Principles of Democracy and the Rights of the Electorate

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I will take a couple more interventions, but then I really must make some progress. I will give way to the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer).

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister. He is absolutely right: all the political parties have, at one time or another, made a commitment to a referendum. In their 2010 manifestos, the three major parties gave a commitment to hold a referendum on what became the Lisbon treaty, better known as the European constitution, although unfortunately the majority of MPs did not comply with those manifesto commitments. Does the Minister agree, however, that the parties that support a referendum, either in the House or in their manifestos, should accept the result when they lose?

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman has made an excellent point. As I was about to say, I supported remain during the referendum campaign, but from the early hours of the morning, when we received the result, I was completely clear about the fact that my job, as a Member of Parliament, and the job of the Government was to deliver on it, and that is exactly what we should be doing.

Prorogation of Parliament

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

I agree with the hon. Lady that this is a political crisis. It is grinding the country to a halt—certainly, to boredom. There is one way to sort it out. We can sit here contemplating our navels, or we can go out and speak to the people. We can have a general election, in which we can discuss Brexit and engage 70 million people, not just 650. To me, that is democracy in action.

Some hon. Members might say, “Let’s have a second referendum.” There are clearly issues with that. It took nine months to get the first one through this place and to hold it, and we would also have to decide on the question, and the electorate. Those issues, which would be hotly debated in this place, would have to be decided before we could even get to the referendum. People may say that the current situation creates uncertainty, but that option would perpetuate uncertainty. To those people who say, “The EU referendum caused division,” I say: why have another one?

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

A new argument has come forward. A number of parties have said that if there is a second referendum, they will honour the result only if people vote in a particular way. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that would completely undermine that referendum, and all future referendums?

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman has argued passionately in this place alongside me against a second referendum. I agree with everything he said, including about the referendum result being undermined.

I mentioned #StopTheCoup, and how bad a coup the Prorogation of Parliament would be. Instead, parliamentary games are being played by those on the other side of the argument. Parliament took control, and took parliamentary time away from the Government to pass the Benn Bill, which passed due to an amendment that was granted by the Speaker, who was frankly making it up as he went along. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has told me that even he did not expect the amendment to be made that allowed him to lay the path for Parliament to take the business away from the Government.

UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

In following the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), may I tell him that the people of the United Kingdom will not be kept in the European Union against their will? I hope that he will support and respect that.

In June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom demonstrated our collective common sense and self-confidence by voting to take back control of our national destiny and to reassert our parliamentary sovereignty. The people’s vision expressed in the referendum result was that of a strong United Kingdom, holding its head high, free from the shackles of the European Union, while promoting international free trade as the key to future national prosperity and the best antidote to global poverty.

We should be expecting to leave the EU in 15 days and there should be an air of excitement about all this, but I detect a certain gloom, because today Parliament is being asked to endorse what is no less than an act of national humiliation—to renege on the decision it took two years ago triggering article 50 and to repeal or amend the Act it passed last year to leave the European Union on 29 March. By dishonouring the decision on article 50 and the result of the referendum, the Government motion before us is a gross betrayal.

As a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee, I have witnessed at first hand on our visits to Brussels the extent to which the Government are now a laughing stock. The most serious criticism of the UK is focused on our Prime Minister for signing up to a deal that she has subsequently disowned. They see that in Brussels as an act of bad faith, which is one reason why they have refused to make changes to the withdrawal agreement.

My amendment (g) is on the Order Paper. It has not been selected for debate, but had it been, it would have allowed the Government to seek to agree with the European Union an extension of the period specified in article 50(3) until 22 May, for the specific purpose of replacing the United Kingdom negotiating team. We need to replace our current team because it has gone back on so many of its promises to Parliament and to the people. The only way to regain self-respect is to have a fresh team of negotiators. I include among that team its head—none other than the Prime Minister.

Two years ago the House endorsed the Prime Minister’s negotiating approach as set out in the Lancaster House speech. The Prime Minister contemplated a scenario of the European Union imposing a punishment deal on us. That is why at the time she waxed eloquent about the benefits of no deal over a bad deal, which included delivering our freedom to negotiate trade deals and, ultimately, enabling us to set out our own economic model to deliver prosperity and growth.

The Prime Minister promised that the divorce settlement and the future relationship would be negotiated alongside each other, that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed, and, on the substance, that we would leave the single market, the customs union and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. None of that is guaranteed in her deal. For all her protestations, the Prime Minister’s deal does not meet her own criteria, and her negotiations have sadly resulted in the punishment deal that she feared. Her insistence that her deal is a good deal is not accepted by the House; indeed, the House has overwhelmingly rejected it on two occasions. But instead of accepting the verdict of the House, she is stubbornly continuing to assert that her deal is a good deal, and now she is holding a pistol to our heads by threatening that we will lose Brexit altogether. It is intolerable that the Prime Minister is asking those of us who oppose her deal to tear up our manifesto commitments, and to break our word to our constituents and electors.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis that the Prime Minister’s negotiating position and skills have been pathetic. If the Opposition table a motion of no confidence, will the hon. Gentleman vote for it, because it is the logic of his position?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Frankly, I would seriously consider that issue. I expressed no confidence in the Prime Minister when we had a vote within our own parliamentary party and my considered opinion now is that, were a similar vote to be held, there would be an overwhelming vote against the Prime Minister and an expression of no confidence in her. One then thinks about the logical extension of that. I am not going to make any promises to the hon. Gentleman now, but obviously it would need the Leader of the Opposition to initiate such a move. I think that Government Members who felt that they were being betrayed would then actually look at the implications flowing from that.

Obtaining a parliamentary majority for the Prime Minister’s deal is now beyond reach. It is pure fantasy to think otherwise. The Prime Minister’s deal does not even satisfy the requirement, for which the Prime Minister herself voted, of replacing the backstop. Nor does it provide a legal answer to the Attorney General’s concern that the Prime Minister’s deal would leave the UK with

“no internationally lawful means of exiting the Protocol’s arrangements, save by agreement.”

Who would want to sign up to that? It means that we would have less ability to leave the agreement than we have at the moment to leave the European Union. How can the Prime Minister think that we are seriously going to support that?

Our current negotiating team no longer enjoys the trust of Parliament, the European Union or even many members of the Government, as was graphically illustrated last night. The feeling on the Conservative Benches now is really strongly against the Prime Minister and her team. She has lost control, and at this most critical moment in our modern peacetime history, we need to change the general. If we were to change Prime Minister now, there would be a case for a short extension to article 50, but in no other circumstances.

Televised Election Debates

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), I originally turned up to listen to the debate and possibly to make an intervention, but I will follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). I start with two disappointments. One is that there are not more right hon. and hon. Members present. This is an important issue; I can guarantee that every Member of Parliament has a view about how debates on television and in the media should be conducted during a general election. It is a disappointment that more people have not turned up. It is disrespectful to the 130,000 people who petitioned for the debate and it does not do justice to the importance of the issue.

My second disappointment is that the three hon. Members who spoke before me all came to the conclusion that we need a quango to regulate debates. Reluctantly, I agree with them. As we do not have a written constitution, it has the merit of being flexible; when the world changes, the processes within this place and electorally change. If people were acting with democratic spirit and good will, and as television and the media have developed, one would have expected politicians and political parties to have responded to that by enabling people to benefit from having the debate broadcast on television in their front rooms. That has not happened for the reasons stated explicitly by the hon. Member for Wellingborough. When Leaders of the Opposition are massively ahead in the opinion polls, they do not want a debate. Why would they risk hitting a banana skin? When Prime Ministers are in No. 10 and ahead in the opinion polls, they want to avoid exactly the same banana skin. Therefore, I think we need a regulatory body.

My heart sank when the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) went through the list of the great and the good who would have to serve on a quango to regulate television debates—judges and other people. Sadly, we have developed a population of quangocrats who serve on many quangos, scratch each other’s backs and move from one quango to another. That means that sometimes we do not get the breadth and the quality in those organisations that we should. I make a partisan point here, from the position I have taken on the Brexit debate. It is extraordinary that the total membership of the Electoral Commission are remainers. The difficult problem in setting up any quango is not going to the pool of people who have made themselves available to serve—often public spiritedly; I do not want to be too mean—as it is a closed group. Reluctantly, I think we have to have a body that will consider the complicated issues involved, but I hope it is not the list that was given by the able motivator of the motion, the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay.

It is important that we have televised debates or discussions set up, in whatever form, because sometimes we do not state the blindingly obvious: that debate is at the core of democracy and our society. We need to have that debate in as many forums as we can. When the BBC was the monopoly broadcaster in the 1950s, it might have been sensible to just have the debate on the BBC, but now we have a range of social media and different television broadcasters, including access to television stations from around the world, as well as traditional print media. We need to ensure that there is regulation on television, which is where most people look for discussion during a general election. The viewing figures for the debates in 2010 were immense. However much Cleggmania we had in that election—and I got worried looking at the figures because it seemed that the Lib Dems were going to get a huge number of votes in my constituency, but I went out every day and I suppose I must have knocked on a Lib Dem door, but nobody admitted to it through the whole campaign—those debates were important, as the people and leaders challenged each other, but I do not think they changed very much.

That has been the case in many elections. I remember the opinion polls ticking over on the bottom of the Sky television screen in the 1997 election, barely shifting half a point during the whole election. We live in a time where the world is changing and politics are more fluid than they have ever been. We need a response to that. It would be the difficult job of a regulatory body to balance up the major parties and who would be invited. It is said, rather glibly, that only the leaders of the parties that are likely to provide the Prime Minister should be there. If we looked at the experience in Canada, the people who were going to be Prime Minister before the election eight or nine years ago were not elected. One of the major parties got 2%. There have been major changes in European Union countries. Parties that were permanently in the ascendency, such as the Social Democrats in Sweden, are now minor parties. Sometimes these changes happen very quickly. There has never been a more intense time for debate.

It is going to be a difficult job for any regulatory body that is set up, but I think it is vital. It is not just that there are a lot of different outlets for information nowadays. We have coined the phrase “fake news” for a lot of the information that has been used in elections and referendums, because of the internet. One of the great things about a debate is the ability to challenge lies. In the old cliché, if you keep on telling lies I will keep on telling the truth. That is the purpose of debate.

People have complained about the referendum—about whether certain facts were facts—but it is the purpose of debate to expose such things. What better place than on television, with a huge audience, to get those issues out? I do not think that the 2010 election was affected by the television debates, but I believe that the 2017 election was massively affected by the debates, quite simply because the Prime Minister did not have the courage to debate. She would not put the case for the Conservative party, which went from having a large lead in the opinion polls to not being able to form a majority Government. If anyone doubts the power of the debate, I think the television companies were right to empty-seat the Prime Minister and go ahead without her. It was a bit strange, and it looked a bit strange, but it exposed the fact that the leader of one of our major parties was unprepared to get up and defend its position.

I have another example of the positive side of television debate and discussion, although not in a formal leaders’ debate. It certainly affected me when I saw how important it was. Hon. Members will remember the rise of the British National party. It did not rise to a significant extent, but it looked as if it was making progress when it was led by the bottom-feeder Nick Griffin. On the evening when he went on “Question Time” I was in someone’s front room talking about pavements and street lighting. At the end of the meeting they said to me, “Are you going to go and buy a bottle of wine?” I thought, “What do these people know about my drinking habits? That’s a bit strange,” but every single one of those people, living in terraced houses in north Manchester, was going back to watch Nick Griffin and Jack Straw, and the other party people on “Question Time”. Griffin was destroyed and the BNP fell apart. That is the power of debate, and however complicated it is to deal with parties that have significant support with no representation, and those such as the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru whose primary objective is to get out of this place, and who do not want their leader to be Prime Minister but who clearly have a significant democratic impact in the whole United Kingdom, we should do what we can to facilitate those positions.

I could go on speaking about this issue, which is an important one, on which we should be giving support. Having heard what the hon. Member for Wellingborough said, I wish him well with his Bill. It may need some tweaks. However, the whole of the House of Commons and House of Lords should get together, because when we are away from elections we all believe in debate. It is only vested interest, when we think we can grab an election without debating, that stops it happening. I did not intend to speak, but the debate is a good one, and it is a shame more people are not here. Sky is to be congratulated, as are the people who signed the petition, on stimulating the discussion.

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[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I do not see that that would be enforceable, although I take my hon. Friend’s point that it would probably be outrageous not to take part so far as electoral ambition was concerned. The point was made eloquently earlier that there is some sign that not taking part in a debate probably does not do a leader any good, but I still stick to the point that I am not clear how one would force a party leader to take part in such an event. I am not convinced that the petition is calling for something that could be delivered in reality.

Generally speaking, although I have said clearly that I welcome any moves to make the democratic process more accessible to our constituents, I am not convinced that TV debates are the way to do that. They have not historically been part of our democratic process. Other hon. Members have said this, so I will not develop the point at length unnecessarily, but only in 2010 did the first leaders’ election debates occur.

We spoke earlier about the figures and, using the wonders of new technology, I have the figures for the 2010 debates here. They are substantial viewing figures, it is true. For the first debate, hosted by ITV, 9.9 million viewers watched. The second debate, hosted by Sky News, had 4.2 million viewers and the third, hosted by my former employer the BBC, had 8.6 million. Those numbers are not insubstantial, but nor are they massive. For comparison’s sake, about two weeks ago on Christmas day, “Call the Midwife” was watched by 8.7 million people.

The broadcasters shot themselves in the foot somewhat after 2010 by trying to make the point that if we added up those three figures, a total of 22.7 million people watched the debates. That is a bit like saying that, because I am speaking in this debate in this Chamber and I also hope to speak later in a debate in the main Chamber, somehow, miraculously, there are two of me. That is not what those viewing figures show at all, and the organisation Full Fact, whose website I have just accessed, makes that point as well. It is debatable how popular the debates are and how much they are relied on by members of the public to make their decisions.

We do not have a presidential system, as has been described. People may think we have moved towards one whether we like it or not, but constitutionally the voting public do not vote for a Prime Minister.

[Graham Stringer]

National elections, certainly for the parties that fight seats across the United Kingdom, are fought on the basis of manifestos. Would the hon. Gentleman like to compare the number of people who read our manifestos with the number of people who watched the television debates? He is absolutely right that these are not presidential debates, but the leaders put forward their manifestos.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

It is true that manifestos, in my experience, will never make it to the top of the bestseller lists. However, although the hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point, there are other ways than a televised leaders’ debate in which parties and party leaders can get their messages across and sell their manifestos, which I will come on to.

My main concern about party leaders’ debates is that they have a tendency to suck the oxygen out of the rest of the campaign, as was ably mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. I take a rather old-fashioned view about this, and perhaps I am aiming for some sunlit uplands that have long since dissipated—if they ever existed in the first place—but I would quite like election campaigns to be about ideas and policies and ideologies. I do not want them to be about whether the Prime Minister was wearing kitten heels, whether the Leader of the Opposition was on the right or the left podium, what colour tie the leader of a third party might have been wearing or whether the TV host of that particular event did a good job, but that is what we will get if we have a campaign that is bookended by two election debates, perhaps a fortnight apart. The first week will be looking forward to debate No. 1, the second week will be looking back at debate No. 1, the third week will be looking forward to debate No. 2 and the fourth week will be looking back at debate No. 2. Where is the time within that actually to debate policies and ideas? The difficulty is that that is what we will end up with.

I speak with a little experience, having worked in politics not only in this country but in Australia, where I worked on election campaigns. There is a longer history there of leaders’ debates on television. I have to say that they are not hugely watched, but they happen, and the public expect them to happen. However, the entire election campaign tends to be about the debate and the process of the debate, rather than the ideas that might be discussed during it. My concern is that that is what we will end up with if we rely on debates as the means to get people interested in the democratic process.

I will move on briefly to the substance of the petition—setting up an independent debates commission. I have a great deal of sympathy with this idea. If there are to be leaders’ election debates, we absolutely have to end the current chaotic system of rival broadcasters jockeying for position, putting forward opposing ideas for formats, arguing about how high the podium will be and whether people will enter from stage left or stage right—and that before individual parties start to have their say.

One side will think that a particular format put forward by one broadcaster favours their man or woman, but the other party will says it prefers another format, so we will end up with either no debate or a month of ridiculous discussions about something that only a few nerds in politics and broadcasting are interested in, and once again we will get absolutely no further forward on discussing ideas and policies. I am not convinced that an independent debates commission would change any of that.

I am also not convinced that, even if a commission was set up with a great deal of legislative power behind it, it would be immune from the sort of pressure that is currently brought to bear on the broadcasters by the different party leaders, who each jockey for a different format. I am also not convinced that it would be immune from potential legal action.

The point was well made earlier about how to define a party leader. Someone could suddenly set themselves up as a party leader. Where would that leave us? Should we then say that only potential Prime Ministers may be allowed to take part? This is a very difficult circle to square, and I am not convinced that an independent debates commission would have any success in doing so. However, my overall view is that we are barking up the wrong tree.

I absolutely want more people to be involved in the democratic process—that is vital—and I could understand if we were having this discussion 20 or 30 years ago, but I think the boat has sailed on TV election debates and on expecting people to sit down at 9 o’clock on a random Tuesday evening to watch something on linear television, even though it will be repeated and watched on iPlayer, or the Sky version thereof.

TV debates feel like they are a bit old hat in 2019. There are many more ways through which we can and should encourage people to access the democratic process, as they are already doing. There are any number of social media platforms where, in my experience from the last general election, the real policy debates seem to happen. I am not sure that, in 2019, mandating a TV election debate in prime time is really looking forward at all; it is probably looking backwards.

I was much taken by the point made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) about the need for our regional broadcasters to get more involved in the democratic process. That is absolutely crucial. I speak as someone who spent most of his career in regional broadcasting. In my area, BBC Spotlight and ITV News West Country do a very good job with their coverage of local politics, but maybe we ought to think about such outlets taking a greater role in ensuring that some of the issues are debated on a level more relevant to people in their constituencies.

I will not detain colleagues any longer. I understand the principle behind the petition, and I applaud Sky News for initiating it. I am not opposed to leaders’ debates per se, but I remain unconvinced that they are the way forward and I am utterly unconvinced that it is possible or desirable to make it mandatory that they happen. If there is an agreement that they should take place in the future, I absolutely see the argument in favour of a debates commission independently—that is the key word—to decide on their format and timing, taking those decisions out of the hands of the broadcasters and party leaders.

Overall, I do not believe that making debates mandatory is the way forward; I remain very uncomfortable with that. I applaud the Government’s response to the petition, which I assume the Minister is about to repeat, which is that they should not change the law in this direction.

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[Graham Stringer]

Does the Minister not accept that we already discriminate in legislation—possibly in favour, possibly against, depending on one’s point of view—against electronic media? We demand that they provide a platform for party political broadcasts and that they balance the different views during a general election campaign, but we do not apply that to any other form of media. There is already that separation and it would not, therefore, be changing the legislative framework very much to say that a platform for debates should be provided.

[Chloe Smith]

I agree, and I disagree. I respect how the hon. Gentleman has tried to bring the point to bear, but the point of detail he has chosen is about how, when any one medium is used, impartiality within it is ensured. That is admirable, and that is where I agree with him, but where I disagree is regarding further entrenching the choice of any one medium over another.

I will put this in a generational sense for the hon. Gentleman: television broadcasters are quite simply losing favour with the younger generation as their source of news. Why should we legislate at this point for a medium that will not necessarily remain favoured among those who are, and those who will become, the voters in elections to come? I am happy to substantiate that.

On how news consumption is going in the UK, a report by Ofcom stated that in 2018 alone 52% of 16 to 24-year-olds used Facebook as their news source while only 39% used BBC1. The report found that people in that age group were more likely to get their news from social media posts than directly from news organisations. In the face of that technological shift, I remain unconvinced that the case is made for privileging a form that one might almost argue had its heyday with Richard Nixon in the last century. Why should we privilege that form? I say Nixon; as has already been covered, it was thought that Kennedy won the debate, but that is the very point. It is a matter of history, and if we legislate at all we ought to look to the future rather than the past.

I will incorporate at this point the parliamentary example that I think was provided by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay. Here we stand today having a debate in Parliament—in itself a form of political debate, a form of debate on political policy—and we do not expect it to be covered only on the TV, although it will capably be, and I am glad for that.

I certainly support the use of TV in Parliament and the accountability that we can provide by being on camera as we do our work. However, we also expect social media to carry part of that weight, and we also might well expect that some people would prefer to read about our proceedings via the written word. All of those are valid ways for people to get their information, and we should not privilege one over another.

Fourthly, I wanted to bring together some points about implementation and refer to a few that have been made in the debate. First, the proposal would require primary legislation. The point has already been made that if we anticipate a general election as far away as 2022, which of course is the case, we have time to look at the issue and get it right. However, even with that timescale, there are other pressing priorities that the public ask us to address through legislation, and I suspect that they would prioritise them over this issue.

Progress on EU Negotiations

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for reminding the House that something like 80% of Members of this House stood on a manifesto to leave the European Union, to deliver on the vote of the referendum, and I hope all Members will recall that when they come to the meaningful vote. He is right about the concerns expressed in relation to the backstop, and I recognise those concerns. That is why we have been looking at alternative arrangements that could be put in place, and we will continue to work on those.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I think we should celebrate the largest democratic vote in our history and be determined to implement leaving the European Union, but I have to say that after two and a half years, I am disappointed that the Prime Minister has come back not with a deal but with the preconditions for a negotiation, and expects the House to vote on it. The fact is that the European Commission, the European Parliament and the other 27 countries are more satisfied than this House is with what the Prime Minister has proposed to them. I do not believe from what the Prime Minister has said so far that she is guaranteeing the future sovereignty of this country. To take just one example, she talks about regulatory alignment. That means we will not be able to adjust our regulations and laws to enable our industries—biological and agricultural industries—to benefit from our independence.

Leaving the EU: Negotiations

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Vince Cable]

If people do in fact feel that way, they will presumably vote the same way again. We take the risk that we lose. That is the democratic spirit.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Why did the right hon. Gentleman not take the opportunity to vote for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty?

[Sir Vince Cable]

We did press for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, as it happens. That was not the view of a majority in the House at the time, but we had no problem with the concept.

Let me try to be a bit more positive about what the Government are trying to do. The first remark I want to make is about the conduct of the Prime Minister. I was going around the radio and television studios yesterday following Conservative MPs and commentators, none of whom had a good word to say about her. It is important to put on the record that she has pursued her course of action, however misjudged it may be, with a grim determination that is rather heroic. I have some admiration for the way in which she is going about her job. She may be wrong, but she is pursuing it in a rather steadfast way.

The second point I will make is about the content of the Government’s announcement. It is clearly an advance on where they were before. There is a recognition now that the Irish border question has to be addressed and that there has to be frictionless trade for industrial and agricultural products. That is now understood. The Government appear to have heard the message from the Jaguar Land Rovers of this world, which have complex supply chains, that it is not possible to stay in the UK if there is interruption of trade, so industrial and agricultural products will have to flow freely.

There is also an implicit acknowledgment that the default position of crashing out of the European Union is less and less plausible, and the reason for that is the changing international environment created by our visitor on Friday. The idea that the UK can fall back on World Trade Organisation rules in the default position is made increasingly untenable by the fact that the WTO has progressively less authority. The United States is not willing to abide by its rulings or to staff its judicial panels. As an organisation, it is completely hollow. Were we to fall back on WTO rules, we would effectively be falling back on anarchy. There is at least some recognition in Government of the dangers of that approach.

Those are the positive things. There is one other positive achievement by default, which is that the Government have effectively scuppered any prospect of reaching a bilateral trade agreement with the United States.

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[Chloe Smith]

I respect my hon. Friend’s intervention. I fear that such an approach would not be one of principle, and he is right to highlight it. Rather than undermine the British people’s democratic decision to leave the EU, let us get on and make a success of it.

[Graham Stringer]

On this point at least, the Minister is making a great deal of sense. Does she agree that the Lib Dems are more interested in being good supporters of the EU than in being democrats? They are following the long tradition of the European Union, exemplified by referendums in Ireland. When the Irish people vote against various constitutional amendments, they keep having to vote until they get the right answer—the one that the EU wants. That is the policy that the Lib Dems are supporting now—“Keep voting until you agree with us.”

[Chloe Smith]

I agree. Such an approach would be deeply unprincipled. What Government Members and all those who believe in the referendum decision want is the right deal for Britain. That is what we seek to achieve and what the Prime Minister set out yesterday.

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[Tom Brake]

I will not give way now, but I may do so in a moment if I have a bit of time.

The hon. Gentleman also said that a policy debate was absent. Let me point out to him that we will not be having a policy debate in this place for the next four or five years, because this Government and any successor Government will have to focus on delivering Brexit. That will take three, four or five years, so the hon. Gentleman can put any policy debate that he wants on hold. We will also be financially worse off. I am sure that the Government will not want to challenge the Office for Budget Responsibility, which says that Brexit will cost £15 billion a year. We are calling for a Brexit dividend, which would mean abandoning Brexit and grabbing that £15 billion a year. No doubt the UK Statistics Authority would be happy to support that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) was right to point out that throughout the Brexit debate the Government have ignored the 48%. I have intervened on the Prime Minister and given her an opportunity to stand up for the 48%, but she has not done so; she has stood up for the 52% instead. I commend my hon. Friend for adopting the Leader of the Opposition’s tactic of bringing individuals into these issues, because we do need to hear from real people—real people with real issues to address, whether they are fishermen, residents of Northern Ireland or, indeed, business owners. It is better to hear from them than it is to hear from some of the ideologues on the Government Benches—and, indeed, a few on the Opposition Benches—whose ideology drives them to abandon their common sense so that they cannot see the consequences of what they are advocating.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) rightly focused on the contribution of EU citizens and European schemes such as Erasmus, and also on one of the things that makes me most angry—the obstacles that the Government are putting in the way of young people’s rights to live, work and study abroad.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) was asked, in another helpful intervention, what question we would ask in a referendum. His simple answer was, “Do people want to vote for the Government deal, or do they want to stay in the European Union?”

My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) rightly said that if we become involved in a campaign for a final say on the deal, we must sell the positives of the European Union, which was not done during the referendum a couple of years ago. There is public support for a final say on the deal, and, indeed, there is public support from members of Unite. As I am sure the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central will be pleased to hear, a net plus-23% of them support a vote on the final deal. So union members are calling for it, and I welcome that, but there is political support for it as well.

It is with great pleasure that I quote what the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said:

“If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.”

The right hon. Gentleman has, of course, been replaced as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab). What did the new Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union have to say on the matter a couple of years ago? He said:

“Tory MPs may push for second referendum after 2020 if Remain win”.

I am happy to pray in aid the support of both the outgoing Brexit Secretary of State and the incoming one for a final say on the deal and a chance for people to have an exit from Brexit.

[Graham Stringer]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier in the debate, I asked the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) why, if he was so keen on referendums, the Liberal Democrats—and he in particular—had not voted for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty in 2008. He said that they had.

Since then I have had the opportunity to check the Official Report, and I can tell the House that on 5 March 2008—this is in column 1868—a small number of Liberal Democrats did vote for a referendum, but the right hon. Member for Twickenham did not. Nor did the then leader of the Liberal Democrats or the vast majority of the Liberal Democrats, because it was against their official policy. I should like your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, on the fact that the right hon. Gentleman misled the House of Commons.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

That is not a point of order, it is a matter of debate. The House has heard what the hon. Gentleman had to say, and perhaps there will be opportunities for Liberal Democrats to intervene on the Minister, but I do want to move on to the Minister’s summing up.

House of Lords Reform: Lord Speaker’s Committee

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree. It is inconsistent for someone to say they wish to abolish an institution but then prop it up by serving in it and trying to enhance its credibility. That, however, is a political contradiction that others will have to wrestle with. I am glad to say it is not one my own party faces.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I have been following the hon. Gentleman’s arguments and facts carefully, and he is making an extremely powerful case. I have no intention of going to the House of Lords—nor will I be invited, I guess. There is another case for not reforming the House of Lords. Some of us believe it is an affront to democracy and should be abolished. Reforming it gives it greater credibility. Does he not agree that there is a danger in reform and that abolition is the better solution?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I do indeed, although the way I would put it is that I wish the reforms to be so extensive that they are tantamount to abolition. Starting with a clean sheet of paper would probably be the best way to go forward. I will come to arguments for the alternative later.

As I read the report and read between the lines, I can almost sense the authors’ exasperation at the situation they are in: their remit has been necessarily constrained to a very narrow one about the size of the House of Lords. They are not able to take into account other matters, looking at the wider context of the institution. I also sense—it is mentioned several times—their frustration at having to search for ways other than legislative and statutory reform to try to achieve some sort of change. I applaud their ingenuity in finding ways within existing statutes and by using procedures such as the code of conduct to set out how they may be able to achieve some of their suggested changes without reference to primary legislation. None of that removes the need for us as an elected Chamber to look at legislative reform. It is an abrogation of political responsibility by the Government, as well as a kick in the teeth for public opinion, that they refuse to countenance bringing forward legislative reform.

The report is necessarily limited, but I would describe it as extremely small baby steps on the road to reform. To give an idea of just how limited they are, one of the key suggestions is to bring in a fixed term of 15 years for Members to serve in the upper House. The suggestion is to phase that in, and it would not be fully implemented until 2042. That’s right—2042. I doubt whether I will be around to see what happens in 2042. To understand just how modest the suggestion is, NASA intends to put a human being on Mars by 2042. We seem to be incapable of suggesting that we can bring in fixed-term appointments for the House of Lords before, as a species, we are capable of colonising other planets. That puts it somewhat in perspective.

Given that the Committee found ways, without reference to legislation, to suggest reform, we should embrace its suggestions and perhaps be a little more ambitious about their application. In considering the report, I suggest to its authors and the upper House that, if they have found ways to bring in fixed-term appointments, why 15 years? On what possible grounds is it okay for someone first to be appointed rather than elected and secondly to serve without sanction or accountability for one and a half decades? Why not cut that in half and make it seven years? Then we could accelerate the process of moving to fixed-term appointments much more quickly.

The Committee suggested through various procedures to reduce steadily the size of the Chamber by appointing one new peer for every two who die, resign or otherwise leave the upper House. If we can have two out, one in, why not have one out, none in? Why not have a moratorium on appointments until the House begins to shrink to a more acceptable level?

We should also be concerned about the things that the report, by its own admission, does not say, and the problems that it does not address—indeed, it recognises that its limited suggestions will exacerbate some of the other problems. Consider, for example, the hereditary peers. Not only are 92 people who are appointed to make the laws of our land not elected by anybody, but the only basis for their appointment is accident of birth. They are not even the aristocracy—they are the progeny of aristocracy from centuries past. That is such an anachronism that it is an affront to every democratic ideal that we must surely espouse. A rather sordid deal was done between the Blair Government and the then Tory Leader of the House of Lords—against, by the way, the wishes of the then leader of the Conservative party—to protect the 92 hereditary peers. That was seen as an interim step, yet every attempt to follow through and complete the abolition of hereditary peers has been blocked by the institution itself and those who support it.

UK Plans for Leaving the EU

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

One of the important points about negotiation is that we keep our hands as free as possible. We do want to ensure that we take business with us. As I have said, there are a number of ways in which we are discussing the future arrangements with business. The implementation period is important, and I hope that we can get on to discuss that as early as possible with the European Union, but we do need to maintain a degree of flexibility in our negotiating positions.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

By having not yet sat down to talk about trade, the European Commission has shown that its priorities are the integrationist European project and punishing this country for having the temerity to choose to govern ourselves. That does not bode well for any deal. Can the Prime Minister tell us what balance of resources is going into contingencies in the event of no deal compared with the amount of resources going into the negotiations?

[The Prime Minister]

We are doing the work that is necessary to ensure that we are prepared for whatever outcome emerges from the negotiations. The hon. Gentleman is right: there have been a number of speeches recently that suggest a more integrationist approach for the EU in future. I am clear that it is important that we are that self-governing nation and that we get that good deal with the European Union because it is in the economic interests of both sides.