock, but there will come a time when that is unacceptable to a wider public, who want Parliament and the Government to move on.
Chris Bryant
I hoped that my words supported the very argument that the hon. Gentleman is making. I would, in addition, invoke Cato the Younger, who by speaking until dusk, made sure that Caesar did not always get his way. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House says that that was a filibuster. Cato was right to use every tactic that he had, but the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) is right, too. The Standing Orders of the House of Lords were the same as they were in this place. The fact that now the Government always have precedence over the order and the timing of debates is one of the reasons why there is no check on the Executive at all.
Mr Shepherd
I am always encouraged when a political opponent, in the sense of someone from the other side of the House, adopts arguments that I advanced against him when he was sitting on the Front Bench on behalf of the Labour party. It is true. Now we see the conversion of the defeated. That is why we should always be mindful that our hold on government is a temporary experience, and that one day we will be sitting on the Benches on the other side of the Chamber and hoping to be able to make the reasoned arguments that can convince a wider public out there.
The sheer disengagement of some of our arguments from those by whom we are elected, and from why we are elected, is to me the most worrying development of Parliament in recent years. We have scorned the historic balance of where the people lie in this matter; that is why I support both new clauses. I have asked the whole way through our consideration of the Bill how it will strengthen the people’s hold over the House of Commons, which is their representative instrument for ensuring that public policy bears some relationship to the desires, hopes and aspirations of our society. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset for the informed, reasoned and reasonable way in which he presented his new clause. If it is put to a vote, I will vote for it, because I would like to show that there is some support in this House for the arguments it advances about temperance in respect of the House of Lords and its doings.
I am a democrat and truly believe in the representation of the people in this House, which is what I want to see. However, the basis of the argument that I have made the whole way through proceedings on the Bill is that we know that it is about the entrenchment of a temporary coalition, and we are trying to examine, and amend, the aspiration that things can somehow be rejigged. We have heard the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is sitting on the Front Bench, advance the startling proposition that the Queen could dismiss a Prime Minister for acting “improperly”. No constitutional documents in the past two centuries, and certainly not since 1867, have stated that that was a practical reality.
Mr Harper
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think that I drew a distinction between certain Members of the other place and the other place in general, about which I have no complaint.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset explained very clearly the effect of his new clause 3, and he was concerned about changes to clause 1 being made using powers in the Parliament Act 1911. It is already the case—this is a subject on which I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—that the Parliament Act cannot be used to push through legislation that extends the life of Parliaments. One hon. Member—I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash)—pointed out that because of the Bill’s provisions allowing the Prime Minister to vary the date of an election by up to two months in an emergency, we cannot use the Parliament Act to push this legislation through against the wishes of the upper House. However, the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset would, as the hon. Member for Rhondda said, also prevent this House from reducing the length of a Parliament without the agreement of the other place. It does not seem desirable to put that provision in place.
Section 2 of the Parliament Act 1911, to which my hon. Friend’s new clause refers, sets out important rules about the relationship between this House and the other place. Those rules have been in place for some time, and the Government certainly do not intend to start changing that relationship. It is already the case that we cannot lengthen a Parliament, and given what I have said, we do not want to start changing the Parliament Act as my hon. Friend’s new clause would.
Chris Bryant
I presume that the Minister is therefore confirming that the Bill does lengthen a Parliament.
Mr Harper
Yes. The Bill sets out a five-year term, and in an emergency it would be possible for the Prime Minister to vary the length, so we cannot use the Parliament Act to enact it. That is a perfectly straightforward point. It is in the Bill; it is no great secret at all.
Mr Harper
No. It is very clear in the Bill. I do not think that the issue arose in Committee.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) also put his finger on this issue when he correctly drew attention to it in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. If my hon. Friend presses the new clause to a vote I shall ask hon. Members to oppose it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone, in speaking to new clause 5, said that the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill was about perpetual coalition arrangements. It is not about fixed-term Governments, but about the length of Parliaments. All it does is take away the Prime Minister’s power to dissolve a Parliament and bring it to an end. It replaces that right with two provisions that establish no-confidence procedures, which we have already, and give Parliament the opportunity to vote for an early Dissolution.
Mr Harper
Exactly; it is a very cunning new clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone put his finger on the point that an amendment simply to take away clause 2 would have been a wrecking amendment. The power of revival is the cunning disguise in which the new clause is wrapped.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) described clause 2 as a fig leaf. I do not agree with that characterisation, but even if the House agreed with it, I am not sure that hon. Members would be as keen to remove the fig leaf as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex appeared to be. [Interruption.] No, that is what he said. He said that it was a fig leaf and that he wanted to remove it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone seemed to establish a new doctrine in his speech. He seemed to be suggesting that all Acts of Parliament should lapse at the end of a Parliament, just in case the new Parliament is of a different complexion and its Members disagree. He said that the House should not bind its successors. It is perfectly true that the House cannot bind its successors, because each successive Parliament can repeal Acts; that is the normal way. However, it is not the normal procedure for all Acts to lapse at the end of a Parliament, just in case the new Parliament disagrees with them.
The Government hope, although they cannot bind their successors, that the public and future Parliaments will find the arrangements in the Bill acceptable and will keep them in place. Future Parliaments are, of course, at liberty to change them. However, we do not think that there should be what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone described as a sunset clause to remove the powers. If clause 2 were removed as he suggested, it would effectively give back the power to the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament at will. We have argued throughout the passage of the Bill that that would be undesirable.
Chris Bryant
Many of us believe that the Prime Minister has that power even under the Bill, because all he has to do is table a motion of no confidence in his own Government, to which the Opposition would almost always agree, and there would be a general election. Be that as it may, I am sure that the Minister argued and voted for sunset clauses in relation to control orders, which, I understand, will expire next Monday. Is the same provision not necessary in this Bill?
Mr Harper
No; the Government’s intention is to change the system so that there are fixed-term Parliaments, apart from in the two possible cases set out in the Bill. We think that that is a desirable change. If the public and future politicians agree that it is desirable, it will stand the test of time. That is what we hope for and what we have argued for.
My hon. Friends the Members for Stone and for Harwich and North Essex raised concerns about the two procedures in clause 2—motions of no confidence and motions on early elections—that allow for early elections. However, the House of Lords Constitution Committee was fairly supportive of those measures.
The Committee said that it was
“sensible for the Bill to contain some form of safety valve which would allow for an early election in circumstances such as the government losing the confidence of the Commons or where a political or economic crisis has affected the country”,
and concluded that the safety valves that we had included were appropriate. The Committee also looked at the risk of the courts intervening, which my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex mentioned, and concluded:
“The risk that the courts may intervene in any early dissolution of Parliament by questioning the Speaker’s certificate is very small”,
adding:
“we do not consider the risk to be sufficient to warrant a rejection of clause 2 of the Bill.”
Based on what the House of Lords Constitution Committee has said, I, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, am confident that when this House approves the Bill, as I hope it will, and it is debated in their lordships’ House, they will give it proper scrutiny, but in the end give it a fair wind and pass it. However, if my hon. Friend presses his new clause 5 to a vote, I will urge all hon. Members to reject it and to keep clause 2 as it stands.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. If you wish to press your new clause, Mr Cash, you will have an opportunity to do so later, after we debate the next group, which starts with new clause 4.
New Clause 4
Prorogation of Parliament
‘(1) Parliament can only be prorogued in accordance with this section.
(2) If the House of Commons resolves that Parliament should be prorogued, Parliament shall be prorogued at that time, or by declaration of the Speaker.
(3) The Speaker of the House of Commons shall not make such a declaration unless the House of Commons has passed a resolution directing him to do so on or before a specified date and time.
(4) Where Parliament is prorogued under subsection (2) above, the Speaker may by declaration prorogue it to an earlier or later day.
(5) The Prorogation Act 1867 is repealed.’.—(Chris Bryant.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 14, page 2, line 5, clause 2, at end insert—
‘(aa) certifying whether or not the motion specified a polling day for such an election, and if so, the day specified in that motion,’.
Amendment 15, page 2, line 24, after ‘be’, insert—
‘(a) the day specified in a motion as certified under subsection (1)(aa) above, or, if no date is specified, (b)’.
Amendment 8, page 2, line 29, clause 3, leave out ‘17th’ and insert ‘25th’.
Amendment 9, page 2, line 39, at end insert
‘within 15 working days of the polling day’.
Amendment 2, page 4, line 4, schedule, leave out ‘“or dissolve”’ and insert
‘“prorogue or dissolve Parliaments nor”’.
Amendment 3, page 4, line 6, at end insert—
‘Meeting of Parliament Act 1797 (c. 127)
2A The Meeting of Parliament Act 1797 is repealed.’.
Amendment 4, page 4, line 8, leave out
‘“or dissolved” where it occurs second’
and insert
‘“unless it should be sooner prorogued or dissolved by the Crown, anything in the Succession to the Crown Act 1707 in any way notwithstanding”.’.
Chris Bryant
I wish to speak to new clause 4 and some of the other amendments in the group, which stand in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Lord Chancellor and myself.
One of the arguments that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, the Minister and the Deputy Leader of the House have advanced in favour of the Bill is that it surrenders a hefty part of the royal prerogative that has been enjoyed by the Prime Minister, in that the Prime Minister will no longer be able to cut and run. That is, the Prime Minister will no longer be able to determine the date of the general election or be free to run the constitution—and, in particular, the electoral timetable—according to party political advantage.
Those of us who have supported fixed-term Parliaments for some time, and who made many speeches about them before the last general election, agree that that is an important step to take. We support the idea of fixed-term Parliaments. We note that there have been several occasions in the past when Prime Ministers have been tempted to call general elections because they have had poll leads, and when they have cut and run. There have been other occasions when Prime Ministers have decided not to do so, because they were fearful of the electorate. We believe that it makes far more sense for local authorities, which have to administer elections, and for the Boundary Commission and the whole paraphernalia of electoral law to have the clarity that comes from knowing, in general, except for extraordinary circumstances, when the next general election will be.
However, one element of prerogative power that the Government are not surrendering is the prerogative power of Prorogation—I shall have to be careful with my syllables in the next section of my speech. As I am sure all hon. Members know, Prorogation is a rather abstruse element of the way in which we do our business. It is an irony that it is still true that Parliament can neither sit nor choose not to sit without the say-so of the Crown. I use the term “the Crown” because in theory it is the monarch who decides, but in practice it is the monarch in consultation with the Privy Council, which means, to all intents and purposes, the Government of the day, and therefore the Prime Minister. That is laid down in a series of different elements of our constitutional settlement, but in particular, in the power of Prorogation, which lies, fairly and squarely, solely with the Crown and the Prime Minister.
It is still true that there is no requirement that a Parliament sit—except, one could argue, in so far as the provisions in the Bill of Rights determine that no money can be granted to the Crown unless it is expressly granted by Parliament, and that Parliament therefore has to meet at least once a year to agree the estimates. Similarly, one could argue that the provisions relating to not being able to have a standing army mean that Parliament has to meet every five years. A provision also exists stating that we cannot be without a Parliament for more than three years. However, I would argue—as the Social Democratic party-Liberal alliance used to argue very forcefully—that Parliament should have a permanent existence, except during those brief moments when it is dissolved.
Of course we still support the idea of having annual Sessions of Parliament, and there needs to be a means of ending each parliamentary Session. We also need a means of dissolving Parliament before a general election. However, the amendments that we have tabled today would mean that the power to decide to sit and not to sit would lie solely in the hands of this House and not in the hands of the Government. Under the current provision, Dissolution is effected by royal proclamation under the Great Seal, and the proclamation of Dissolution sometimes follows Prorogation and sometimes follows an Adjournment. Our proposal is that that proclamation and the date on which Parliament would next sit following a general election should not be decided solely by the Prime Minister, and that they should be fixed in statute, as they are in nearly every other constitution in the world.
This is especially true if we are moving towards what are being called fixed-term Parliaments but are actually fixed general election dates. It is important that the House should always know when it is next going to sit following a general election. That is why we have tabled amendment 9, which proposes that Parliament should sit
“within 15 working days of the polling day”.
That would apply whether it is an early general election or one that takes place on a fixed date, such as May 2015—or, as we would argue, May 2014. We have used the term “working days” because that term has been used throughout the Bill. There is one tiny element in the Bill in which the Government refer simply to “days” rather than “working days”, but they refused to accept our argument on that, and our amendment to change the wording was defeated. None the less, I think that it is better to be consistent throughout the Bill in the terms that are used.
The power of Prorogation is important not only at the end of a Parliament when there is a Dissolution and a general election; it is important also at the end of a Session, in that every element of parliamentary business is suspended. There are no further sittings, and all Bills that have been commenced fall, except those that have expressly been permitted to be carried over to the next Session. As I understand it, the only other exception relates to impeachment proceedings, which are able to continue from one Session to the next.
The power to prorogue is therefore a substantial one that the Government retain. I would argue that this is particularly important in relation to this Bill because the Government could use the power inappropriately, if it were to remain solely in their hands, if there had been a vote of no confidence in them. Let us say that the Government had opposed the vote of no confidence but lost it. There is a provision in the Bill that, in the following fortnight, a new Government would have to pass a motion of confidence. However, a motion of confidence can be agreed in the House only if Parliament is sitting. If the Government had decided to prorogue Parliament, there would be no opportunity for a new one to be formed. I can perfectly easily see a set of circumstances in which a Government, having lost a vote of confidence, would want to make sure that no other Government can be formed and therefore prorogue Parliament expressly to prevent an alternative Government, thereby triggering a general election.
Thomas Docherty
My hon. Friend is articulating a coherent case. Does he agree that if we have a new electoral system, the odds of having a hung Parliament will increase greatly and that if this Parliament did not have an opportunity to re-form a Government, that would be expressly against the wishes of the people, who had clearly voted for a hung Parliament?
Chris Bryant
I detect a bit of a difference of view between my hon. Friend and myself here. I hate to say this, but I am rather more with the Deputy Leader of the House on this issue. My hon. Friend is right in saying that if a proportional system were introduced, a succession of hung Parliaments would be more likely. Consensus would rule the day and coalition Governments would be formed on a fairly regular basis. That is not absolutely certain, as it has not happened in some countries that have proportional representation. However, the alternative vote, which I shall be voting for—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) shouts out, “Shame”, but it expressly points out in “Erskine May” that shouting “Shame” is unparliamentary. I would not want to excoriate him on that basis. I am not quite sure on which page it says that, but I am sure he will find it, if he looks for it. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. It is my job to cite that authority, not the job of the hon. Member.
Chris Bryant
I am just trying to help you out, Mr Deputy Speaker. You did say earlier that you were at the edge of your knowledge and this might not be a page you have reached in your reading of “Erskine May”.
My point was that the alternative vote system does not necessarily lead to more hung Parliaments. It depends entirely on the political climate of the day. The fact that first past the post has on this occasion delivered us a hung Parliament and that we have had coalition Governments many times over the last 140 years provides evidence that it is not first past the post that delivers a particular version of government, but how people vote in the particular circumstances.
Chris Bryant
I was referring to the use of Prorogation at the end of a parliamentary Session. I believe that that should be in the hands of this House, not in the hands of the Government. Sorry, in fact I was referring to the case where a Government might choose to use Prorogation expressly to prevent an alternative Government from being formed. The Deputy Leader of the House might reassert what the Parliamentary Secretary said earlier—that the monarch would simply sack the Prime Minister in such circumstances—but I do not believe that the monarch has such a power. In fact, since statute law would have expressly stated that that power was still there, I cannot see how that could possibly happen. Alternatively, the Deputy Leader of the House might say that the monarch would refuse to grant Prorogation. That would set the monarch directly against the Prime Minister, and in such a contest there would be a real constitutional crisis, which some would want to take to the courts because the provisions would by then have been placed in statute law.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
The hon. Gentleman is exploring an interesting argument, but there is currently nothing to prevent a Prime Minister from requesting Prorogation to avoid a vote of no confidence if he believes that the monarch will accede to his request. Given that that has never happened, why does the hon. Gentleman think that such a constitutional anomaly is more likely to arise following the passage of the Bill than under the present arrangements?
Chris Bryant
The Deputy Leader of the House has made a fair point. However, because we are now putting in statute significant elements of the way in which the British constitution might work in the future, rather than, of necessity, what exists at present, we are creating a labyrinth which Prime Ministers may well wish to navigate. I shall say more about that shortly, once I have given way to the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who is talking to a Whip at the moment.
Mark Reckless
That is very kind.
I believe that there is a recent precedent in Canada, whose Parliament—if I understand the position correctly—was prorogued for two or three months by a minority Government, against the wishes of many parliamentary parties.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman has predicted almost exactly what I was about to say. The 40th Canadian Parliament, which was elected on 14 October 2008 and opened on 18 November, was prorogued by the Governor-General almost immediately, on 4 December, at the specific request of the then Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. I do not think that there is a deliberate coincidence between his surname and that of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office.
Mr Harper expected a motion of no confidence in his Government, and a coalition agreement was established between the various parties with the support of the Bloc Québécois. As the hon. Gentleman says, that Prorogation was quite substantial, and a second Prorogation at the end of 2009 lasted for more than two months. Many complained that it too had been arranged expressly to avoid a political inconvenience. At the time, a big row was taking place about the detention of Afghans by Canadian forces.
As the hon. Gentleman suggests, there is a real danger that Prorogation could be used in a rather more assertive and political fashion. Governments in this country have tended not to use it in such a way, partly because it means losing the business on which they have embarked and having to start it all over again. That will probably continue, but given that Select Committee reports—including reports from the Standards and Privileges Committee—also fall in such circumstances, I can easily imagine that a Government might choose to prorogue a month earlier than usual, perhaps very early in a Parliament, in order to avoid a political necessity. Interestingly, the ostensible reason given by the Canadians was the prospect of the winter Olympics in Canada. They said it was imperative that the Canadian Government should be able to get on with its business, and that Parliament should not be able to meet during the Olympics.
I think it is right for the power to cease to be wholly in the hands of the Crown, and to be in the hands of the House. I also think that we should start to clarify the knitting pattern, as it were, of this part of the constitution as it currently exists. The laws governing Prorogation hang on a series of Acts of Parliament: the Prorogation Act 1867, the Meeting of Parliament Acts 1694, 1797, 1799 and 1870, and the Parliament (Elections and Meeting) Act 1943. The thrust of all those Acts is that the monarch is entirely able to prorogue Parliament, to decide when it will next meet, and to continue to prorogue with only the safeguards of the measures that I mentioned earlier in the context of the Bill of Rights.
There is a considerable lack of clarity in regard to the process in the run-up to a general election. We know when the next general election will be, at least according to the Bill, although we still hope that their lordships may enforce their will and ensure that it takes place in 2014 rather than 2015. Indeed, I hope that a significant number of Conservatives will support the 2014 date, if only to shrug off the embrace of the Liberal Democrats. However, given that we know when the next general election is expected to be, it surely makes sense for us to rationalise the process of Prorogation.
Up to 1974, there were only two 20th-century general elections in which a Dissolution was not preceded by a Prorogation: the elections of 22 August 1922 and 31 July 1964. As I am sure Members have already spotted, both those elections took place in the summer months, during long recesses when the House stood adjourned. Adjournment, of course, follows a decision by the House, not the Government. There followed a period during which the Government decided to abandon Prorogation. There were adjournments in the summer of 1974, in 1979, in 1983 and in 1987, with no Prorogation.
By 1987, the assumption seemed to have become that the House would do without Prorogation at the end of a Parliament and before Dissolution, partly because the Royal Assent Act 1967 had allowed Royal Assent to be granted by notification rather than necessarily by Prorogation. There was, and still is, no specific need at Prorogation for Royal Assent to Acts that had not yet been referred to. In fact, in 1987 there was something of a row in the House. Mr Speaker Weatherill said that he thought it inappropriate for us to abandon Prorogation. It may be apposite to discuss that occasion this evening, given that so many Members have left the Chamber to go to a drinks party in Downing street. Incidentally, is the sun already past the yardarm? It is not yet 6 pm, and Conservatives are already drinking in Downing street. Tradition has gone by the board.
Thomas Docherty
I am sure that the fact that the Conservatives have had to resort to drink has nothing to do with last Thursday’s result in the Oldham by-election.
Chris Bryant
I do not think they are very happy. I also think that the Prime Minister may have needed to gather his troops as a result of last week’s result.
On that occasion in 1987, the Speaker and several Members, including Mr Faulds, expressed the view that one of the traditions that had developed over the years was that once a Parliament had been prorogued, Members had an opportunity to make final speeches, and the Speaker had an opportunity to bid farewell to those who would not be standing in the subsequent election. I believe that 86 were not standing again in 1987. Mr Speaker Weatherill said that he thought it was wrong for there to be no Prorogation before Dissolution, and several Members agreed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) was the only one who believed that it would be good to get rid of Prorogations, because the whole business of Lords Commissioners doffing their caps in the House of Lords struck him as a ludicrous ceremony that should be abolished. A fair number of Members probably think that the quaintness of that moment should not simply be chucked away for the sake of it. My point is, however, that the decision on whether Prorogation should take place ought to lie in the hands of the House rather than in those of Government. I also think it is important for it to be known at that point exactly when the first sitting of the new Parliament will be.
As a result, I suspect, of Mr Speaker Weatherill’s views, Dissolution was again preceded by Prorogation in 1992, 1997, 2005 and 2010. However, in 2001 Parliament was dissolved without being prorogued, and was simply adjourned on 11 May 2001. Adjournment was, of course, a decision of the House, not the Government.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
Anybody who knows me knows that my appreciation of a glass of reasonably priced white wine is second to no one’s in this House, and my appreciation of a glass of reasonably priced white wine served by the Prime Minister in No. 10 Downing street is extreme, but my love for the British constitution is greater than that.
Nick Boles
The shadow Minister asks whether my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is charging for the drinks he is serving in No. 10 Downing street. In response, I would merely point out something that seems to have escaped the attention of Opposition Members.
Nick Boles
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was in danger of being wholly distracted from my point, which is that my love for the British constitution, such as it is, is greater even than my love for a glass of reasonably priced white wine served at No. 10 Downing street, and there is no part of the British constitution for which I have a greater passion than that nebulous concept of Prorogation. It is the subject of the stories that my parents read to me by my bedside when I was a child. I agree that it sounds like a sad childhood, but such it was.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made an ingenious argument about the dangers of this power remaining with the sovereign. He suggested that a Prime Minister presiding without a secure majority and having lost a vote of no confidence in this House might advise the sovereign to prorogue Parliament to avoid the possibility of Parliament passing a vote of confidence in an alternative Government and thereby bringing about an election, rather than the installation of a new Government. I am second to none in my passion for the nebulous concept of Prorogation, but I am no lawyer, unlike the hon. Gentleman.
Nick Boles
I withdraw that comment, Mr Deputy Speaker, which was almost certainly unparliamentary and banned by “Erskine May”. The hon. Gentleman said he felt he had a certain expertise in English law but not in Scottish law. I point out that my expertise in any law is equivalent to his expertise in Scottish law, so I am skating across boggy ground, if such a thing is possible.
The hon. Gentleman tried to argue that the power to prorogue should transfer to Parliament so that a Prime Minister who has lost his majority and lost the confidence of this House cannot use the power and the persuadability of the sovereign to remain in office and require an election to be called. He has an excessively colourful imagination. I understand that where no party has a clear majority in this House the role of the sovereign is to see whether a stable Government can be formed.
We saw a very good example of that after the last general election, when there was no clear result and no party had a clear majority in this House. The sovereign behaved impeccably in allowing and encouraging the parties, both the Labour party in government and the Opposition parties, to explore which arrangement was the most stable and to form the Government who had the most chance of lasting. Surely where a party in government has lost a vote of confidence in this House and no longer commands a stable majority here it would be an absolutely integral part of the sovereign’s constitutional role to invite the other party leaders to explore whether they could form a stable majority. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) frowns. I would be happy to take an intervention from him, but may I finish explaining my logic? He can then explain to me why, as so often, it is flawed.
The sovereign would invite other party leaders to see whether they could secure a stable majority and they would have those conversations even if Parliament had been prorogued. If a group of parties not then in the Government told Her Majesty—or His Majesty, on some future date—that they could form a stable Government and provided good evidence of that fact, and if the Cabinet Secretary were to advise that they were a stable Government, there is no reason why Her Majesty should not invite the leader of the parties putting together that constellation to form a Government. At that point, that leader would be the Prime Minister and could kiss hands—all of that can happen without Parliament being involved. That leader would then be the Prime Minister and would be able to “rerogue” or “unrogue”—I do not know what the correct term is—and recall Parliament, thus cancelling Prorogation, and put their Government to a vote of confidence. If they were successful, that would obviate the need for a further election. So I do not think that the logic of the argument made by the hon. Member for Rhondda holds.
Nick Boles
The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) or me?
Chris Bryant
Both of you. I am quite happy to like anybody.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is completely wrong. A person from the same political party might want to take over. The no-confidence vote might apply to the Prime Minister as an individual rather than to the whole Government. I would agree with the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) were it not for the way in which the Bill is worded, because it refers to the period of 14 days—not 14 sitting days. The House could be adjourned or prorogued during that period, or it could already be prorogued. There are many different situations in which we need to seize this power back into the hands of the House rather than the Government.
Nick Boles
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who has thought about this for longer, more deeply and in a more researched way than I have, as I was invited to make this speech only a relatively short time ago.
Nick Boles
My hon. Friend is right. There were moments in the previous Parliament when we all might have wished that the party in government had taken that route rather than imposing on us the rather long, drawn-out demise that we all witnessed.
Chris Bryant
Much as I like the other hon. Gentleman, whose name I do not know—[Laughter.] No, I do, but he was completely wrong. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire would be right if the Bill determined what counted as a motion of no confidence, but it does not. A motion of no confidence could be a motion of censure of an individual person. It might be tabled by the Opposition, and, if they won, they would end up unseating somebody as a party leader without unseating the Government.
Nick Boles
I have a sense that we will probably not persuade the hon. Gentleman here and now, although I have eternal optimism that we will persuade him of everything in due course.
Let me move on to the solution proposed by the hon. Member for Rhondda, which, to my mind, is as flawed—though also as ingenious—as his analysis of what he sees as the problems with the Bill. His solution is that this House, and exclusively this House, would have the power to prorogue. I believe that the House would adopt a resolution and the Speaker would then prorogue Parliament. The problem is another circumstance that the Opposition parties have talked about. When a Prime Minister with a rather small majority in this House feels, in the middle of a five-year term, that everything is going frightfully well, they might cynically decide to engineer a vote of no confidence that they would then instruct their Members to vote for in order to bring the House down, to prorogue and, more importantly, to have a further election. I have heard in earlier discussions that that vexes and worries Opposition Members and the hon. Member for Rhondda. Surely, his solution would fall prey to that ruse far more than happens under the current circumstances, when only the monarch can prorogue Parliament.
If a Prime Minister who felt that everything was going frightfully well and that if he had a quick election he could get a better majority could engineer a vote of no confidence by getting his troops to support it, surely he could engineer a resolution of the House to prorogue just as cynically, wilfully and arbitrarily. Does not the hon. Gentleman’s proposal move the power of prorogation, which currently sits in that special, rather hallowed constitutional place of being one of the few things that the sovereign does, on to the Floor of this House where it will become subject to all the machinations and swirls of this place and of ambitious Prime Ministers trying to secure a better majority?
Chris Bryant
Prime Ministers are by definition ambitious, I think—that was otiose. No. The Prime Minister, to all intents and purposes, is the Crown and the Crown, to all intents and purposes, is the Prime Minister in the exercise of prerogative powers. Secondly, there is a significant advantage in not just being able to prorogue and close Parliament by proclamation but having to come to the House to make a speech to argue for it. That is the big difference.
Nick Boles
Although I defer hugely to the hon. Gentleman’s greater understanding, he betrays a lack of a feel for how this constitution of ours works. The same criticism could be applied to some of his other amendments. The whole point of our constitution is that it is organic and flexible, and that it develops over time. Everything we do, every decision we make and every Bill we pass slightly shifts and changes the constitution. It is not a rules-based constitution but a practice-based constitution. Of course, there are rules—the Parliament Acts, the Salisbury convention and so on—but they develop and metamorphose as we use them.
Nick Boles
If I may, I would like at least to develop the argument enough for the hon. Gentleman to be able to fire it down good and proper.
Once we have passed this Bill and created five-year Parliaments and the expectation that they are the norm for this country, the constitution will have changed. The way in which the sovereign uses her powers to invite people to form Governments, to see whether they can win the confidence of this House, to prorogue and to accept advice from a Prime Minister will change. We will all make the argument that it would be profoundly unconstitutional for a Prime Minister who had just lost a vote of no confidence to abuse his power as the monarch’s sole adviser to advise her to prorogue a Parliament. It would be absolutely within the monarch’s rights to say, “I am defending the constitution. I am defending this new expectation that we should have five-year Parliaments by trying to see whether there is somebody other than this loser, who has just lost the confidence of the House, who can command a majority. That does not interfere with Parliament or government—I am in fact interpreting properly the will of the people, which is that we should have five-year terms.” I believe that the hon. Member for Rhondda thinks that these rules are unchanging and unbending and that they will not shift and metamorphose in response to the Bill.
Chris Bryant
Well, the hon. Gentleman should not, because if we extended the 17 days to 25, there would be less need to raise money because the amount that can be spent in a short election campaign is much more circumscribed than the amount that could be spent across the whole of the previous year. With a fixed-term Parliament, it should be possible to restrict the amount of money much more readily, so that is a further reason—I am glad he has added another—for him to support my amendment.
Nick Boles
I am not sure I understood that point, so, in a traditional Tory way, I am going to reject it because the hon. Gentleman said it.
The issue is whether the timetables should conform to the lower figure of 17 days or the higher figure of 25 days. My instinct, and probably that of most Government Members, is that any conformity should be to a shorter election campaign and a quicker decision. However, we must then address the issue of whether it is appropriate to determine that figure in this Bill. I believe that the Bill makes a fundamental constitutional change—to that extent I agree with those of my hon. Friends who are uncomfortable with parts of it—but that is why I support it. I want that fundamental constitutional change and I want it to remain for ever. I want it to be something that people will describe in 25 or 30 years’ time as one of the big constitutional shifts in the life of modern Britain. Because the Bill will make such a fundamental constitutional change, I do not want to hang about with all sorts of little, pernickety tidying-up exercises. I do not want to lumber the Bill with measures that might seem irrelevant in future, thereby opening the door to further amendment. I want the Bill to have as few clauses as possible—clear clauses that are based on the principled position that the timing of an election should not be up to the Prime Minister but should be a matter of rhythm and pattern defined by our constitution.
Nick Boles
I thank the right hon. Gentleman and I agree with him. If we are to have, as I hope we will, elections falling in a regular pattern, coinciding with other elections to other important democratic bodies, it seems obvious that there should be a consistent series. Otherwise, people would find it very confusing if local election campaigns had started while the parliamentary election campaign they all knew was coming had not. In such a situation, if parties put out leaflets with councillors on one side and a parliamentary candidate on the other, they might get into trouble for jumping the gun. The point he makes is absolutely right, but we should not necessarily decide here and now, in this Bill, between the proposals for 17 or 25 days, or even that the length should be 17 or 25 days. If we want to make this change, should we not think a bit harder about what the period should be? I have only thought of it on the spur of the moment, but I think I could make a very strong case for 12 days, and if someone wants to enter into a bit of a Dutch auction and say eight days, I would be happy with that too.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is wrong, because one major reason why we might want a slightly longer period is to allow people who register for a postal vote to get their vote in on time. The hon. Gentleman’s Government will be legislating for prisoners to have the vote; they will vote by post, as I understand it. In addition, as I heard him say earlier, people who live abroad—especially those in the armed forces—who vote by post would find it impossible to do so within a period of eight or 12 days. They already find it very difficult to do so within 17 days but they do manage to do so within the 25-day period for local elections.
Nick Boles
The hon. Gentleman is being a trifle unkind because he knew I was being a little light-hearted and frivolous; indeed he indulges himself in such behaviour. Whereas we allow him to get away with it, he has taken my light-hearted conjectures as a serious suggestion. What he has done, however, is to demonstrate the force of my argument, which is that we should have a proper discussion, separate from the Bill, about the question, “What is the right time period?”
There are many good counter-arguments; the hon. Gentleman has enumerated some of them. My sympathies for those prisoners denied their right to vote are more limited than my sympathies for the other categories of potential postal voter that he mentioned, but I am sure that those prisoners too will have their defenders. Should we not have a separate debate on a separate piece of legislation on this question—if legislation is required? Maybe it is required, but I do not think that we should be making this amendment to a Bill that needs to stand the test of time. It needs to rest as a keystone in our constitution that lasts through the ages and is not eroded by time. I hope, therefore, that everyone in the House will choose to reject the new clauses and the amendments proposed by the hon. Gentleman.
Dan Byles
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for alluding to an argument that I have heard time and again, when people suggest, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it,” but I shall come to the problems with the current situation in a moment. He also alludes to the interesting idea that we have a democratic system that works, so we should not amend or tinker with it. I have heard Opposition Members support that idea before. I have heard it suggested that, somehow, the Bill is undemocratic. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friends, I find that an extraordinary argument. That line of reasoning seems to suggest that the only truly democratic system is the one that has evolved in this country—the one that we currently use. Such reasoning suggests that it is not possible to amend our system without somehow making it less democratic, even though it concentrates power in the Prime Minister’s hands. The Bill will devolve the power to call a general election to the House, which is surely where it belongs.
If one were to follow that line of reasoning to its absurd conclusion, it would suggest that other western nations are somehow less democratic than ours, simply because they have democratic systems different from the one that we enjoy. In the United States Congressmen and women serve a two-year fixed term. The President serves a four-year fixed term. Senators serve six-year fixed terms. Clearly, that does not make the United States less democratic than we are simply because its system is different from ours. In France Members of the National Assembly are elected for five-year terms—the period that the Bill recommends. The President is also elected for a five-year term. The Senate is selected for a six-year term.
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but Members of the Assemblée Nationale are elected for terms of up to five years, not fixed terms.
Dan Byles
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting me. That was not my understanding, but I will bow to his superior knowledge. The French model has an interesting lesson to teach us about leaving the power to dissolve Parliament with the Executive, as opposed to the system that we are now considering. The President of France has the power to force Dissolution early, but that is not supposed to be the norm; it is supposed to be used only in an emergency. It has been used only twice in an emergency, in 1962 and 1968, but it has been used three times for political advantage—in 1981, 1988 and 1997—thus clearly demonstrating that if we leave such a power in the hands of the Executive, it will inevitably be used for party political advantage.
Chris Bryant
But when our forefathers reached that view, they pointed out that although the maximum length of a Parliament would be five years, in practice the length would nearly always be four years.
Dan Byles
The hon. Gentleman has advanced that argument before, but I am aware that another interpretation is that if a Parliament lasts five years, only about four years’ work gets done in practice, because Governments find it harder to get their business through in the final year as people are looking ahead to the next general election: in effect, the election campaign starts.
Dan Byles
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is exactly the point that I would have made.
The Bill is truly historic. That fact has been mentioned by numerous Members on both sides of the House, and to consider it in isolation—what it means to us now, rather than its place within the sweep of the history of our nation—would be wrong.
Chris Bryant
I agree that historical precedent is important, but I think the last time the monarch was involved directly in a speech made before Prorogation was 1851 or 1854, so we are going back some time. Since then there has been quite a transformation of the Prorogation system.
Chris Bryant
In 1831 the row about Dissolution and Prorogation, which was all about the proposed Great Reform Act, led to a phenomenal row in this House between the Conservatives and the Whig Government, precisely on the basis of whose decision it should be that Prorogation should proceed.
Dan Byles
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for joining our discussion of the history pertaining to Prorogation. I am glad that he has recognised that understanding the history of how we have got to where we are today is relevant to the discussion at hand. However, as the House is clearly not in the mood to discuss history today, and as I am aware that time is pressing, I want to move on and make a final point about amendment 9 before bringing my remarks to a conclusion.
Clause 3 states:
“Once Parliament dissolves, Her Majesty may issue the proclamation summoning the new Parliament which may…
(a) appoint the day for the first meeting of the new Parliament”.
Amendment 9 would add:
“within 15 working days of the polling day”.
The issue has already been discussed, but I am concerned that the amendment remains a little woolly. I question its purpose. What does a working day mean? Does that take into account religious holidays? There has already been a discussion about whether “working day” or “days” should be used. If that is an issue that the Opposition are concerned about, the term “working days” remains vague. Are bank holidays in other parts of the United Kingdom to be taken into account?
Is it not difficult to add “within 15 working days” in such specific terms, when “working days” could mean something entirely different in another part of the United Kingdom? In particular, why is Labour adamant about 15 working days? Is there any rationale or logic behind this number? Why not 14 days or 16 days? If we believe in evidence-based policy making in this place—[Interruption.] I detect some chuckling. Perhaps that is a dangerous thought. Evidence is not always welcome in this place. I have discovered that in previous debates. Perhaps when he sums up, the hon. Member for Rhondda will explain to us why 15 days is the magic number, not 14 or 16.
The House has indulged me enough. Time is pressing and there may be others who wish to speak. I thank the House for its attention.
Mr Heath
I do not dismiss the hon. Gentleman’s arguments. I understand what he is saying. However, in purely practical terms, it is difficult for the House to receive advice from any quarter on what would be an appropriate date. The House as a whole would find it difficult to take the sort of advice that the Prime Minister, as an individual, could easily assemble. In the politically charged atmosphere of a vote of no confidence, it is hard to understand—[Interruption.] Sorry, not a vote of no confidence. I could see what the hon. Member for Foyle was thinking. In the consideration of an early election, it would be even more difficult to set.
There are always technical issues in establishing the most appropriate date for a general election, and the considerations of all parts of the United Kingdom must be taken into account. I know that the hon. Gentleman has had mixed experiences, but he knows that it is the experience of the devolved Administrations that it is useful in the circumstances that have been suggested for an individual to have this responsibility. Giving it to the House as a whole would be technically difficult, without a significant advance in the arrangements being achieved.
I move on to amendment 8, which the hon. Member for Rhondda said “makes things tidy”, in the words of his valet. I am sure that it would, and I have some sympathy with his argument. The amendment would lengthen the election timetable by requiring Parliament to dissolve 25 working days before polling day, rather than 17. The Government recognise that remaking the election timetable is a complex matter that we should consider. However, it cannot be done simply by edict and without the background work.
The Electoral Commission supports the idea, as the hon. Gentleman knows. He did not make a great deal of that in his speech, but I know that he knows the background material. The commission has suggested that an extension to the electoral timetable would support participation by overseas and service voters, and better support the effective administration of elections. We agree that it is an important issue, and the Deputy Prime Minister has indicated to the commission that there is merit in exploring a change to the timetable. However, as the commission has pointed out, it would require a thorough review to ensure that any change is consistent with the arrangements for elections across the piece.
A host of practical issues and consequential complexities must be considered. We will have to form a balanced judgment on where particular milestones would best fall within an extended election timetable. For example, there might be competing views about the deadline for nominations, and we would have to work to find the most effective compromise. Another crucial milestone is the deadline for registering to vote, which, although not part of the timetable structure, is inextricable from it. That illustrates that such changes to the timetable cannot be made in isolation. As part of the process, we would need to consider the current deadlines for postal and proxy vote applications. Additionally, different elections across the UK run to different timetables and moving to 25 days in Westminster would not, of itself, generate consistency.
As I have said, the Government agree that this is an important issue and we will set out our proposals on the timetable in due course. We have held initial discussions with the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators to identify points to address. It should be noted that the Bill already greatly enhances the ability of administrators and candidates to plan ahead, because we will know when general elections will happen, usually at least five years in advance. The various people involved in running elections will be able to factor that into their thinking and organisation. Even if the provisions for an early election were engaged, the Bill sets out clearly the steps from the Dissolution motion or no-confidence motion to the Dissolution of Parliament, and those steps will be conducted in the public eye. There will be no more snap elections, and I believe that electoral administrators and candidates can be glad about that.
The final reason for asking the hon. Member for Rhondda not to pursue amendment 8, despite its merit and the fact that the issue needs to be considered, is that the Bill is not the right place to amend the election timetable. The Bill is about fixing the date of the poll, not wholesale electoral reform, as we have said repeatedly. Governments are constantly urged by everyone to have focused legislation that deals with specific objects. This is just such a piece of focused legislation and I do not want to cloud the simple but constitutionally significant issue of fixing parliamentary terms with other electoral issues.
Having said that, I hope that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members who have tabled amendments will not press them to a vote, so that we can continue with the debate on the final group of amendments.
Chris Bryant
I note that the Prime Minister’s drinks party has clearly ended, because the whole Conservative party has gathered in the Chamber. We heard earlier that the Prime Minister had been serving reasonably priced drinks, so I hope that all hon. Members paid for them.
Simon Hart
Amendment 1 was tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, who apologises for not being here in person.
I hope not to detain the House for too long. Amendment 1 is a probing amendment, which the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee agreed should be tabled to ensure that the Bill was technically sound. Clause 1(3) and (4) provide for the clock to be reset if an early general election is called, and for the date of the next scheduled general election to be shifted to four to five years after that early election. Those provisions, however, do not seem to apply to the next general election, which is scheduled to take place on 7 May 2015. The Bill seems to require an election to be held on 7 May 2015 even if an early election has been held before that date, perhaps only a few months before—although I suppose that depends on how it is interpreted. The Government have made clear their policy that the clock should be reset each time there is an early general election, and I do not suppose that they mean to make an exception for 2015.
I appreciate that the Government have already announced that the next general election will be held on 7 May 2015 and not before. Can the Minister reassure us that, in the unlikely event of an early general election during the current Parliament, the Bill as it stands would not require a further election to be held on 7 May 2015? If he cannot give that reassurance, is he prepared to accept the amendment? That would make it crystal clear that if an early election took place before May 2015, the date of the next election would be four to five years later, not in May 2015.
Chris Bryant
It is a great delight to see the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). It is always odd when constituencies contain bits of the west and bits of the south and bits of the north, all aligned with each other. May I just notify the hon. Gentleman that I shall be in his constituency on Friday evening? Now I have got that out of the way. He will be glad to know that I shall be addressing a Labour party meeting—although I am sure he will be welcome to come along if he wishes.
As for the hon. Gentleman’s argument about amendment 1, I entirely agree with him that the drafting of the Bill is deficient in this regard. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has done a remarkable piece of work in the short time it was given to do its work, and I am glad it has been able to come up with this amendment. I had worried that there was not going to be a Committee member to move it, because neither of the two Committee members whose names are attached to it is present this evening, which is a shame.
I also want to speak to amendments 10 and 11 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Lord Chancellor my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), and myself. Amendment 10 would amend clause 1 by adding that “no notice” should be
“taken of any early parliamentary general election as provided for in section 2.”
That is basically to say that, notwithstanding that there might have been an early general election, the next general election will be on the date that had already been specified.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that one of our primary objections to the Bill is that it refers to five-year Parliaments rather than four-year Parliaments, which we would prefer, we none the less subscribe to the belief that it is good for parliamentary democracy to have an expectation about when the next general election will be, and for Parliaments to be for fixed terms, especially because our broader electoral system is now analogous to that of the United States of America in that we have local elections on a four-year cycle, Assembly elections in Wales and Northern Ireland on a four-year cycle and the parliamentary elections in Scotland on a four-year cycle. We know the dates when they will take place in perpetuity into the future, so it makes sense to have the same pattern and rhythm in elections to this House. That is why we have advanced this amendment, which, in essence, would mean that we would not start the clock again. Consequently, we would know whether elections were going to coincide with certain local elections or elections for the devolved Administrations. That is a better model than the slightly haphazard manner in which we may proceed if the Bill proceeds unamended in this respect.
There is one other advantage. The Government have written to the devolved Administrations about the fact that the next general election would coincide with their elections in 2015 unless the Prime Minister brings our general election forward by two months or delays it by two months, and the Minister has written asking them whether they think it would be better to have a new power added giving them the right to delay their elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by six months. I have spoken to various Members of the Welsh Assembly, including the First Minister, and he is clear that it would be wrong suddenly to change the date of the Welsh Assembly elections because Parliament had decided that its elections were to be at a certain point in 2015, thereby either prolonging the next Welsh Assembly by six months or shortening the one thereafter by six months. Moreover, if we are deciding that the best time of the year to have elections is the first Thursday in May, it would seem wrong suddenly to decide that everyone else should have to get out of the way and have their elections in November. Also, just shunting the devolved Administrations’ elections away by a month or two months is likely to harm those elections substantially, because I do not think that voters want to come out very regularly, within a month or two of another general election.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
It is not just that it is a burden on the electorate to ask them to come out and vote twice in a short period. One of our concerns about the local government and Assembly elections that will be taking place in Northern Ireland—as well as the referendum—is that the campaigns will become blurred and people will focus less on some of them and more on others.
Chris Bryant
I think that is absolutely right, and I fear that the likely outcome of that is that most people will end up voting purely and simply according to party, rather than according to the candidate, which would be a damaging direction of travel for British democracy. We would prefer deliberately to avoid a coincidence of the Scottish Parliament elections with the general election, and we think that the best way of doing so is by having a four-year fixed-term for this Parliament and by not restarting the clock. We would thus not have constant uncertainty about the year of the general election.
Dr McCrea
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Electoral Commission has written to the Deputy Prime Minister on this issue, and the right of the devolved Administrations to lengthen the period by six months? It letter states:
“the Commission believes that there remains a clear need for…research to be carried out”—
forthwith—
“to ensure there is a robust evidence base to inform decisions about the timing of elections in 2015.”
Chris Bryant
Yes, I am aware of that and I completely agree with the thrust of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The Government cannot just pull at individual strings of the constitutional settlement, because we will just end up unravelling the whole jumper: that is the law of unintended consequences, which we are in danger of having thrust upon us.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that four years seems to be the normal cycle. Does he agree that if the Government are intent on pushing ahead with a five-year fixed term, the natural thing to do would be to do the same thing with the cycle for the National Assembly for Wales, and change its term to five years?
Chris Bryant
I suppose it would, but I am not in favour of five-year terms. Political events change at a dramatic pace these days and a five-year term would not meet that requirement. I suspect that such an arrangement would mean that Governments both here and in the devolved Administrations would more regularly be at the fag-end of their sense of having a mandate, and a four-year provision would be much better. I am sure that we shall return to this matter on Third Reading.
I have no desire to delay the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I think that I have made my point. In essence, it is that we believe it would be better to have a four-year fixed-term Parliament, because that would help us to avoid the elections for the devolved Administrations coinciding with the general election. We need change only one other measure to make sure that that never happens; we need to provide that we do not start the clock again when there has been an early general election. The Government’s intention is to try to make us fall into the rhythm of fixed-term Parliaments and not have lots of early general elections, and such a provision would give people an added incentive not to seek an early general election because they would know that they would then have only a short Parliament before the next general election, which would fall on the previously arranged date. Without any further do, I shall conclude and I look forward to hearing from the Minister.
Mr Harper
The amendments relate to the date of the election and it is worth touching on the points that a number of hon. Members have made about the coincidence of the proposed date of 7 May 2015 with the date of the devolved elections. It is worth saying, as we said in Committee, that it is entirely possible and, indeed, likely that, regardless of whether or not this Bill was introduced, the UK general election could have been held on the same day as those devolved elections if this Parliament had run for five years. In some sense, the Bill provides an opportunity, because it has highlighted and crystallised that fact at an early stage, when we have the chance to debate the consequences and do something about it.
As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, and as we discussed in Committee, I wrote to all the party leaders in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament proposing to give their Assembly or Parliament the power to extend its term by up to six months. That was to go alongside the existing power to shorten the term by six months to provide a window of a year in which it could vary the date of the election to avoid that once-in-20-year coincidence with the Westminster election.
Mr Harper
I heard very clearly what the hon. Gentleman said in his intervention on the hon. Member for Rhondda, and I was going to refer to that point anyway. Let me finish this part of my speech and I shall come on to that.
I wrote to the party leaders. They wrote back and I think it is fair to say that they were underwhelmed by the proposal to give the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament the opportunity to extend their term by six months to provide that one-year window. For that reason, the Government did not table an amendment on Report, as we had suggested that we might if the responses were more positive. The party leaders and Presiding Officers raised some other points, some of which the hon. Member for Rhondda has raised today, about alternatives. We are considering them and will write back to the party leaders as well as keeping the Opposition and the House informed. For the benefit of Members, I should say that copies of the letters that I have written have been placed in the Library of the House today.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful for the tone in which the Minister is responding to this part of the debate. For his information, his office sent me a letter by e-mail today, apparently responding to a letter I sent him on 21 December. It was in fact a letter about something completely different, so if he could arrange for the actual letter to be sent to me, I would be grateful.
Mr Harper
I replied to a letter that the hon. Gentleman sent to me. He might find—I can absolutely get him a copy—that the letter about the letter to the party leaders went to the shadow Secretary of State’s office today. I can make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets a copy directly and, as I said, I placed copies of those letters in the Library of the House.
The Electoral Commission’s letter made some sensible points about considering all the issues raised by combination. It seems to me that there are two kinds of issues: first, the practical delivery of elections—how we make the mechanics run—and, secondly, making combination easier. That is not just related to the devolved elections and those for the Westminster Parliament. The fact is that whether or not one agrees with the Government’s proposals, we are proposing elected police commissioners and some elected mayors, so there will be more elections and more of them will take place on the same day. Therefore, we need to make that easier. Another issue that came up in the debate, which is serious and valid, concerns the extent to which media coverage and so on means that two different conversations can be going on at the same time for different elections. That will obviously engage the political parties, broadcasters and people more widely.
The Electoral Commission’s suggestion is very good, but it has not taken place to date. The Government think there is some support for it, but given where we are in the timetable and given that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland wanted to consider the experience of the combined elections in Northern Ireland this year, it might be a good idea to consider what happens with the referendum and elections in May—in only a few months’ time—and use that experience to kick off some project along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) once the Government have considered the suggestions from the party leaders. That might give us a possible route forward.
Chris Bryant
The Minister referred to elected police commissioners and more directly elected mayors. Will he confirm that they will all also be on four-year terms, rather than five-year terms? If he wanted to provide a little more tidiness—I can see him smiling, because he knows how this sentence will end—he could change this five-year fixed-term Parliament to a four-year Parliament, even if he only did it for after 2015.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady makes a good point. When the Deputy Prime Minister and I introduced the Bill, we said that a UK general election coinciding with a devolved legislature election would be qualitatively different from a referendum campaign coinciding with a devolved legislature election for the very reason that the hon. Lady says—there would be a narrative and a debate going on and there would be questions about whether the media, newspapers and broadcasters would fairly cover both parts of the debate and whether the public could therefore take properly informed decisions in both elections. We need to consider that issue with all the parties and broadcasters and see whether there are ways around it.
Let me address amendment 1, which my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) moved on behalf of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform. The intention of the amendment is to clarify that, in the event of an early general election—before 7 May—under subsection (1) or (2) of clause 2, the general election specified in clause 1(2) would not take place, but the Bill already makes it clear that the general election of 7 May 2015 would take place only if no intervening early general elections under the procedures in clause 2 had occurred. Clause 1 sets the date for the first scheduled general election, “subject to” clause 2—those words appear in the first subsection of the Bill’s first clause. If there were an early general election, it would replace the election of 7 May. The Select Committee has been very helpful in scrutinising the Bill and its amendments have brought about some good debates. Amendment 1 is good in that it has enabled this debate, but it is not necessary because the Bill is already clear.
Amendments 10 and 11, which the hon. Member for Rhondda spoke to, would mean that the parliamentary term following an early general election would last only for the remainder of the previously scheduled term. To use a phrase that the Committee used in its report, it would keep the clock ticking on the five years whether there was an early general election or not. There has been quite a lot of speculation among academics and others on whether that would act as a disincentive for a Government or strong Opposition to engineer an early general election because a new Government would get a term of perhaps only a few months. We did think about that, and we debated it in Committee. The flip side to that is that there is an election in which a Government get elected, perhaps with a significant majority, quickly followed by another election. That explains the Government’s choice of wording.
There is a technical problem with the amendments. An early election could take place just before the scheduled election but the scheduled election would still be held. The rules for the devolved assemblies provide a window, so that if the early election takes place very close to the scheduled election, the scheduled election does not take place. If the early election is more than six months before, the scheduled election still takes place. As the amendments are drafted, there could be an election only weeks before the scheduled election, and the scheduled election would still have to be held. That would not make a great deal of sense.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is right; that would be the eventuality. However, I think that would fly in the face of what in practice would happen politically, because some six to nine months before a general election people would choose not to bother to militate for an early general election—they would just accept that the next general election was coming. I understood that that was what the Minister was trying to achieve—fixed-term Parliaments.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman was hypothetically pessimistic earlier. Now he takes the opposite approach: he is being hypothetically optimistic. The Government’s view was that we could have that early general election and the Government could be returned with a large majority, and we think the public would expect that Government to govern.
Interestingly, the Constitution Committee in the other place agreed with the Government’s approach. Its report concludes that a newly elected Government should have a full term of office, and that the Government would present its programme to Parliament through the Queen’s Speech, which, of course, is traditionally considered to be a test of confidence. We think that in that situation the Government should have the right to carry out their programme for the full five years, and it would make little sense to ask the voters to go back to the polls when they had sent out a clear message.
I accept that that is a debatable point—we had a significant debate in Committee—but let us look at it from the public’s end of the telescope rather than our own. If we were to have an early general election, because the Government had lost a confidence vote or because there had been a general sense that we should have an early general election, it would seem a little ridiculous if the public had made a clear choice, sent a Government into office with a significant majority, and then a few months later were back doing it all over again.
I think that, on balance, the Government’s decision and the current drafting of the Bill make sense. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, on behalf of the Select Committee, to withdraw his amendment 1 and I urge the hon. Member for Rhondda, just for once, to think about whether he really wants to press amendments 10 and 11 and potentially force the British people to undergo election after election in close succession—something which neither he nor I would want to achieve.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree that in principle a clash of elections to the devolved Assemblies and to the House of Commons should be avoided. As I have said before in debates, there is a world of difference between the potential for confusion among voters being asked to vote for two different Parliaments that will in turn create two different Executives or Governments—a wholly more serious issue—and the coincidence of such elections with a referendum on a specific yes or no issue, as will be the case with the AV referendum and the elections this May. We have always accepted the fundamental assertion that we need to find a way around that. We have had ongoing discussions and will continue to do so with an open mind. We made the suggestion that the devolved Assemblies should have the power to shift the date of their elections by six months either before or after the general election. That has not been greeted with universal approbation, but it is none the less a sincere attempt on our part to try to find a way forward.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the Deputy Prime Minister, who is being generous in giving way. Can he confirm that the provision set out in clause 1(5) will extend the maximum length of a Parliament beyond five years and that therefore it would be the longest fixed-term Parliament in the world, other than Rwanda? There is no fixed-term Parliament in the world of five years.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman has read the provisions of the Bill correctly, and I think that his point was confirmed by the Minister on Report. On the point about the coincidence of elections, Northern Ireland Office Ministers are conducting separate discussions with the parties in Northern Ireland, where the issues are slightly different. It would be inappropriate for me to prejudge the outcome of those ongoing discussions. We will of course endeavour to keep colleagues on the Opposition Benches informed.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend was asked about clause 1(5) and the length of time between general elections, but my reading of that provision is that it does not extend the life of a Parliament. Parliament will still expire after five years, but the general election has to come within two months after that if it is extended, which is a shorter period than the current maximum.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I defer to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) on the theology of those things. The hon. Member for Rhondda says that he is wrong, but my understanding is that the Bill is fairly clear on that point, even if it a little opaque to me on that very specific point. As my hon. Friend knows, the provisions purely address highly exceptional circumstances that arise for one reason or another, such as unforeseen emergency circumstances. Foot and mouth is an obvious recent example of where it is self-evident that an election simply could not be conducted either practically or politically. That is what we had in mind when we drafted the Bill in those terms.
In conclusion, the Government believe that fixed-term Parliaments represent a simple but absolutely fundamental change: strengthening Parliament, providing stability and moving us towards the new politics that we have all promised the people of Britain. I commend the Bill to the House.
Prisoners (Voting Rights)
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I, too, wish you, Mr Benton, and all Members present a happy new year. I also wish myself a happy birthday, although I note that no one offered that unto me. I congratulate the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing the debate. It is right that we should have the debate here and, as several Members have said, that there should be a proper debate in the Chamber so that many of the issues can be elaborated at greater length, so I hope that that will happen.
I do not wish to disturb the equilibrium between myself and the Minister, but I must excoriate him slightly, because thus far there have been only written ministerial statements on the matter. The policy should have been announced in the Chamber, not by written ministerial statement, and I say that because the Minister said on 2 November 2010:
“when decisions have been taken they will be announced to the House at the Dispatch Box in the usual way.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 722.]
That is not what happened. A written ministerial statement was snuck out—I never know what the past tense of sneak is—or sneaked out.
Chris Bryant
Put out is less pejorative, and I want to be pejorative on this point. The statement was snuck out the day before Parliament adjourned for the Christmas recess. That is an inappropriate way to deal with Parliament, let alone with the politics of making a significant constitutional change in this country.
I am afraid that on this occasion I agree with neither my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), nor our new knight, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), whom I congratulate on his knighthood. I believe that the tradition that prisoners should be unable to vote is older than the Forfeiture Act 1870, because prior to that, the property qualification was so significant that, in practice, prisoners would have been unable to vote anyway. Merely referring to the 1870 Act, although that was the point at which the idea was qualified in statute, is irrelevant. It is an old tradition and a fine one. I think that when one forfeits the right to liberty, one should forfeit the right to vote.
However, I disagree with those who have said that we should leave the European Court of Human Rights. I think that David Maxwell Fyfe was a pretty odious Home Secretary, but I agree with those who argue that he did a good job at Nuremberg in trying to ensure that human rights were protected across Europe. It is difficult for us to argue with Russia that it should comply with the European Court of Human Rights in cases such as that of Sergei Magnitsky if we do not comply ourselves.
I also believe that the Government have been entirely wrong to gold-plate the provisions that are being brought forward. If the cut-off comes at four years, that will mean that people who have committed many very serious crimes, including violent crimes and crimes of a sexual nature, and electoral crimes for that matter, will be able to vote, which I think is inappropriate. That will mean that close to 30,000 people in prison will be able to vote. Notwithstanding the comments that other Members have already made, I think that there will be logistical problems in various areas in the country, which I will move on to in a moment.
The proposals are far more generous than the arrangements in other countries. The hon. Member for Kettering referred to several countries but not to Belgium, where the line is drawn at four months. I wonder whether the Government simply got the words “months” and “years” wrong, because opting for four months would allow them to comply with the Court. In Austria the requirement is one year. In France there is an element of judicial decision making on who gets the franchise—I think that the Government intend to introduce that here—as the court decides whether someone should be deprived of the right to vote as part of the sentencing. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) commented earlier on how the French approached the creation of the Court in the first place and that their system arose because the Napoleonic code had always stipulated that. Of course, 13 countries still have complete bans, although it must be said that they are not countries that we would hold up as exemplars of liberal and civilised societies that comply with human rights.
I have 10 questions for the Minister, although I realise that he may be unable to answer all of them. I hope that he will write to me on any that he is unable to answer today, as the deputy Prime Minister has not responded to any of the letters that we have written to him on the subject—it has been quite some time now and I am looking forward to those replies. First, the current prohibition on votes for prisoners was introduced through primary legislation in the Representation of the People Act 1983, and amended by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Can the Minister confirm that the amendments to statutes to enable prisoner voting will be done though primary legislation, rather than secondary legislation, so that it can be amended on the Floor of the House? Secondly, were we to proceed with a one-year ban, rather than a four-year ban, can he confirm that that would meet the requirements of the Court and that, therefore, the four-year ban is entirely of the Government’s choosing?
Thirdly, can the Minister confirm that more than 28,000 prisoners will be given the vote under the proposals, including around 6,000 who have committed violent crimes and 1,800 who have committed crimes of a sexual nature? Fourthly, the written ministerial statement states that prisoners will be able to vote in an area where they have a local connection. That seems, contrary to the remarks made earlier by several Members, to be a rather loose way of determining where they vote. What will happen if a prisoner wants to be registered in their prison, rather than in their home, or if they are registered in the place where they last lived but someone else is now living there? Frankly, they might not want someone who is serving time in prison to be registered to their home address. What provision have the Government made to ensure that that will not affect householders in their credit rating and in other ways? Will prisoners be entitled to anonymous registration, or will they be included in the electoral register, including details of their last known address, and what provisions will be made for candidates to be able to canvass prisoners?
As I understand it, the Government intend to allow judges to make specific recommendations on depriving people of the vote. On what grounds will a judge be entitled to remove the vote? Following the comments made by other Members, are there particular crimes that, while they might be subject to relatively short sentences of less than four years, should in all cases still see the perpetrator banned from voting? In particular, will the Government ensure that judges receive guidelines on when it will be expected that the vote be removed, and will those guidelines be made available when a Bill comes before the House? Will mentally disordered offenders or prisoners detained in mental health hospitals awaiting sentencing be entitled to vote under the Government’s proposals? I hope that the Minister can answer many of those questions. Many Members are understandably angry about out inaction in the past, but I must say that I prefer our inaction on the matter to the Government’s action thus far.
Parliamentary Representation
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that the independence of the Boundary Commission, or the boundary commissions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is vital, but they quite often get it wrong. In fact, invariably over the past few years, their first version has, as they themselves have readily admitted, not fitted the bill. That is why we think it very important to keep hold of public inquiries, whereby people can test in public the arguments about the shaping of constituencies. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?
Mr Reid
I am not convinced by the hon. Gentleman’s argument in that regard. One of the things I have always found problematic with the present system is the fact that there are only 28 days for people or organisations to put in objections or suggestions. Many organisations—for example, community councils in Scotland—meet on a monthly cycle, and it was often just pure luck as to whether the community council was meeting at a time that would allow it to put in objections. Therefore, the Government’s proposals in the Bill for a period of three months are very important. That will allow plenty of time for local debate. Twenty-eight days does not allow proper time for local debate, because by the time that a local newspaper has carried the detail of the proposal, a week of the 28 days will often be gone, and by the time that people get together and hold meetings, the whole of the 28 days will often be gone. The Government’s proposal for three months but without a public inquiry will be an improvement, because it will allow local debate. Although there might not be face-to-face debates at a public inquiry, there will be local debates through the local press over a three-month period. That will allow many more people to participate than would be the case at a public inquiry. Ordinary people will not take several days off work to turn up to public inquiries, whereas they can engage in debate at local public meetings in the evening or in the columns of a local newspaper.
The 5% straitjacket that the Bill imposes is not an absolute principle, because there are exceptions for certain island groups and there is also a 13,000 sq km area cap. I fully support the clause in the Bill that says that Orkney and Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar should have their own constituencies. Since 1918, independent boundary commissions have always allowed individual constituencies for those island groups. It was only at the last boundary review that Orkney and Shetland was written into legislation as having its own constituency, but the Boundary Commission still decided that Na h-Eileanan an Iar should have its own constituency despite its not being written into the legislation. I am fully behind the Government on that.
[Mrs Linda Riordan in the Chair]
As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives said, however, we would like the Government to elaborate on the principles behind where the exceptions should be. We were not able to tease out from them during the debate on the Floor of the House why the two island constituencies I have mentioned were to be exceptions, but there were not to be exceptions for other islands. As my hon. Friend pointed out, part of the Isle of Wight will share a constituency with the mainland. There is also the island of Anglesey. Under the new rules, the constituency that it would be in would include part of the mainland of Wales.
While we are talking about islands, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to my constituency, which contains many islands. In fact, it contains 25 inhabited islands. Thirteen of those have a public air service or a public ferry service, or both. I visit all those islands as part of my constituency tour. I sent the Minister a copy of the itinerary for my constituency tour, pointing out to him that it takes several weeks to get round the constituency.
That factor is important. Constituents are entitled to have the opportunity to meet their Member of Parliament face to face. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives pointed out, there are electronic means of communication these days, but that is no substitute for the Member of Parliament going to individual communities in their constituency and seeing the facts on the ground—or, as my hon. Friend pointed out, at sea. It is also important that constituents be able to meet their Member of Parliament face to face in their own community. I would therefore like the Minister to elaborate on the reasons why the two island groups I have mentioned were chosen as exceptions, and not other islands.
Let me give hon. Members some statistics. As I said, my constituency contains 13 islands that can be reached only by an air or ferry service. That compares with only three in Na h-Eileanan an Iar, because of all the causeways that have been built there. That means that every island in the island group is connected to Lewis and Harris, the Uists or Barra by a fixed link. Therefore, Na h-Eileanan an Iar is in effect three islands, whereas my constituency contains 13 islands that can be reached only by air or sea. If we compare Argyll and Bute with Na h-Eileanan an Iar, we also find that Argyll and Bute has twice the land area and three times the electorate. The Boundary Commission could therefore perhaps be allowed some flexibility to take into account islands and large areas where few people live.
Elsewhere on the highland mainland, the Government have introduced the 13,000 sq km rule. It is important to note that that rule will not result in the creation of new constituencies that are more than 5% under the quota, but it will create three constituencies that are a strange shape. To get within 5% of the quota and to meet the 13,000 sq km rule, the Boundary Commission will have to create three strange constituencies, each containing part of the Greater Inverness area and a large part of the rural highlands and islands. One constituency will comprise part of Inverness, going north and west all the way to Cape Wrath. Another will contain part of Inverness and go all the way west to include the Isle of Skye. The third will contain part of Inverness and go south and east. Those three constituencies will look very strange, and there will be little shared community interest between the different communities in them. As I said, we are supposed to represent communities, but someone in a remote, rural part of north-west Sutherland and somebody in the city of Inverness have little shared community interest.
That leads me to suggest that the Government are being too formulaic in simply writing in a 13,000 sq km cap without taking into account a constituency’s size and shape. Let me give the example of my constituency. Loch Fyne, which is a long sea loch, cuts the mainland part of my constituency almost exactly in two. If some miracle happened and Loch Fyne were suddenly filled in, my constituency’s land area would increase, which would take it closer to the Government’s 13,000 sq km cap. However, it would also make the constituency easier to drive around, because I would no longer have to drive all the way up to the top of Loch Fyne and all the way back down the other side when I went from Dunoon, where I live, to the western part of my constituency.
Mr Reid
Loch Fyne is a beautiful loch with beautiful scenery, and I am certainly not advocating filling it in; I am just giving an example of how the land area would increase if the geography were different. That would take us closer to the Government’s cap, but it would also make it easier to drive across the constituency. The point I am trying to make is that land area by itself makes for too crude a formula, and the rules should take into account the constituency’s shape and the difficulties of travelling around the constituency. It is difficult to write such things into a formula, which is why we need to give the Boundary Commission a bit more flexibility than the Government propose in the Bill. Islands, peninsulas, sea lochs and so forth must also be taken into account. The House of Lords will shortly re-examine the Bill, and I hope that the Government will be amenable to accepting amendments to give the Boundary Commission a bit more flexibility.
To sum up, I am fully in favour of capping the House of Commons, but, again, there should be a bit of flexibility. I am also fully in favour of speeding up Boundary Commission proceedings. Furthermore, although it is important that constituencies have close to the same number of people in each, it is also important to have flexibility to deal with the small number of constituencies with unique geographic circumstances—rural constituencies in the highlands and islands, the Isle of Wight and Anglesey, and constituencies in Cornwall. Members from those places have come to the House to speak to Ministers and argue for a bit of flexibility. The constituencies where the Boundary Commission would exercise flexibility would be a tiny proportion of the whole. Making provision for such flexibility would improve the Bill and mean that we represented much more cohesive communities than we would under the Bill as it stands. I hope the Government will listen. We are fortunate in having a politically independent Boundary Commission, and we should trust it with a bit more discretion over constituency and community boundaries.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I had not realised, Mrs Riordan, that the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), would sit down quite so suddenly, even though you gave me a warning just before he began his speech that I would soon be called.
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I think he blames me for his not having been able in previous debates to make some of the arguments he has made today. I note from the giggling at the far end of the Chamber that that is probably the tenor of his argument. However, he has been able to discuss some of the issues today. He is right that some of them are being debated in the House of Lords at the moment. As I understand it, they have another 70 or 80 sets of amendments to deal with, and of course the process there is rather different from that in the House of Commons. Rather more time is being devoted to the Bill in the Lords, and some issues are being talked through in rather more depth. I hope that in what is sometimes a less partisan environment, some of the changes that the hon. Gentleman has advocated today will come about.
I note that the hon. Members who have spoken so far have constituencies that are called “something and something”; or rather, Cleethorpes is not really like that—the constituency is just called Cleethorpes—but I note that its Member of Parliament refers to it on his website as “Cleethorpes, Immingham, Barton and the Wold Parishes”. That just makes the point that in the historic past, when there were either county or borough Members of Parliament, everyone pretty much knew who represented them. If someone was described as the Member of Parliament for Manchester, someone who lived in Manchester knew that that was their Member of Parliament. However, through the passage of universal suffrage, the enfranchisement of women, and the steady process of changing the franchise and drawing up constituencies in the 20th century, we ended up with many constituencies that are incomprehensible to voters. One of my concerns is that the Bill now in the House of Lords will lead to a greater sense of uncertainty for voters about who their Member of Parliament is.
It is relatively easy in the Rhondda. Those who live in the Rhondda know they do, and the physical boundary is relatively well known, so people can work out quite easily that the person referred to as Member of Parliament for the Rhondda is their MP. In cities it tends to be more complicated. I suspect that things are fairly straightforward in Forest of Dean. My anxiety is that some of the provisions in the Bill will make it more difficult for voters to see such matters with clarity.
John Stevenson
I am fortunate, in that I represent the city of Carlisle, which is easy to identify, but interestingly enough, in the seat of my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), there are three district councils; one of the divisions of the county council is split between the two of us. In our experience, there does not seem to be that much of a problem in identifying which of us represents the people of the area. I question whether it is as big a problem as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) thinks it is.
Chris Bryant
I do not question the hon. Gentleman’s experience, although it is relatively new. However, things are certainly very difficult in many constituencies. I get more people thinking that they are in the Rhondda who are not than the other way round. People who live in Tonyrefail, who might one day—who knows?—be in the constituency of Greater Rhondda, but are presently in the constituency of Pontypridd, believe they live in the Rhondda. There is confusion, and my anxiety is that we should not make greater confusion for voters. Most of the time most voters do not worry about such matters. It is not the most important issue in their lives.
Andrew George
I entirely support the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. Indeed, the boundary of my constituency changed at the 2010 election and those constituents who used to live in my old constituency still contact me. Given the arrangements in the Bill, that sort of thing would happen at every election, so there would be confusion. The point really is that while the hon. Gentleman is content about representing a constituency that is wholly the Rhondda—as is the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) about representing one that is wholly Carlisle—under the Bill, at some point a line could be drawn right through the middle of either of those constituencies.
Chris Bryant
Yes. For some strange reason I seem to have been up in Oldham recently. Oldham East and Saddleworth feels as it if it has been slammed together with no consideration of what constitutes a community.
I do not want to focus too much on that issue; I really want to talk about equalisation of seats. I cannot remember which hon. Member said it, but it is absolutely right that the apparent party political advantage to the Labour party from the fact that it takes more voters to elect a Conservative MP than a Labour one is far more to do with turnout than anything else. The equalisation of seats will make barely any difference, according to calculations done by virtually every academic so far, to the partisan advantage of one political party or another. For that matter, a 5 or 10% leeway would not make a great difference, on a partisan basis, to one or other party. In Labour constituencies there have tended to be smaller majorities, but still safe seats, whereas a Conservative safe seat tends to have a very large majority, because there is a much higher turnout.
I support equalisation to an extent, and certainly as things stand the situation is not right; it is not acceptable and there should be greater equalisation. However, I worry about the Government trying to get 99% of all seats within a very tight band. That is a much tighter band than in any other country, and it is being done on the basis of registered electors, whereas most other countries use population. The hon. Member for St Ives was right when he said it would be a mistake if, because of the Bill, we ended up with—I think these were his words—“antiseptic constituencies” with permanently mobile boundaries. That would not be good for representation of views in Parliament or for ensuring that a full cross-section of British society is here. Nor would it make it easier for people to understand who represents them, and to maintain that continuity.
To give one tiny instance, if a constituent comes to a Member with a case and the Member takes it up, it might take many years, as did many of the miners’ compensation cases that I took up. Someone whose Member stops representing them because of the boundary change must start all over again, from the beginning, because the data protection people have said that MPs cannot hand the file over to another MP. [Interruption.] The Minister is saying something. I do not know whether he wants to intervene; perhaps he will respond later.
On a point of information, international comparisons are often cited regarding the need for greater equalisation. In fact, in the United States of America, if the same equation is made concerning how many voters it takes to get someone elected, Wyoming has nearly 10.5 times the representation, for population, of California. They base their arrangements not on registered or eligible voters, but on population. Sometimes it is good to equalise—but only to an extent.
It is important to recognise the distinctness of various parts of the country when we are drawing up boundaries. Some have already been mentioned. The Isle of Wight was referred to in some of the debates we had in the House of Commons. We believe that the distinctness of the Isle of Wight should be recognised in the statute, and hold a similar belief regarding Cornwall. I note that yesterday was the anniversary of the crossing of the Rubicon. I do not know whether the crossing of the Tamar is still an ambition of the Government. In one sense, Cornwall is only administratively in England. It has a distinctness that should be recognised. If there were a referendum in Cornwall on whether Cornwall should have Cornwall-only seats, there would be an overwhelming majority in favour. I hope the Government will think again on that matter.
Many of the same issues apply to Anglesey, though in that case it goes the other way in being too small, as opposed to the Isle of Wight being too large. The point was made about Argyll and Bute, and, although it did not sound like special pleading, of course it was. However, the point was well made: it is in many ways a sparser constituency than the highland seats. There is a strong argument for the distinctiveness of Argyll and Bute.
Although I understand the issues about Wales—in particular north-west Wales, where there is a high concentration of people with Welsh as their first language—a drive towards equalisation may, and in some academics’ views will, lead to no parliamentary seat having a Welsh-speaking majority. That would be a mistake in terms of how the British Parliament is viewed in Wales, and would incense a greater sense of nationalism. The Government should recognise that.
My final point on specifics that should be recognised concerns estuaries. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) referred to sea lochs, but it is important that wide estuaries such as those on the Mersey, the Humber, the Clyde, the Forth and the Thames should not be crossed when creating parliamentary constituencies. Some argue that that should apply to Welsh valleys, because of their peculiarities. It would seem odd if a small part of the top of a valley—even if there was no connecting road—was bunged into another constituency. However, I think most issues in the Welsh valleys can be addressed; there is no specific reason why not.
A 10% rather than a 5% leeway would mean there was no need to cross ward boundaries in the creation of seats. In some of the big city conurbations, that is important. There would be no need to cross county boundaries—all geographical and physical necessities that the land, or God or whoever has given us could be met, and there would be no dramatic harm to the representativeness that the Government seek to achieve in aiming for equalisation. I hope that, in striving towards their measures, the Government will look again at whether 10% might not be a better leeway than 5%.
I want briefly to say a couple of words about the number of seats in Parliament. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute said that the number has always crept up, except when the Irish Free State was created and we cut the numbers. However, the measure we should think about first is the nature of the job of a Member of Parliament. International comparisons were made by the hon. Member for St Ives. However, to compare the UK with Spain, France or Germany—where Governments are not constituted in the same way—is to compare apples with pears and is therefore mistaken. Similarly, the powers held by parliamentarians in those countries are very different. In France, much more is devolved and done by councillors. We have far fewer councillors—one for every 3,000 voters, whereas in France it is one for every 110. Those comparisons do not bear examination.
As MPs, we create the Government; we are the electoral college, as it were, for the Prime Minister and the whole of the Government. All Ministers have to come out of Parliament, because the amendment in the 1689 Bill of Rights was lost. Dramatic cuts in the number of MPs would be a mistake. The number of constituents has grown and grown over the years, as has the amount of casework we are expected to do.
I have two final points. I wonder how the AV Bill—I cannot remember what it is called—
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.
Chris Bryant
From a sedentary position, the Minister has helped me out. I wonder how the Bill is doing in the House of Lords. As I understand it, the Bill has to be out of the House of Lords in February in order to have the referendum in May. With another 70, 80, 90 sets of amendments, I wonder whether it is now possible for the Bill to have the two weeks between Committee and Report stages in the House of Lords, and come back to the House of Commons. I urge the Minister—indeed, I make him an offer: if he splits the two elements of the Bill, as we urged in the beginning, we could help him get his AV referendum in time for May.
House of Lords reform has been briefly mentioned by several Members. When are we going to have that Bill? It was originally going to be before Christmas, then at the beginning of the year, then in January. We hear rumours of March, April and May. When will we get the Bill?
European Council
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your leniency. No European statement would be complete without a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash). He may have a good point. Article 122 of the treaty refers to help in the case of natural disasters and other emergencies. There are some people who question whether it should have been used in this way to support eurozone countries.
That argument was had and was conceded under the previous Government in two ways. First, they agreed the establishment of the mechanism. Secondly, if we go back to the Nice treaty, it was the then Europe Minister, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is in his place, who argued from the Dispatch Box that it was perfectly okay for article 122 to go to qualified majority voting, which is where we are today. So in two ways the previous Government made a bad mistake. As I say, we are clearing up the mess and we will certainly do that from 2013, but the mechanism remains in place till then.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Was there any discussion at the Council of the case of Sergei Magnitsky, who was working on behalf of a British investment firm in Russia and was tortured and murdered a little over a year ago? I am sure the Prime Minister is aware that there was a vote in the European Parliament last week, supported by MEPs from all parties in this House, to say that those who took part in his murder, who have not faced any criminal prosecution at all, and those whose corruption he unveiled should be banned from the European Union, and that Senator McCain in the United States of America is supporting a similar ban. Will he support a ban?
The Prime Minister
The Government continue to raise all these cases and issues around them with the Russian authorities. Our embassy in Moscow is closely watching developments in the cases of Mr Khordorkovsky and Mr Lebedev, and we remain very concerned about Mr Magnitsky’s case, as raised by the hon. Gentleman. We await with interest the conclusion of the official investigation into the case, which was announced by President Medvedev in November 2009.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I am not relying on it for the passage of the Bill. I was referring to the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, who last week, on behalf of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, raised some potential scenarios with which she was uncomfortable. I believe, and the Government believe, that those scenarios are indeed, as my hon. Friend says, theoretical, and extremely unlikely to happen. My point is that if a Prime Minister behaved unconstitutionally in such a theoretical and extremely unlikely way, a mechanism that already exists would be invoked. However, the Government contend—and I agree with my hon. Friend on this—that both sets of circumstances are highly unlikely. It is our contention that the eventuality to which my hon. Friend has referred would not be necessary, because a Prime Minister would not behave in a way that stretched constitutional convention to breaking point.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I must say that this is the second very worrying route the Minister has gone down. He is saying that if the Prime Minister were to behave unconstitutionally, the monarch would act. How would the monarch know whether the Prime Minister had acted constitutionally or unconstitutionally?
Mr Harper
I am not setting out anything that is groundbreaking; this is the position that exists now. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that there would have to be an extraordinary set of circumstances; indeed, I said as much. I did so because I was referring to a point my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest made last week in raising some concerns of the Select Committee’s concerns. My view is that those concerns are not well founded because the events they address are extremely unlikely to happen and are only really theoretical in nature, but there is a response to them if they were to happen.
Chris Bryant
Let us be absolutely clear: as I understand it, the Minister is saying that if the Prime Minister were “unconstitutionally”—to borrow the Minister’s word—to engineer a motion of no confidence in himself, for instance by tabling a motion of confidence in himself and urging his supporters to abstain, the monarch would sack him.
Mr Harper
I am not setting out particular scenarios. I was making the point that we can set out some theoretical propositions that have not happened and that we think are extremely unlikely to happen. I was simply setting out that if such a theoretical and unlikely event, to use the words of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, were to happen there is a constitutional long-stop. That was all I was saying, and I think the hon. Gentleman is making rather too much of it, as it is not a new point.
Mr Harper
The fact is that some of these things can happen under our existing constitutional position; they are not triggered by anything we are providing for in this Bill. Our flexible constitution has worked rather well over the years in dealing with events that have not been thought of in advance, and I see no reason to undertake a rather more significant constitutional rewrite.
This Bill is intended to do one specific thing, which is remove from the Prime Minister the power to seek a Dissolution of Parliament. It makes the necessary changes to do that, but it does not seek to make changes that are not necessary to do that; it does not seek to go wider than achieving that particular change, and I think that is very sensible.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest also asked last week how the Bill strengthened the power of the House to throw out a Government. Giving statutory effect to the vote that could bring about a general election, rather than simply relying on the conventions, strengthens the power of the House. The Bill transfers from the Prime Minister to this House the power to decide whether there will be an early general election. If I remember rightly, my hon. Friend did, however, say that she is broadly supportive of the measures in the Bill, as, I think, is the Select Committee.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) asked a number of questions last week. He asked whether the Bill should contain a provision to ensure that a motion of no confidence is given precedence so it is debated without delay. He is aware—he mentioned this last week—that there is a convention that the Government find time to debate a motion of no confidence tabled by the official Opposition. That is a long-standing convention, which has been followed by Governments. Also of course, it would always be open to the Opposition to table an amendment to a Government motion, changing it to one of no confidence to ensure that that was debated.
The hon. Gentleman also raised a number of related points about whether particular votes could be considered motions of no confidence and whether it was appropriate for the Speaker to rule on such matters. I think I am right in saying that he was concerned that the Bill would give too much discretion to the Speaker. The Government do not consider that to be the case. We would expect the Speaker by and large to take a fairly literal approach to clause 2(2). We do not think the Speaker would be left with appreciably more discretion in dealing with this sort of question than he already has, for example under the Parliament Act 1911 when he has to certify whether a Bill is a money Bill. That is a decision he makes; it is for him. It seems to me that that is a sensible amount of discretion for the Speaker to have, although I accept it is on a different issue.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is right, of course. In fact, at present Members of the House of Lords are fiercely contesting the Speaker’s decision on whether certain Bills are money Bills. My point, however, is that all that that determines is whether or not a Bill can be debated in another Chamber, whereas under this measure it would determine whether or not we had a general election and the Government had fallen. That is a very big decision to be placing in the hands of the Speaker, which heretofore has never been in the hands of the Speaker.
Mr Harper
There are two issues there. I will not dwell on the money Bill issue to any great extent, because if I were to do so you would rule me out of order, Ms Primarolo, but I have read the account of the debate in the other place to which the hon. Gentleman refers and the other place is not challenging the Speaker’s ability to rule on whether a Bill is a money Bill. It is simply disagreeing with the consequences of that, and arguing that if something is a money Bill it is perfectly appropriate for the upper House to debate it in Committee and pass amendments to it, recognising that legally those amendments will have no effect if the House of Commons chooses not to take them into account. The upper House is therefore not challenging the Speaker’s right to make that decision.
The hon. Gentleman is also not right to say that this is about the Speaker deciding, effectively, whether to bring down the Government. That would be a decision for the House. The Speaker would have to make a decision about certifying something as a vote of confidence. As we debated last week, it would be extraordinary if the House were debating a motion of confidence—which the Speaker would certify as such—with everybody remaining in ignorance of the fact that it was a motion of no confidence in the Government. I simply do not think that would happen. Everyone would be very well aware of the fact that it was a motion of confidence—that it had that import to it. It would be for the House to vote on the matter, and the Speaker would then certify in a way that means the decision is outside the ambit of the courts.
Mr Harper
As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is away on parliamentary business and, as he has perhaps not reached 21st century methods of communication, my words are unlikely to reach him in a timely way. So I can only urge him not to press his amendment to a vote, but I suspect that the decision on that will be for others, not for him.
Chris Bryant
As it happens, I agree with the Minister on this amendment. However, the one area that it will be worth considering on Report is whether it would be sensible to have a motion of confidence on the forming of a new Government after a general election, which should be treated in a slightly different way. Such an approach would address the 1924 situation that he suggests.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, which has been raised by others. I believe I am right in saying that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, has said he is keen on the idea of installing Prime Ministers with an explicit vote in the House—he was speaking for himself there, not for the Committee. That would be a further change to our system and, as I said in answer to the hon. Member for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby), we have made the necessary changes in the law to take away the Prime Minister’s right to call an early general election, but we have not gone further. I shall think about what the hon. Member for Rhondda said and see whether we think it has merit.
The hon. Gentleman’s amendment 22 seeks to replace the 14 days that we set out in the Bill for that Government formation period with a period of 10 working days. He is supportive of a Government formation period, because he would not be attempting to keep one through this amendment were he not. I think he was wanting to understand why we chose the period that we did, using calendar days rather than working days. The reason why we did so was because the calendar day period is fixed and certain, whereas working days are not, as they are dependent on things such as bank holidays.
Two legitimate concerns are involved here, and they were touched on last week. There is a concern that the number of business days in the 14-day period would be curtailed or that the date of the no confidence vote could mean that the date for the Government formation vote fell on a non-working day. Our view—I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s—is that discussions on Government formation would not stop on weekends and bank holidays; I suspect that they would continue, given that having a Government is probably the most important thing for the country.
There are two ways around a scenario where the vital 14th day when the vote of confidence is due falls on a day when the House would conventionally not be sitting. The first is to arrange that the no confidence motion be taken on a day that means that the House will be sitting 14 days later. The alternative is for the House simply to sit on what would traditionally have been a non-sitting day. There is nothing to prevent the House from sitting, if it chooses to do so, on a bank holiday, a Saturday or a Sunday. Non-working days are not days when the House cannot sit, even though it does not do so. There are precedents for the House sitting on such days when emergencies have happened. I believe I am right in saying that the House was recalled to sit on a Saturday when the Falkland Islands were invaded by the Argentines. Holding a vote on whether a new Government did or did not have the confidence of the House would be sufficiently important that it would be in order for the House to sit that day, even if it was not a conventional day.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is right in relation to the Falkland Islands, and I believe that the House has also sat on a Sunday on the demise of the monarch. That is precisely why we did not specify “sitting days” in this amendment; we used the term “working days” because that is the language used throughout the rest of the Bill. We sought to provide a degree of flexibility; otherwise, over Easter, when there are bank holidays on the Friday and the following Monday, there might be a sustained period when the House would find it inconceivable to sit but the Government might, none the less, want to be able to do their business.
Mr Harper
For the purposes of this particular set of motions, the only business that we would be talking about the House undertaking would be holding a vote on whether or not a new Government who had been formed had the confidence of the House. Given the things that the Government are responsible for, it would be important to have a clear Government in place for the financial markets and at difficult times. We know from experience and we can see it from what happens in other countries. Therefore, the Government formation negotiations would want to be concluded and it would benefit the country, the Government and the House for the House to vote on that without inordinate delay. If there were a number of bank holidays or other holidays in the way, that could be dealt with. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman asks about Good Friday. As I have said, the alternative is that we could arrange things by moving the no confidence vote so that it was 14 days before a sitting day.
Conventionally, no confidence motions are given time in the House very soon after they are tabled, but as long as the Government were prepared to table such a motion very soon and agreed that with the Opposition, it would not necessarily have to be tabled the next day. I do not think that it is an inordinate problem. We think that it is sensible for there to be a fixed timetable for a Government to be formed so that everyone has some certainty. That is why we picked the time period that we have.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest spoke in support of amendments 36 and 37, which are also tabled in the names of other members of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform. Amendment 36 would make the 14 days in a period following a Government defeat a period that would not include periods of Prorogation or Adjournment for more than four days. Although I do not think that this is the intention behind the amendment, its effect would be to permit the 14-day period for Government formation to be prolonged potentially indefinitely if the House was prorogued or adjourned. The Government do not think that that is appropriate. We think that the 14-day period strikes the right balance between giving parties in this House time to discuss and see whether a Government can be formed and not allowing things to go on for so long that the country is plunged into a period of uncertainty. We do not think that amendment 36 is acceptable.
Amendment 37 provides that a Prime Minister must resign within seven calendar days of losing a vote of no confidence and recommend to the monarch a successor who appears to them to be the person most likely to be able to command the confidence of the House. I think I am right to say—my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest will correct me if I am wrong—that the purpose of the amendment is to avoid a situation in which a Prime Minister who has lost a no confidence vote wishes to remain in power and asks the monarch to prorogue Parliament to avoid an alternative Government receiving a vote of confidence, thereby forcing a general election.
Mr Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, to which I shall return. The entire Bill could be dealt with through Standing Orders. The only reason we have a Bill is either that a Bill is favoured by those who want to move towards a written constitution—I do not remember that being in anybody’s manifesto—
Mr Jenkin
There we are. Perhaps that is why the Opposition support the Bill. We have just had a Division in which 400 right hon. and hon. Members were in the No Lobby and only a handful of us in the Aye Lobby. That underlines the curious consensus in favour of certain principles of the Bill. I do not think either of the elected parties in the coalition was in favour of a written constitution—[Interruption.] That is two parties, but the one that won the election certainly did not—
Chris Bryant
To clarify, I think the Liberal Democrats were in favour of a written constitution, and we were in favour of looking at a written constitution.
Mr Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The amendment, as drafted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, deals with only one aspect of the matter, and, given our limited time to scrutinise this enormously important Bill, I explicitly invite the other place to look carefully at all the aspects and the advice of the Clerk. One of its own Committees is considering the matter and might well come up with different conclusions from those of the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. The Lords sorted out the IPSA Bill, under which they kept our proceedings immune from the courts, and I very much hope that they will do the same with this Bill.
My concluding point is a general one about the Bill but is relevant to the amendment. I do not think that I can recall a major constitutional measure that was so closely associated with the survival of one Administration. We have to pinch ourselves when we think of what we are doing in reality: we are completely changing our constitutional settlement at the behest of a coalition, so that it can remain in power for five years. I do not even think that that is ethical. Parliament’s immunity is basically being screwed up, and, although a Bill can at least be repealed, once the courts have been allowed into our proceedings, we will never get them out again without a major break in the constitution such as in 1689.
All that can be forestalled if the Minister simply says, “These matters cannot be resolved today,” because they cannot be resolved on the basis of parliamentary counsel’s advice to Ministers about the drafting of Bills. We need the other place to give the highest and most independent legal advice to ensure that we do not inadvertently bring about what the Government themselves do not want to see.
Chris Bryant
Many thanks are due to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who has done us a great favour by pointing out some of the problems in this small aspect of the legislation. He is absolutely right to say that large parts of the Bill exist only for the preservation of a single Administration. I do not know the appropriate Latin equivalent of ad hominem legislation, but this is “ad administrationem” legislation, which is why some provisions will not stand the test of time. The best that we can do is try to ensure that the elements of real peril are tidied up.
The hon. Gentleman was right in several regards, but not in one. He talked about the IPSA Bill having been miraculously improved in the other place, but none of us really thinks that we ended up with a perfect situation or that nirvana arrived by virtue of that Bill. However, on the Bill before us—I suspect this would also apply to the other constitutional Bill that we recently scrutinised—he is right that if there were a free vote, none of the legislation would go through at all.
Mr Jenkin
If the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill had been separate Bills, I do not think that either would have gone through.
On the IPSA Bill, at one stage there was a proposal to allow IPSA to adjudicate on and punish Members for breaching the rules. That would have driven a coach and horses through our traditional immunities under the Bill of Rights, but it was removed in the other place.
Chris Bryant
Indeed. As the hon. Gentleman said earlier, a privileges Act will be needed at some point, and I hope that the Government turn to such legislation. I realise that there are problems with any written or “codified”—to use the Minister’s term—constitution, because one risks making it justiciable and must then decide what will be the justice that oversees it. Will it be a supreme court or a constitutional court, such as many other countries have? That is a debate for another day, however.
Mr Shepherd
I am a little puzzled as to why the hon. Gentleman comes to the conclusion that this needs to be codified in any way. Our history demonstrates quite openly that this House comes to such a resolution by the processes of the House. When Mr Chamberlain won the famous Norway debate, he recognised that there was no confidence in him personally. These matters are eventually decided by the House and by the judgment of individuals. Surely that is the better way of doing it.
Chris Bryant
In a sense, that is an argument against the whole Bill which I understand. I know that the hon. Gentleman is not saying that this is a conspiracy, but I think that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex feels that a bit of a cosy consensus has developed around the fact that there should be a codification of fixed-term Parliaments. We agree with that codification. However, once one starts to codify one element, one has to codify rather a lot of them. That is why I have wanted to codify what counts as a motion of no confidence and what should be a motion of confidence. Perhaps we should have tried to codify it in a slightly different way so that, for instance, a motion to amend the Loyal Address could also be considered as such, as in 1924.
Mr Jenkin
What the hon. Gentleman is suggesting might well be sensible in one respect, but I fear that it will not prevent the courts from having a go at this. Indeed, if what constitutes a motion of confidence is codified in our Standing Orders, the courts will then be interpreting whether our Standing Orders reflect what could be regarded as such. If he wants clarity and is seeking to provide a better definition, this has to be put into the legislation. Of course, that reflects the point that we are tempting the courts to interfere in the proceedings of this House.
Chris Bryant
That is an interesting point. The Bill of Rights refers, I think in section 9, to the fact that proceedings in Parliament shall not be touched by any other court. The moot point then is what constitutes a proceeding in Parliament. There have been many discussions about this over the past couple of years, not least in relation to the arrest of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex is right in one sense. However, I have presumed—this is the advice that I had when I sat on the Government Benches as Deputy Leader of the House—that parliamentary privilege covers proceedings in Parliament and the whole of the Standing Orders of this House, because that how this House chooses to proceed. I think that there is greater security in the Standing Orders of the House.
Another issue is how we ensure that the Speaker is not dragged into a partisan contest, particularly at a moment of great political drama. As I said in an earlier debate, my concern is that if it is left for the Speaker to have to determine all these elements, the Speaker’s impartiality is compromised.
Another strange element of the Bill is the provision that says that before the Speaker issues his certificate, he shall consult the Deputy Speakers. That mirrors the provision in the 1911 Act whereby the Speaker, before issuing his certificate on a money Bill, has to consult two members of the Panel of Chairs. What happens if all the Deputy Speakers disagree with issuing the certificate? Why should the Speaker have to consult? One presumes that it is simply a matter of fact, although I suppose we all know that facts are rarely clearly delineated and are rather more subjective than most people would want to admit. The point is, however, that this puts the Speaker and potentially the House in peril, because people may want to contest any one of the various elements of the Speaker’s decision. One of the matters that would almost certainly arise if there were any contest as to whether the certificate was being rightly issued is what the Deputy Speakers had said. That is an unfortunate direction for us to take.
We have tabled an amendment, on which I hope to divide the Committee, on the timing of when the Speaker issues the certificate. At the moment, the Bill makes no provision whatsoever on when the Speaker’s certificate should be issued. One therefore presumes that it could be a month, two months or several months after the passage of two weeks. Let us say, for instance, that after a motion of no confidence has been carried, the Government try to reform themselves with a different concatenation of political parties and do not manage to secure a new motion of confidence, but there are still patently ongoing negotiations that are nearing their closing phase. Would it then be all right for the Speaker not to issue a certificate at that point but to wait until such time that another Government had been formed? The difficulty is that if the Speaker chose not to do so, who is to gainsay the Speaker? There is no provision in the Bill for what would happen if the Speaker has not done what the Bill requires.
For all those reasons, I believe that this element of the Bill is flawed. I also believe that certain elements should not be in statute but should be in Standing Orders in order to provide greater certainty for the House by taking them within the concept of proceedings of this House. Above all, I want to ensure that there is no uncertainty about the specific provision as to when the Speaker has to act and when the Speaker may act.
Jesse Norman
I wish to speak in favour of the amendment. First, may I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour the Minister on the very calm and effective way in which he has steered this legislation through the House?
None the less, it seems to me that a basic issue with the legislation remains unresolved. It has been described in this House as a matter of parliamentary privilege, but in fact it concerns the fundamental principle of parliamentary sovereignty. One thinks of the magisterial words of A.V. Dicey:
“The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely that Parliament thus defined”—
by which he means the King or Queen in Parliament, rather than just Parliament itself—
“has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever: and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.”
That is the cardinal principle at issue today. It is worth saying that our parliamentary sovereignty remains intact in principle. It remains open to this House to repeal, if it so wished, the Act of Settlement 1701 by simple majority. The sovereignty of Parliament can thus be deliberately limited in its effects by this House—for example, by treaty—but it should not be limited by accident, by inadvertence or by over-confidence. There is a risk—a small risk—that this will happen under these provisions.
The Clerk of the House has advised in writing and in testimony that to include parliamentary voting procedure in statute would risk judicial scrutiny of the proceedings of this House, and possible legal challenge. It is important to note that this is not merely the view of the Clerk of the House, but also the view of Speaker’s Counsel, and it has legal authority behind it. That is simply because the functions described under the clause are statutory functions, and it would therefore be for the courts to determine whether those functions are lawfully exercised. That is, of course, advice rendered to the House, not to the Government.
Jesse Norman
No. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I do not propose to sing, but I am pleased to report that I have managed to overcome the quadruple handicaps of being tall, white, English and male.
Mark Durkan
I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, and that was why I indicated my support for earlier amendments that would have narrowed the ambiguity and reduced the possibility of political and procedural chicanery, with which the Bill is riddled.
Chris Bryant
Will my hon. Friend point out to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) that there is a picture of the heffalump in several of A. A. Milne’s books?
Mr Cox
No, I do not think that. Intense pressure is precisely what an independent judiciary is set up to resist. One would expect and hope for that from a senior judge. We are fortunate in the judiciary we have in this country. I hope that hon. Members will reflect carefully on some of the language that we have used in this debate today. It is not the case that the judiciary have an appetite to assume the powers of this House. Indeed, in my experience the preponderance in the judiciary is to be careful and scrupulous in the way they observe the parameters of judicial power.
The problem is—if I can extend this parenthesis as briefly as I may—that we have invited the judiciary into the territory time after time, since the European Communities Act 1972, which fundamentally altered the constitutional arrangements in this country. It essentially meant that there was a higher constitutional court, namely the European Court of Justice—we already have it—which presupposes and believes it is capable of trumping domestic law. That ultimately led to a decision in a case called Factortame, in which an Act of Parliament was set aside by the House of Lords, on the basis of the seniority—or superiority—of the European Union’s law. Then we had the Human Rights Act 1998, which preserves—or attempts to preserve—a careful balance. Nevertheless, it invites the courts into consideration of the policies and legislative objectives—almost on the basis of their merits—that this House has always considered to be its prerogative and to fall within its exclusive sphere. The courts are careful, but they themselves acknowledge that the Human Rights Act has invited them further into that territory.
Chris Bryant
The hon. and learned Gentleman is making an important contribution, and he is right about the reluctance of the courts, for the most part, to intervene and tread on our toes, as it were. However, the truth is that those elements of parliamentary privilege that attach because of not wishing to interfere with proceedings in Parliament get very fuzzy at the edges. Indeed, there are areas where others want the courts to express a view. My anxiety is not that there would be a challenge when the Speaker had issued a certificate, but that a challenge would be far more likely when the Speaker had decided not to do so.
Mr Cox
I have heard that observation made, and I hope that the Minister will be able to address it. I do not feel quite as concerned as hon. Members who have expressed their views on that point, and I will say why. A court would very soon see through an argument that went: “The Speaker has not issued a certificate in circumstances where we”—the party bringing the application to the court—“think he should have done.” The reason is that if a certificate is conclusive for all purposes, so must the absence of a certificate be. I do not believe for a moment that a court would see the matter any other way when the Speaker had chosen not to make a certificate. Otherwise, we would have to have a provision in the Bill saying that if the Speaker chooses not to certify, that should not be challenged either. It must be implied that if a Speaker made a deliberate and conscious choice not to certify, the absence of the certificate—that choice—must equally be conclusive, and I think that most courts would see it that way. One could argue that that should be explicit in the Bill, but for my purposes, I would not have thought a court would find impressive an argument that said that a Speaker who decided not to certify could be judicially reviewed, whereas if he had certified—let us say, in the negative—he could not be. That would be pointless.
Mr Cox
What is the point of a certificate? It is not going to be challenged in a court, because the Government and this House will instruct the courts not to look at it. The point of the certificate is merely to express in writing the Speaker’s view that something had been a motion of confidence. If he does not issue a certificate, it is plainly the case that he has reached the view that it is not a motion of confidence. However, it is highly unlikely that the mere fact that a Speaker had produced that view but not committed it to a piece of paper would induce the courts to enter that territory and issue what used to be called a writ of mandamus—it is now called a mandatory order—to force him to do so. I find that improbable and implausible. I hope that the Minister will draw some comfort from that, but he should not draw complete comfort from it, because the mere fact that we are considering whether the courts would or would not be able to enter this territory will induce litigants, lobby groups and political groups to bring these very applications before the courts to test out the territory. It will not be long before the courts start to consider the extent to which the Bill allows them in, and the extent to which it does not. That is where the hon. Gentleman of whose constituency I am shamefully ignorant—
Mr Cox
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) quoted the recent judgment of Lord Phillips, and that is important because Lord Phillips made it plain that the courts will reserve the power to define the parameters of parliamentary prerogative and privilege. If the Bill remains enacted in the law of this country for a long period, which I rather doubt, there will inevitably be a point at which the courts are invited in and at which they will start to examine the extent to which they can and cannot become involved. Their view might not entirely coincide with that of the Government. For example, the question of whether a certificate is valid might arise. The Bill states:
“A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes.”
A court might well feel entitled to consider whether, as a matter of law, it is in fact a certificate. In the past, that is the way in which ouster clauses have been outflanked.
I am asking the Minister to consider this matter, and I am asking from the heart. I have noticed that, from time to time, he has found many of the interventions by Members not altogether to his taste. Perhaps the smile of the Cheshire cat is always seated on his face during these debates simply because of his serene command of his brief and his sublime confidence in the merits of this legislation. However, I ask him to address the consciences of many of the Members on his own side who have deep and sincere concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) is among them, and when he rises to speak on matters of the constitution, he must always be listened to with respect. He may not be a lawyer but, by Jove, his instincts on the constitution are proud and honoured by a long tradition in this House. I pay tribute to him for standing up with such integrity and for such a long time for the traditional view of the constitution in this House. It is not a bad thing to stand up for tradition. It is not wrong to honour the way in which our forefathers constructed the constitution, the wisdom of it and the value that it has conveyed down the ages to the inhabitants of this country.
Will the Minister address this matter? I hope that I have expressed myself modestly by saying that I do not endorse or adopt many of the more exaggerated flights of fantasy that have occasionally been bandied about the Floor of the House. However, it surely cannot be denied that there is some risk and some legitimate cause for concern, when this matter seems to prey on the minds and the consciences of so many Members of this House who are motivated by entirely sincere reasons, rather than merely by the need to hear the sound of their own voice. I ask the Minister to address those concerns with the sincerity with which they have been expressed.
Mr Harper
I think we have touched on that before. Once the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, it cannot be changed purely by a majority vote in the House of Commons. The decision would have to be made by Parliament, which would also engage the other place, in which the Government do not have a majority. Even after—[Interruption.] I anticipated that reaction. Even after the appointment of the new list of working peers, the governing parties together will have only 40% of the peers in the upper House; 60% will be Labour peers, Cross Benchers or Lords Spiritual. The fact that this will be an Act of Parliament makes it impossible for a majority vote of a governing party to bring about an early general election, which is our policy objective.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is right in saying that the main difference is that the matter would have to be dealt with in the second Chamber. As I understand it, however, the coalition agreement states clearly that the Government’s aspiration is to create enough peers to meet the proportions formed by each of the parties in the general election. That would provide a majority of 56%—quite apart from the fact that, as far as I can see, virtually every remaining Liberal Democrat Member in the country will be a member of the Second Chamber.
Mr Harper
I will not dwell on this issue at length, Mr Evans, because if I did so you would rule me out of order, but the coalition agreement does not say that. It says that we want to make the upper House more representative of the result in the general election, not exactly in line with it. The hon. Gentleman simply is not right.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) quoted from a judgment. I will not be drawn into the specifics of the Chaytor case—although the Supreme Court has given its judgment, there are ongoing criminal trials—but the flaw in the hon. Gentleman’s argument lies in the fact that the case concerns the administration of the expenses scheme. The House of Commons has never asserted exclusive cognisance of the expenses scheme. It has never said that the scheme, its administration and the matters that flow from it are parliamentary proceedings, which is why that is not a good example. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s judgment recognises the exclusive right of each House of Parliament to manage its own affairs without interference from the other, or from outside Parliament.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) quoted the views of the Clerk of the House. If the Government were alone in their view and the Clerk’s views were shared by everyone else, my hon. Friend would have a stronger case. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and the Lords Constitution Committee have taken a great deal of evidence, and the weight of independent expert evidence has supported the Government’s view. For example, Professor Robert Blackburn of King’s college London said—and I think that this is in line with the comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon—
“In my view, the government's Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill has been technically well-drafted by the Cabinet Office’s parliamentary counsel, particularly in avoiding judicial review of its provisions on early elections by way of Speaker’s certificates”.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, said:
“In the very limited time that we had to look at this matter, the Clerk was the only person to raise this question, and the academics who have been referred to—Professor Hazell, Professor Blackburn and others—completely disagreed with the view put forward by the Clerk.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 632-3.]
Mr Harper
I am prepared to accept that consideration of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has been proceeding faster than consideration of this Bill, but I cannot accept that this Bill is being considered at a great pace. It was published five months ago, we have reached only the third day of the Committee stage, and the Report stage is still to come. I believe that we have been proceeding at a sensible pace. Indeed, today’s proceedings were added when the Government realised that Members wished to engage in the debate at greater length.
Chris Bryant
The Minister seems to suggest that all the evidence apart from that of the Clerk of the House falls into the other camp. The Committee listened to the various witnesses and reached a rather different conclusion—that the purpose of the Bill needed to be achieved without the courts being invited to question aspects of the House’s own procedures or the actions of the Speaker—and urged us to move in a rather different direction from the one advocated by the Government.
Mr Harper
The Committee was quite right. I agree that we need to ensure that the courts do not question those matters. In a moment I will deal with the amendments and the Government’s reason for believing that the language we have used about the well-precedented use of Speaker’s certificates prevents the courts from questioning the Act.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex observed that judges were not more interventionist. I believe there is evidence that there has been more judicial activism in judicial reviews of Executive decisions, but as far as I am aware there is no evidence that the courts have become more interventionist in challenging parliamentary proceedings. Executive decisions and decisions of Parliament are quite different from each other. Although the Supreme Court has a new name, it has no greater powers than the judicial Committee of the House of Lords that it replaced. I do not think that my hon. Friend’s concerns are well judged.
My hon. Friend also referred to the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The European Court of Justice can deal with matters related to European Union law; nothing in the Bill would engage it. Similarly, the functions of the Speaker under the Bill do not engage any of the rights conferred by the European Court of Human Rights. I think it was only last week that the Joint Committee on Human Rights agreed with that when it said that the Bill’s provisions did not need to be brought to the attention of either House on human rights grounds.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—who is not in the Chamber, as he has had to fulfil a long-standing and important engagement to attend a meeting elsewhere in the House—expressed concern about the European Court of Human Rights. In fact, it has shown the utmost respect for parliamentary privilege. In a 2003 case, A. v. United Kingdom, it was specifically held that article 9 of the Bill of Rights did not violate the convention by preventing an applicant from taking defamation proceedings against an MP for words said in parliamentary proceedings. The European Court of Human Rights strongly supported the contention that courts would not become involved in these matters.
I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, who said that owing to the very nature of these events—the fact that they would be politically highly charged—judges would not be keen to rush in and engage in questions that are rightly to be resolved by political rather than legal means. I have heard no evidence, apart from assertion, that courts would do anything different.
Chris Bryant
Sorry, but the Minister is using the phrase “proceedings in Parliament” as though it were a self-evidently clear concept, but a great deal of legislation and case law has analysed various different aspects of it and it is nowhere near as clear as he might presume.
Mr Harper
No, and that leads to where I was going, which was to turn to amendment 6 and to explain why we are using the language of the device of a Speaker’s certificate. There are precedents that have stood the test of time, which is why Professor Blackburn expressed the feeling in the quotation I read that parliamentary counsel had drafted the Bill well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) tabled amendment 6 and my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex spoke to it. I can see why they would want to use the wording in the Parliament Act 1911, but the Bill says the Speaker’s certificate is “conclusive for all purposes” and the Government do not think inserting the words
“shall not be…questioned in any court of law”
adds anything. The 1911 wording has, indeed, stood the test of time, but it used the language of the early 20th century. Later legislation used different wording. The House of Lords Act 1999 used exactly the wording we have used, which provides that certificates of the Clerk of the Parliaments on questions of whether an hereditary peer is one of the excepted 92 hereditary peers are conclusive. The provisions have worked well in practice, whereas wording consistent with the Parliament Act 1911 could bring into question whether protections in more recent Acts were meant to be an inferior sort of protection. We think that would be undesirable.
Provided certificates are conclusive for all purposes, it is perfectly adequate to show that it is for the Speaker to decide whether the conditions for an early election have been satisfied, not for the courts or the Executive. The effect and the intention of the drafting are perfectly clear. Although the additional words in amendment 6 might appear attractive, they would not add anything to the protection in the Bill. There is no evidence or reason to think the courts would want to trespass on what would effectively be highly politicised issues or that they would not continue to regard matters relating to the internal operation of the House as “proceedings in Parliament”.
I should also like to deal with the wording in amendment 6 that seeks to prevent a Speaker’s certificate issued under clause 2 from being “presented” to a court. I can see why my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is trying to do that, but it seems to me that that takes a step backwards. Being able to present the certificate to the court is the simplest and easiest way of informing the court that the conditions for an early election exist and the Speaker has made the decision. That stops the court being tempted to dwell on proceedings in Parliament; it has a clear piece of paper that explains that the Speaker has made that determination and the court need go no further.