Procedure of the House
Helen Goodman Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
As the Leader of the House will recall, the purpose of changing the arrangements for timetabling amendments was to facilitate debate on non-Government amendments in order to democratise the Report stage and consideration of Lords amendments. Will he explain why he is continuing with only one part of the experiment, and—if I may say so—not going all the way to facilitate proper consideration on Report?
Mr Hague
We have generally had a great number of days for Report, and we worked closely with the Opposition on that in the last Parliament. We are implementing the recommendations of the Procedure Committee—the part that the Committee recommended should be implemented before the end of the Parliament, which is today. That does not exclude further changes in the new Parliament, but if the motion is agreed to we will implement the urgent recommendation of the Procedure Committee. The Committee also recommended that the deadline be extended to cover amendments in Committee of the whole House for all Bills, and at Report for unprogrammed Bills. Those are further improvements to the procedures.
Devolution (Scotland Referendum)
Helen Goodman Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
We share a constituency boundary and the Leader of the House knows, as I do, that our constituents feel that too many decisions are London-centred. They want more power closer to them. Is not the problem with English votes for English laws that it changes the job description of Members in this House, but does not actually take power nearer to people?
Mr Hague
These issues are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible to believe that there should be greater autonomy at the local level, including for the hon. Lady’s constituents and mine. However, if she is talking, as she did at the beginning of her intervention, about what people feel, I think she will have to acknowledge that they also feel, whether it be in Yorkshire or County Durham, that Scottish Members should no longer be voting on matters that have been devolved to Scotland. That is the local opinion.
Deregulation Bill
Helen Goodman Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 62, page 40, line 13, at end insert—
‘(3) The Secretary of State must lay the terms of reference of a review under subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.”
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 14 and 15.
Amendment 63, in clause 55, page 41, line 26, at end insert—
‘(14) The power conferred by subsection (1) may not be exercised until after the BBC’s Royal Charter has next been reviewed.”
Government amendments 20 and 22.
Helen Goodman
I want to speak to the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), as well as to the Government amendments.
Clause 54 puts a duty on the Secretary of State to review the sanctions on those who own a television but fail to pay the licence fee. Our amendment would require the Secretary of State to lay the review’s terms of reference before both Houses. Clause 55 gives the Secretary of State a power to decriminalise sanctions on those who fail to pay the licence fee. Our amendment would prevent this power from being used before the completion of the next review of the BBC’s royal charter.
The BBC is a universal service, and the licence fee is a universal payment for anyone with a television. The licence fee is not a tax; it is a guarantee of the BBC’s independence. The BBC is the most trusted source of news in the United Kingdom, with 58% of people rating it as their most trusted news source.
Kelvin Hopkins
Does my hon. Friend agree that the BBC is trusted not just in Britain but across the world, and when other broadcasting services are compared to it, they take it as flattery or a compliment?
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The BBC is now one of the great British brands and it exports across the world.
In the evolution of British broadcasting, the licence fee has gained broad support. Nearly everyone in the UK uses the BBC each week—it has 97% reach—which helps to explain why support for the licence fee is at 53%, up from only 31% in 2004, and is ahead of the 17% support for subscriptions and the 26% support for advertising. It is the top choice for funding the BBC across all ages and all socio-economic groups, whether people are in Freeview, Sky or Virgin households.
Not just the public but other broadcasters appreciate the licence fee, since they have built their business models using finance from advertising, sponsorship and subscription on the assumption that the BBC will not enter those markets and that, as a result, the size of those markets will be fairly stable. Labour believes that the licence fee is the best funding model.
Kelvin Hopkins
I apologise for intervening again so quickly, but I want to reinforce my hon. Friend’s point. The fact is that we have quality television across the piece in Britain because of the BBC. If it were not for the BBC, standards might drop severely.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. No one wants people to go to prison for non-payment of the licence fee. Last year, 165,000 people failed to pay, and 51 were jailed for non-payment of the associated fines, even though people can pay by instalment. Clearly, we need some sanctions to ensure payment. The question is whether the current sanctions are the right ones. That is why we have agreed to a review of the sanctions.
Our amendment 62 would require the Secretary of State to lay the review’s terms of reference before Parliament, because we want a proper, analytical and unbiased review. I wrote to the Solicitor-General’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who has responsibility for communications, about this matter on 7 April.
Such a review should cover the impact of a change on the level of licence fee evasion. It would be helpful to have historical data on evasion rates. According to the TV licensing database, the statistics on the socio-economic background of unlicensed properties show that 38% are ABs, 29% are C1s, 13% are C2s, 8% are Ds and 11.5% are Es. Those figures are broadly in line with the socio-economic background of UK properties as a whole. That does not translate to the socio-economic status of those prosecuted or imprisoned for non-payment of the licence fee, but it indicates that there is higher evasion among better-off households.
The review should cover the impact on the BBC’s finances. Without that information, we will not know the full impact of evasion. Estimates suggest that a 1% increase in non-payment might lead to a £35 million loss to the BBC. It has said:
“If Licence Fee evasion were to double to around 10%, the BBC would have an estimated…£200 million less per annum for content and services—equivalent to the combined budget of BBC4 and our two children’s channels, CBeebies and CBBC, for example. Due to low rates of evasion at present, an additional £6.7m was available to spend on BBC content in 2012/13.”
Obviously, if evasion went up, such investment would no longer be possible.
The review needs to look at the impact of new technology and the possibility of ending the BBC’s universal offer. Currently, the BBC cannot switch off the signal, so what would happen if it could?
The Solicitor-General
We have had a short but lively debate, and I would like to put it on record that no Government Member said that the BBC was not a fantastic institution, or anything of that sort. Our debate was not about the licence fee, although the charter review is coming up, and that will have a process of its own; it was about enforcement.
My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen)—I pay tribute to the way he put his case—made the point that there are many poor and vulnerable people who struggle with the licence fee, and they can be criminalised and even sent to prison for failure to pay it. He clearly felt concerned about them, and made his case in that way. It was not developed as some kind of veiled attack on the BBC. I think it right to look at decriminalisation. Even the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) seemed to accept that at one point, and he even seemed to accept that it would be right to have a review of the sort proposed by the Government. Again, I do not see much cross-party disagreement there.
Clearly, the Government will not take up the invitation of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and say what the outcome of the review and the penalties will be—something I thought she said. She asks why the Government are unwilling to set the penalties now; the answer is that we have not yet had the review. Whether one particular body will have the duty of setting the variable fees is another issue for the review; we want a proper review that will look into all aspects of the issue. As to what analysis has been done of the potential impacts—positive and negative—of switching to a civil rather than a criminal enforcement, or of having the option of both, we are having a review precisely to determine that. The whole point is that we do not want to prejudge the review.
Helen Goodman
My question was not why the Government will not decide the penalties at this juncture—I completely accept what the Solicitor-General said about that—but why the Government were offloading the task of setting the penalties on to another body.
The Solicitor-General
There will clearly need to be a mechanism to effect the change; someone will have to decide what the variable penalties should be, and I shall come on to that in a moment. I do not think it right, however, to prejudge who or which body should do the setting. The hon. Lady suggested one particular body, but we are happy to let the review look into these issues and come up with its thoughts on what sort of regime should or should not be approved.
The amendments are designed to achieve two objectives. Under amendment 62,
“The Secretary of State must lay the terms of reference of a review”
of the TV licensing enforcement regime
“before each House of Parliament.”
Those would be key papers for the review, and there would be others. What normally happens, and what we propose, is that those papers are deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. It would be unusual to lay them before the House. That would be the normal and best way forward, and it would achieve the same effect as the amendment—that is, it would ensure that the House of Commons was fully aware of the details.
Amendment 63 looks to ensure that the power to decriminalise the failure to have a TV licence via secondary legislation, either by replacing the criminal regime with a civil regime, or by enabling the imposition of civil penalties for such offences, would not be exercised until after the conclusion of the charter process. As previously mentioned, this power would need to be exercised in the light of the review’s findings, and considering the full impacts, costs and benefits to licence payers, to the court system—where, as the hon. Lady said, changes are being made—and to businesses of any changes to the enforcement regime. That would be considered in the context of the charter review.
At this stage, it would be premature to put restrictions on the timing of when the power may be exercised, given that the charter review has not yet started, and the Government have not set out the detail of the process and the timing. The Government therefore resist the amendments on the following grounds. First, the key papers will be deposited in the Library in the normal way and, secondly, we do not want to restrict what should or could happen, in terms of decriminalisation, by aligning the legislation with the timing of the charter review, although the legislation would be in the context of the review.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) made the point that we are living in a changing world. That is true, both as regards the courts and how they go about enforcing, and about the media and broadcasting world. It is also true in respect of how we look at enforcement. Given that so many public services have civil enforcement and that it can be effective, it is certainly right, I think, at this point to have a review, and to try to move away from the aggressive approach that my hon. Friend mentioned. The point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), and I have encountered the issue in my constituency postbag and at surgeries. Elderly people who feel that they have paid their licence fee—they often have—can be threatened with bills, letters about going to court and so forth, yet it is often the TV licensing authorities that have made the mistakes. A civil approach, where at least the threat of court is not frightening elderly, vulnerable and poor people, might be a better way forward. It is certainly something worth reviewing. On the issue of excellence and free markets, it is right that both can deliver.
The Solicitor-General
It is certainly not the intention to do anything that does not take into account the full context—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman laughs, but there is a full context to the charter review. It is difficult when the process has not been set out and nobody is aware of the full details, so one needs to be wary of tying one’s hands too much. All I am saying is that some commitments have been made about the time scale for the review; that is in the legislation. We know when the charter review will take place, and we know that nothing will happen until the review has been completed, taking into account all the various points I have made. That should satisfy the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned variable fees; they are provided for in the Government amendments, which also deal with the question of extent and the Crown dependencies. I commend Government amendments 14 and 15 and 20 and 22, and urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.
Helen Goodman
I did not find the Solicitor-General’s arguments very convincing. He seems to want to retain the freedom to fiddle around with the way in which the licence fee operates before we have seen the results of the royal charter review. None the less, I do not wish to press either amendment 62 or amendment 63 to a vote, although I suspect that amendment 62 may be re-examined in another place. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 55
TV licensing: alternatives to criminal sanctions
Amendments made: 14, page 40, line 24, after “be” insert “—
(a) ”
This amendment is a drafting amendment related to amendment 15.
Amendment 15, page 40, line 25, at end insert
“, or
(b) such amount, not exceeding a maximum amount specified in the regulations, as may be determined by a body so specified.”—(The Solicitor-General)
In the event of the Secretary of State deciding to make regulations replacing the TV licensing offences with a civil penalty regime, this amendment would allow the regulations to provide for the amount of the penalty to be determined by a body specified in the regulations, subject to a maximum amount specified in the regulations.
New Clause 3
Limit on indemnity required under Outer Space Act 1986
‘(1) The Outer Space Act 1986 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 3 (prohibition of unlicensed activities), after subsection (3) insert—
“(3A) An order under subsection (3) may—
(a) provide that section 10(1) does not apply to a person to the extent that the person is carrying on activities that do not require a licence by virtue of the order;
(b) specify the maximum amount of a person’s liability under section 10(1) so far as the liability relates to the carrying on of activities that do not require a licence by virtue of the order.”
(3) In section 5 (terms of licence), after subsection (2) insert—
“(3) A licence must specify the maximum amount of the licensee’s liability to indemnify Her Majesty’s government in the United Kingdom under section 10 in respect of activities authorised by the licence.”
(4) In section 10 (obligation to indemnify government against claims), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) Subsection (1) is subject to—
(a) any limit on the amount of a person’s liability that is specified in a licence, and
(b) any order made under section 3(3).”
(5) The Secretary of State may vary any licence under section 4 of the 1986 Act that is held at the time when this section comes into force so as to specify the maximum amount of the licencee’s liability under section 10 of that Act.
(6) A variation under subsection (5) is to be made by giving notice in writing to the licensee.
(7) The power under section 15(6) of the 1986 Act may be exercised so as to extend to any of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or any British overseas territory any provision made by this section (subject to any specified exceptions or modifications).” —(Oliver Heald.)
Section 10 of the Outer Space Act 1986 requires people carrying out certain space activities to indemnify the UK government against claims arising out of the activities. The new clause makes provision for limiting the amount of the liability under the indemnity.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Solicitor-General
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Business of the House
Helen Goodman Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
I hope my hon. Friend knows that I share his sense of how profoundly important the proper use of the UK’s asset, or in this instance, England’s asset—NHS data—can be. When patients and the public generally are asked whether they are content for their data to be used to enable treatments and research to be promoted for all patients in future, as long as we give them the proper protection for their anonymity and confidentially, they are very much in favour. That is the point we are trying to get to.
My hon. Friend mentions something that will be important this coming week: that Back-Bench colleagues take every opportunity to put their names forward for the private Members’ Bill ballot. He instances one issue, but it would be very much in the interests of the people of this country if a number of others were brought forward under the banner of a private Member’s Bill.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) pointed out how little legislation the Government are bringing forward, but they are also evading accountability to this House on a week-by-week basis. In the four months between the beginning of May and the beginning of September, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will come to the Chamber only once to answer oral questions. Will the Leader of the House tell us what the Department has to hide?
Mr Lansley
I am not sure the hon. Lady understands that the rota for questions is a standard process. When the House is sitting, we answer questions in the normal way. I have to say that the premise of her question is somewhat misplaced. As I explained to the shadow Leader, 20 Bills were passed in the previous parliamentary Session. In the penultimate Session of the previous Parliament, 18 Bills were passed.
House of Commons Business
Helen Goodman Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I want to confine my remarks to motion 5 on programming. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), with whom I enjoyed serving on the Procedure Committee. I am pleased that he took us back to the 1300s, because he has shown the context in which we can understand the glacial pace at which the Leader of the House seems to want to proceed in making changes to programming.
When we are thinking about improving the processes of this House, it is really important that we understand the poor reputation that the House has at the moment and has had previously. Maybe we have turned a corner, but maybe not. It is incumbent on all of us to show that this House is responsive, effective and understands what the public expect of us.
Broadly speaking, the House has three functions, all of which have been discussed today: holding the Government to account; raising matters of general concern and supporting campaigns; and legislating. Legislating is the one thing that only we can do. The media take part in holding the Government to account, and all citizens are involved with campaigning, but legislation is the one thing that is solely our responsibility, and we should therefore do it as well as possible. It is appalling that things get on to the statute book without any debate in this Chamber, but that is what has been happening. I do not want to take part in a partisan debate on this. From my experience in this Parliament and the previous Parliament, things were not altogether as they might have been in the previous Parliament.
In my view, the efforts that the Leader of the House has made to extend the time on Report do not do the business. We need a system that works so that we are not reliant on the good will of whoever happens to hold the office of Leader of the House and be in charge of timetabling business. The basic problem is that because there is a fixed time for amendments on Report, if there are too many groups, the early groups are debated and the later groups are not debated. This creates two problems. First, sometimes amendments tabled by Her Majesty’s Opposition or by Back Benchers do not get debated at all, so new ideas and possibilities are not floated. Secondly, because of our practice of voting on all the amendments, when the Government get their legislation through, the Government amendments are put on to the statute book without any discussion. Across the House, people are appalled by this, and if the public knew about it, they too would be appalled. That is what we need to address.
The Committee that produced the major report on this House, the Wright report, was particularly concerned about the fact that Back Benchers’ opinions are not voiced. The evidence that the Procedure Committee gathered about which Government amendments are put on the statute book without debate reflects a more serious problem. In the Session that we looked at, 28 clauses were put on to the statute book without any debate in this House. That is the equivalent of a small Bill; it is quite a substantial amount of legislation. Some of the subject matter might not have been so exciting, and in some cases, had there been an opportunity, it might have taken only 10 minutes to debate, but that is not true of all of it.
The extradition provisions were not discussed in this Chamber. Whichever view one takes—whether for or against the legislation—it is absolutely clear that those provisions were highly controversial. Such was their significance that it would have been right to discuss them properly. The problem did not begin on 5 May 2010. It has been going on for some time and we need to address it.
The Clerks of the Procedure Committee came up with an excellent way of dealing with the problem. It was suggested that if amendments could be tabled earlier, the Chair would have more time to produce a schedule for the day, and that the time given for debate on Report could be divided in proportion to the number of groups of amendments so that every group could be debated. Members have always been dependent on the excellent work of the Clerks in getting into the nitty-gritty and making a reality of our vaguer aspirations, and the Procedure Committee could not have produced a report as good as its third report without their help.
I made a tactical error because, having produced that third report, which suggested a solution to the problem, I resigned from the Procedure Committee. That was obviously a mistake, because I resigned before we received the Government’s response and I was not involved in the sixth report. The resistance of the Leader of the House to the suggestion that every single group of amendments should be debated on Report takes the heart out of the matter. We have the disadvantages of tabling amendments earlier, without the advantages of being confident that every single group will be debated, which was the whole object of the report.
If we are taking the glacial approach that has been taken over seven centuries towards the issue, I am prepared to go along with the motion; we have part of what we wanted, but not all of it. I am not confident, however, that in future we will feel that all parts of every Bill will have been debated, and we will have the disadvantage of having to do everything earlier.
Mr Charles Walker
May I say to the hon. Lady, before she gets too depressed, that we have reached the shoulder of the mountain, but the summit remains to be conquered?
Helen Goodman
I am glad that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, who chairs it most ably, is showing once again his political nous in his attempts to corral us. I hope he is right and that, after this experiment, the Procedure Committee will be able to return to the matter and see whether it has achieved its purpose. If not, I hope not only that the experiment will result in a permanent change to Standing Orders, but that all of the third report’s proposals will be fully implemented.
Mr Harper
My intervention is likely to be more prosaic and not as poetic as that of my hon. Friend the Chair of the Procedure Committee. Having read the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, I am not as depressed as the hon. Lady, because all it said was that they did not agree with the suggestion for a proportionate and rigid allocation of time. They said they wanted to be able to exercise judgment on how to allocate the time and that a proportionate model would be complex and unwieldy. The sense I got from the Government’s response is that they want every group of amendments and all the major issues to be debated; they just do not want to do it in the mechanical way suggested by the Committee’s report.
Helen Goodman
We will hear whether that was the intention when the Deputy Leader of the House winds up the debate. What the Government actually said was this:
“The Chair would have to make rapid calculations on the number of minutes available per group in response to the progress of the...business”,
as if the Chair is not capable of doing some straightforward arithmetic. I know that education standards in this country are not what they ought to be, but I am absolutely confident that the Chair, supported, of course, by the Clerks, would be able to do that. The Government’s response also said that there is no evidence of a “systemic problem”, but there is a systemic problem, which is precisely why it is worth changing the rules of the game.
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
The systemic problem is not purely on the Government’s side, whichever party is in government or in opposition. As long as an Opposition’s main weapon of debate is seen to be the ability to delay and prolong debate rather then make points succinctly, we will never have a rational distribution of time in this House.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. I have said that I do not think that the fault lies on the Government side or the Opposition side of the House. If the time were divided in proportion, we would be confident that every group of amendments would be debated. Without that, things will get squeezed out and there will be maximum scope for playing games.
It is obvious that, in order for the House to work well, we need sensible rules and a degree of co-operation. That requires a constructive approach from the Government and the Opposition and responsible people in the Chair who are interested in facilitating debate. If we had those things and all the right rules, we would be able to do it. I simply do not understand why the Leader of the House has resisted the proposal in the third report that would provide the best guarantee of debating every group of amendments.
I enjoyed serving on the Procedure Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who showed his skill on many occasions. I am prepared to take his advice once again and not to push the motion on programming to a vote. We should, however, return to the issue in a year’s time and make sure that we absolutely lock it in.
Business of the House
Helen Goodman Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
Yes, my hon. Friend makes a good point and he is right, as we try in many contexts to support our high streets and the traders and small businesses on them. One of the ways we can do that, which the Government have done, is to require greater notice of roadworks and for utility companies to work together in a more co-ordinated fashion, so that roads are not constantly dug up for one purpose, with someone else then coming along and digging them up for another. Giving notice and co-ordinating work is important, but I will ask my hon. Friends from the Department for Communities and Local Government to update him on anything else we are doing in this context to support high streets.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I was disappointed that the Leader of the House said nothing about the future programme for Westminster Hall in his statement, but he has had time to think about my question. Will he bring forward the Westminster Hall debates to 10 June? He has been eloquent about the need for this House to hold the Government to account. Here is an opportunity to show that he is right behind that.
Mr Lansley
The hon. Lady will understand that the provisions for sittings in Westminster Hall are determined by Standing Orders. It is not in my gift to change Standing Orders; it is a matter for the House, but as she rightly asks the question, I will look at what provisions in Standing Orders permit us to bring debates forward in Westminster Hall more speedily after the opening of a new Session.
Amendment of Standing Orders
Helen Goodman Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Walker
The Backbench Business Committee is known for its independence of thought. I rather agree with my hon. Friend, who is a stalwart of the Procedure Committee and one of its leading lights. Once again, he has made an incisive contribution.
Because we do not have all night, I am now going to make a little progress. We also propose a new Standing Order—again, resisted by the Government—allowing the Backbench Business Committee to organise its own time through a motion proposed at the commencement of one of its days of business, regulating the business that follows. Such a change would enable the Committee to make provision for decisions on a series of motions and amendments to those motions to be taken together at the end of a debate, at the normal moment of interruption or before.
I shall canter through the next part of my speech. I shall have to read it, because it is quite complex, and I would not want to make a deliberate or unnecessary mistake. Let me give two examples in which that power might have been useful. In the case of recent debates on the sitting hours of the House, the need to take a complex series of votes before the usual time of interruption required the sacrifice of an hour and a half of debating time. The debate on assisted dying, which was scheduled to last an hour and a half, had to be voluntarily stopped 20 minutes early so that the first amendment could be put and voted on, in order to allow a second vote to be taken before the 7 pm deadline. The power might also provide for a timetable for decisions to be made on a series of separate motions at fixed points, or for a day simply to be divided between two or three debates. That would be entirely convenient to the House because it would make everything reasonably predictable.
In anticipation of resistance from the Government, the Committee has proposed a fairly formidable set of constraints on the use of the power, which I shall set out now. I can see that the House is waiting with bated breath to hear about this series of protections.
First, the decision to use the power must be a unanimous decision by the Committee, made, obviously, at a quorate meeting with due notice given. Secondly, the Committee— unlike the Government—is given no power to stretch a day, except in so far as Divisions might run past the normal moment of interruption. It cannot extend the length of a sitting on Thursday. Thirdly, and most importantly, the House would be free to disagree with any proposal made by the Committee at the start of the day to which it applied. The proposal would be put without debate, but could be divided on and defeated. If the House did not like it, the House could reject it.
So there is no possibility, in a perfect world—the world that I would like to see become a reality, although it is not going to become a reality tonight—of the Backbench Business Committee’s abusing its power to force the House to make unpalatable decisions in an unpalatable way. The whole Committee, and the whole House, must want the business to which this power might be applied to be conducted in a rational and predictable way. It is not applicable to anything other than Back-Bench business: it cannot affect Government business, Opposition business, or private Members’ Bills.
I appreciate that there is resistance to this. There are many here who feel that the Government, motivated by good will, would want to ensure whenever possible that the Backbench Business Committee was able to achieve its objectives, and that there would be helpful Whips supporting them in the process. This is where I diverge slightly from the view of my opposite number, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), who chairs the Backbench Business Committee. This is a point of principle and the—slow—direction of travel at the moment is for this House to take back more powers for itself. It was the case about 110 years ago that if the Government of the day wanted to transact their business in this place, they had to come and seek our permission. Over the past 110 years we have given up successive powers through Standing Orders so now we are in the position of begging the Government for time, or relying on the good will of Government to give us that time.
This is what I suggest: I am not going to press the House to a Division tonight, so the amendments put down by the Government will carry the day, but I am convinced that the day is coming—slowly—when this House will have the courage and desire to take back some of its own power and we will have the self-confidence not to rely on the Whips to transact our business for us on those days when it is our business. I accept that there will be Government days for business, and that is fine, but I think that on those days when there is Back-Bench business—those days when it is our business, when this place comes back to us—in a few years’ time we will have the self-confidence and courage to say, “Actually, we can handle our own affairs in a grown-up, mature and successful fashion.”
Helen Goodman
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Procedure Committee for giving way. Surely what we are talking about here is the House growing up and our being treated like grown-ups—being able to vote as well as debate? I therefore wonder why the Chairman of the Procedure Committee—who chairs it absolutely marvellously—is not going to press the House to a Division this evening.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Helen Goodman Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Stephen McPartland
The hon. Gentleman has summed up why we have waited three and a half years for the Bill, and why we do not want to wait any longer. We want to get the Bill going.
I believe that the purpose of part 2 is to prevent a small number of large organisations from channelling money in a way that would affect the outcomes of elections, irrespective of the level at which that happens. Its purpose is not to upset the local charities with which we all work, but to enable us to work with those charities to secure the best possible deal for our constituents and communities.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
A new low has been reached in the handling of the Bill. I do not think that we have seen such a shambles since the last occasion on which the Leader of the House was involved with a piece of legislation. At least on that occasion there was a pause when the Government decided to go back to the drawing board. This time, we seem to be being expected to debate a Bill which the Minister himself, from the Dispatch Box, has said is not adequate and must be changed. I am pleased to see that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), is in the Chamber, because I feel that the Committee should consider the process issues connected with the Bill.
It is peculiarly ironic that the Minister, the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), is a Liberal Democrat. One would think that, of all the things that the Liberal Democrats could defend, one would be liberal democracy. This is about the nature of our democracy, and I really think that the Liberal Democrat members of the coalition should learn to stand up to the Tory members. The Bill is clearly a highly political piece of legislation, aimed at defending Tory donors and attacking the civil society groups that might support any other political activity and any other political parties.
It is particularly worrying that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), has admitted in reply to a parliamentary question that the first time she spoke to voluntary sector organisations about the Bill was on Monday last week, at least two months after the publication of the Bill.
I do, of course, support amendment 47. I want to say a few things about my experiences working in the voluntary sector, as they help to explain why I am so horrified by the contents of clause 26. Before I was elected to this House I worked in three voluntary sector organisations: the Runnymede Trust, the Church of England Children’s Society and the National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries, which I ran. The Church of England Children’s Society, in particular, did a lot of campaigning work alongside all the many practical projects it ran. It is perverse to put a limit on the amount that voluntary sector organisations can spend on campaigning in the run-up to a general election because that is when they can most effectively influence the political process, as that is when the political parties are writing their manifestos and when candidates are standing for election and re-election.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is right to refer to the explanatory notes. One of the reasons why so many voluntary organisations are nervous about these provisions is outlined in paragraph 59:
“The definition of ‘for electoral purposes’ does not rely solely on the intent of the third party; the effect of the expenditure must also be considered.”
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful to him for reminding me of paragraph 59, because I, too, had underlined it. That makes the situation almost completely unpredictable for voluntary sector organisations.
Helen Goodman
Yes, but that is the whole problem. They may not say, “Vote Liberal Democrat”, but if they say, “Don’t vote for candidates who voted for an increase in tuition fees,” everybody will be pretty clear what that means. The right hon. Gentleman’s party would be perfectly well able to go to court and say, “The effect of the expenditure must also be considered and it is clearly discriminatory against Liberal Democrat candidates.” That is the problem.
Andrew Gwynne
The sentence before the one I previously quoted mentions
“enhancing the standing of a registered political party or parties or candidates.”
In my hon. Friend’s opinion, would the Deputy Prime Minister’s pledging not to increase tuition fees on behalf of the National Union of Students have increased the electoral opportunities of that candidate in the 2010 general election?
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is pointing to the very serious practical problems that everybody—both the politicians standing for election and voluntary sector organisations—will face.
Lady Hermon
The intervention of the Deputy Leader of the House has, not for the first time today, added confusion. We are talking about clause 26, which states that “a course of conduct” could be covered if
“it does not involve any express mention being made of the name of any party or candidate.”
Therefore a charity that does not mention the name of a party or candidate could be covered.
Helen Goodman
That is right.
In the run-up to general elections, voluntary organisations often send e-mails and letters asking people where they stand on certain subjects, and after receiving the answers they send another message to their supporters saying, “Well, candidate X stands for what we want and candidate Y stands against it. If you think this is a big issue, we advise you to vote for candidate X, not candidate Y.”
Stephen McPartland
If a charity advises their supporters to vote for candidate X rather than candidate Y, that could affect the outcome of an election and it would therefore have to be included within regulated expenditure under current charity law.
John Cryer
What the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) says is right, but over the past few days and weeks we have all been reading the briefings from charities and they are not saying “If we do this it is controlled expenditure, and if we do that, it is not.” The problem is the doubt, and that will be resolved in court cases that will probably run for years, unless this Bill is heavily amended, which we are expecting from the Government.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is right. The problems of substance and process in the preparation of this Bill are numerous and inter-connected. People working in voluntary organisations are always annoyed that politicians of all stripes want to associate themselves with their good works but often want to ignore the hard messages they receive from those organisations. They want to ignore the lessons based on the wide range of practical experience the voluntary sector can bring to the table. This Bill is institutionalising cloth ears on the part of politicians.
It is ironic that part 2 of this Bill should come from this Government, because when the Conservatives were trying to get elected they were proclaiming the big society. Vladimir Putin would be proud to introduce this Bill.
Caroline Lucas
New clause 10, which stands in my name and those of the hon. Members for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and for St Ives (Andrew George), would require the Government to carry out a proper assessment of the effect of third-party campaigning on UK elections, because I want to know what problem the Government think they are trying to fix. Alongside the rest of part 2, the changes made by clause 26 would silence legitimate campaigning voices in the run-up to elections. Equally alarmingly, Ministers are trying to push through this clampdown without a shred of evidence that there is a problem with third sector organisations exerting an undue influence over elections in the first place. As many hon. Members have said, the best way to proceed would be to ditch the whole of part 2 and only introduce changes for which there is a robust evidence base—one that would attract cross-party support—and which could take place after consultation with all organisations affected. That is what new clause 10 proposes.
Some people say that organisations such as 38 Degrees are scaremongering and that the Government’s concessions demonstrate that everything will be fine, but Ros Baston, a solicitor specialising in political and election law, told a number of MPs at a meeting that I hosted this morning that they would be advised to read the briefing from the Electoral Commission itself. Many hon. Members have already quoted from that, so I will not add to that. However, I would point hon. Members in the direction of Sir Stephen Bubb, the chief executive officer of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, who says that even after these vague concessions have been promised
“the Bill remains fundamentally flawed. Our issue with it is not simply how it affects charities, but the fact it suggests they, and not other groups in society, are to blame for the public’s loss of trust in politics.”
He is very right in that assessment.
I strongly believe that there is a case for revisiting the current legislation, introduced by Labour in 2000 with the primary aim of preventing the emergence of US-style front groups working for particular candidates or parties, because the existing legislation has already been criticised for being heavy-handed in how it goes about achieving what is, of course, a laudable aim. As a result, some fiercely non-party political organisations are already saying that even the current rules have had some dampening effect on the freedom of charities and civil society organisations to campaign on policy issues—not for any political party or candidate—around the time of elections.
The crucial point must be to proceed on the basis not of hearsay but of a sound evidence base. It is right to examine the effect that third-party campaigning has had at elections in the UK and whether it has exerted undue influence over elections. It is also right to look at whether the activities of charities and civil society groups have harmed the public perception of the political system, as the Cabinet Office contends. But such a review must surely also look at whether the opposite is closer to the truth. It must ask whether existing rules are already too restrictive: do they make it unnecessarily difficult for the public to hear the opinions of those who might have different views from particular parties or candidates; are they imposing disproportionate limits on the ability of charities and others to engage in political and policy debate as one way of pursuing their charitable purposes; and are they preventing people from getting together to seek to influence the policies and positions of those who want to become their elected representatives?
Susan Elan Jones
My hon. Friend could well write the episode of the soap opera that I was describing.
As a co-chair of the all-party group on civil society and volunteering, along with the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and Baroness Pitkeathley, I was delighted to see the voluntary sector speak up loudly on this issue—rightly so, given the attacks on civic society in this Bill. I know that many hon. Members have been deluged with e-mails, letters, telephone calls and requests for meetings about this. We know the NCVO’s serious concerns from its briefing, and it raised the specific point of how damaging it feels the legislation would be for expenditure thresholds and activities and how they relate to small charitable groups.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about this. One thing voluntary groups do is use campaigns to raise their profiles so that they can raise funds to do more practical work. Their campaigning activities are part of all their work and it all fits together for them. The Bill will damage not only their ability to speak but, potentially, their ability to do some practical work.
Susan Elan Jones
That is absolutely right.
Many concerned voices were heard in last week’s debate and many thoughtful speeches, too, none more so than that of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who is Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. I do not quite concur with one small aspect of his speech, however. He said that
“one of the most wonderful parts of my life experience as a Member of Parliament is when we come towards a general election, and all those different bodies start to get hold of us, lobby us, knock on our doors, phone us and send letters—‘Come to our meeting. You will not get our vote unless we know exactly what you are doing on this.’ Someone on the opposite side then says exactly the same thing”.—[Official Report, 3 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 205.]
In truth, although at times such meetings will be bliss itself and will be meaningful, sometimes they will frustrate and annoy many Members and the Government—any Government. That is why it is correct that the right of such organisations to do this must be protected at all costs so that they can put forward their view unhindered, without being entangled in red tape, and can speak truth to power unhindered by the certainties of this Bill.
I wonder how the Bill would affect the pro and anti-HS2 lobbies, the campaign for digital hearing aids, the campaign for the rights of Gurkhas to settle in this country and some of the campaigns run by the Royal British Legion.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It is a great pleasure to speak while you are in the Chair, Sir Edward, on the feast of St Pulcheria, who died on this day in 453 AD. It is the 1,560th anniversary of her death.
Helen Goodman
Having read the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, I wonder whether he is trying to take us back to the politics of those years.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Even this Parliament did not exist under the benign reign of the Empress Pulcheria, so I am afraid that I am unable to propose doing that.
The purpose of my amendment, which I think fits very well with the clause, which I support, is to limit the ability of people in receipt of public funds to intervene in elections, particularly general elections. In this country we do not have state-funded political parties. We have Short money and Cranborne money to help the parliamentary activities of Opposition parties, but we have consistently decided that the state would not fund political parties and that they would instead be funded by private donations, trade union donations and business donations. It therefore seems to me to be completely wrong for third parties that might depend on subventions from the state for a large part of their income to be able to campaign as third parties in general elections.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Again, I am in disagreement with the hon. Gentleman, who, surprisingly, I often agree with about many things. The amendment does not change in any way the definition of election expenditure. It leaves it as it is set out in the rest of the Bill. As I have said, that definition leaves unchanged the situation for people hosting hustings meetings. What I am doing makes not one iota of difference—not one jot of change—to the Church of the England. It will still be able to host meetings in churches and it would still be in difficulties if it decided not to invite particular candidates. That is quite right, because at the heart of democracy is the notion that candidates should be treated equally.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that British Telecom, Arriva, Stagecoach, Heathrow, Virgin Care, Tata Steel and farmers in his constituency are all in receipt of large amounts of public money. Is he really saying that none of them may make statements that could be taken as interventions in a general election?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady is ignoring the detail of the Bill and carrying on with the absurd scaremongering to which we have been listening for more than a week. A farmer in my constituency who is in receipt of subsidies would have to register as a third party and, according to the terms of clause 27, spend more than £5,000 to be in any way affected by my amendment. If only the farmers in my constituency were so rich that they were scattering £5,000 hither and yon, my own campaign might be the beneficiary of such largesse.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As an established candidate before I was elected in the last election, I did not receive any help from British Telecom. I had no idea that British Telecom was funding the campaigns of candidates up and down the country. If that were a purely commercial activity, it would be mistaken in doing so because it would alienate half its customers who would dislike the party that it decided to support.
We have heard throughout these debates Opposition scaremongering about all these third parties lined up waiting to support individual candidates, with the question of whether that is against charities law or constitutionally improper being cast to one side. That is being brought back in the context of this clause. It is absolutely clear from the Bill, from what the Minister has said and from the law as it currently stands that these bodies—charitable bodies, in particular, but also firms such as British Telecom—are not going to be third parties because they do not and, indeed, should not intervene directly in the election of individual candidates or in supporting individual parties.
Helen Goodman
I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is talking out of his hat. The fact is that a lot of large private-sector businesses are donors to political parties, and that is an intervention. Is he saying that if they had been in receipt of public money, they should not be making these interventions? When they give money they are also making statements, not only about individual candidates but about parties.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady is wrong to say that I am talking out of my hat because if I did, Sir Edward, I would be out of order and you would therefore not allow it to take place. Third parties that merely donate to other political organisations are not third parties under the terms of the Bill. To be a third party under the terms of the Bill one needs to be campaigning in such a way that one is advancing the campaign of an individual in a particular constituency or a political party across a number of constituencies. Under the terms of the Bill, giving £10,000 to the Conservative party does not require registration with the Electoral Commission as a third party. All it requires is for someone to register their donation and be a legitimate British company, as covered by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The Bill is limited in scope. It cuts the amount that third parties may spend, and my amendment would ensure that people receiving Government funding do not become third parties. That seems not only reasonable but something that the Opposition in particular should support.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. There is public support for candidates in this country. We have a mixed economy because we all get free delivery of our manifestos to households in our constituencies.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady is right that there is a free post, but parties are not publicly funded. They receive no cash for the free post; it is done without any cash transfer to parties, and they have no control of the money that comes to them. My point that parties are not funded by the state is right. There is Short money and Cranborne money, which I mentioned, but that is specifically for parliamentary activities, not campaigning.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The British Legion will not become a third party in a general election because it is against charity regulations for it to do so. It would be an outrage if one of the most admired and apolitical bodies in this country suddenly started saying that people should vote Conservative—let alone say that people should vote Labour, heaven forfend! Charities are not there to intervene in general elections. They have specific tax benefits and their ability to fundraise is dependent on them being charitable, not political, and there is a clear difference. There is no question of the Royal British Legion becoming a third party in a general election. That is the classic scare story that we hear again and again from the Opposition, who wish to obfuscate and confuse matters because they are worried that their trade union masters will, under this clause, have the amount they can spend reduced. They hide it; they camouflage it under this complaint on behalf of the Church of England, the Royal British Legion, and so on.
We should be concerned about third parties spending money in a way that is less regulated than political parties themselves, or having the ability to spend more and with lower effective limits on what they are able to do. The clause succeeds in doing that and would make no difference at all to charities or the Church of England. My amendment would further tighten the clause. As I have said, the Opposition should be enthusiastic about it, because it is wrong for Government money to be used by third parties when they have received it not for political activity but for their general activities of whatever kind.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The Government and the taxpayer hand out very large amounts of money to third parties. Therefore, those parties should say either, “We will not take those funds,” or, “We want to be free to campaign.” They have the choice.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman reveals to the Committee that he does not understand how voluntary sector finances work. Voluntary sector organisations have restricted and unrestricted money. When organisations such as Shelter get money for public sector contracts, it is restricted and must be used on the service. The money used for campaigning comes from voluntary donations.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady is not entirely accurate. If she were to trouble herself to look at the NCVO accounts, she would see that the largest contribution of non-allocated money—£500,000—is from the Government. When the NCVO spends unrestricted money on campaigning, there is a very good chance that it is Government money, which seems improper. I am well aware of the distinction between restricted and non-restricted money. Unfortunately, many Government grants are not sufficiently restricted and therefore can be used to lobby the Government. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) challenged me on that—I am concerned about that too, but it is not the specific point I am making.
Angela Smith
I thank my hon. Friend. What he said provides further evidence to show how this Bill was not properly thought through before it was brought before us. It shows, too, the amount of work that should have been done and the issues that should have been sorted out before it was brought here.
Helen Goodman
I am sure my hon. Friend is aware—I hope so—of the paper produced by the House of Commons Library, which shows that under the Bill’s proposals, the limits on third party spending in Wales are coming down to £24,000 and to £10,000 in Northern Ireland. That would mean that in Wales and Northern Ireland, it would be impossible to employ anybody in a voluntary sector organisation to run any kind of campaign for one year in four.
Angela Smith
I agree with my hon. Friend on that point.
As I was saying, our amendment is designed to return us to the status quo on thresholds and to help protect smaller charities and groups from being caught by legislation, making it virtually impossible for them to participate in the democratic process. That must be right, and the Electoral Commission has suggested, as I pointed out earlier, that the threshold should be raised. Let me quote from the evidence given by Jenny Watson to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee:
“We said again in our written evidence that one practical thing that could be done to make a difference to the Bill would be to raise the thresholds at which people have to register, and we have a particular concern about that as it relates to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, because those thresholds are low.”
Let me ask the Government why the voice of the regulator is being so badly ignored in respect of this legislative process. Why is the Electoral Commission being ignored? We will listen with interest to the Minister’s response on that point.
As far as the limits for controlled expenditure are concerned, our position is clear: the limits need to be defined in the context of meaningful reform of the funding of political parties and of their ability to throw big money at election campaigns. In other words, the Government need to withdraw the Bill and to rethink. They need to enter into meaningful negotiations with the other political parties and to commit to proper consultation and scrutiny of proposals as they emerge, in relation to both political parties and the third sector.
In concluding my remarks, I ask the Minister to think again about not just specific points in this clause, but something more fundamental. The Minister is a Liberal Democrat; I ask him to take back to his Conservative partners the message that the Government’s whole approach to this issue needs to be looked at again. “Think again” is our message to the Government, who should commit to discussions designed to produce meaningful reform within which we can place sensible changes to the rules on third party funding—changes that we can consult on with confidence, knowing that we have done the right thing overall in changing our politics for the better.
Summer Adjournment
Helen Goodman Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
My constituent, Mrs Rene Chung, is not an illegal immigrant, although that is how she has been treated, in part, by the Home Office and the UK Border Agency—I am glad to see that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), is in his place.
Mrs Rene Chung is a Canadian citizen and she has been living in the UK, perfectly legally, since 2008. She is married to a British citizen and she is a top-flight business woman. She contributes to Britain’s economic performance, and no doubt to the revenues going into the Exchequer through the tax system. For her job it is essential that she travels. The chief executive of the company for which she works—an international, executive search and selection company—recently wrote to the Home Secretary as follows:
“Ms Chung works as a Senior Consultant for me, and as a valued member of my company, she holds expert knowledge about our clients and their businesses, and she also has valuable experience of interviewing and assessing the suitability of candidates for our clients. Ms Chung is also responsible for business development and she is required to support me in “pitch” meetings which involves visiting clients’ offices all over Europe. Our business travel occurs about two times a month, and is usually planned at very short notice i.e. one week notice or less. It is important for me to stress that Ms Chung’s ability to carry out her basic job responsibilities is directly linked to her ability to travel. Ms Chung has performed extremely well in my company for the past four years, and she has proven to be an asset to the company. It is therefore important for me to request that Ms Chung is allowed to continue travelling regularly for business.”
I will not detain the House with the details of Rene Chung’s case, but I want to highlight three points. First, Mrs Chung has been waiting for more than a year for the renewal of her spouse visa application—in my view, an unacceptable length of time. Secondly, the Home Office has already made a disastrous error in handling her case by incorrectly deeming Mrs Chung’s application to have been withdrawn—the Immigration Minister has apologised for that in his latest letter to me. Thirdly, and most disgracefully of all, when Mrs Chung recently returned to Gatwick, following a business visit to Europe, she was locked up for six hours and released only after her passport had been confiscated. Such conduct is more redolent of an authoritarian police state than what we expect in a democratic Britain that pays proper regard to basic human rights.
When it comes to supporting economic growth in the business community, the Home Office is wholly apart from the rest of the Government, who are doing all they can to support economic growth in the business community—some signs of success are, I hope, beginning to show through. On the other hand, as far as I can see, the Home Office takes absolutely no account of the need to support the business community, including individual business men and women trying to contribute to our economic growth. It is blindingly obvious that it should introduce a fast-track procedure for processing applications for visa renewals of people with a clear legal right to be in this country and for whom travel is essential to their work. I put it to the Home Secretary that fast-track processing should be put in place forthwith. In cases such as Mrs Chung’s, I see no reason why visa renewal applications should not be processed within a maximum of four weeks.
Finally, I want to make a complaint to the Immigration Minister about a recent answer he has given to me. I appreciate that he has probably got the worst job in the Government and is probably grossly overburdened, but on 11 July he gave me a seriously misleading answer. I tabled a question to the Home Secretary asking when I would receive a reply to a total of four letters I had sent to her about Mrs Rene Chung’s case. The Minister replied:
“I wrote to my right hon. Friend on 3 July 2013.”—[Official Report, 11 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 367W.]
The answer was misleading, because it related only to the first letter I wrote to the Home Secretary. I have received no reply to the remaining three letters. I ask my hon. Friend the Immigration Minister to make the appropriate correction in Hansard and, most particularly, to reply forthwith to the three outstanding letters I have sent to the Home Secretary about Mrs Rene Chung’s case, to return her passport to her forthwith and to renew her spouse visa application forthwith.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have just learned that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has laid an order under the Communications Act 2003 to reduce the number of public service broadcasting reviews from a regular review every five years to perhaps only one a decade. The order is not available in the Vote Office and cannot be read on the parliamentary website. It is less than an hour before the House rises for the last time for several weeks. Can you give me any guidance or advice, Mr Deputy Speaker, on what to do?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Unfortunately not. It is a matter for the Minister, but I am sure that if anything is untoward, the Vote Office will investigate. The point is certainly on the record now, however, and I am sure we are all aware of the communication—or rather, on this occasion, the lack of it.
Paid Directorships and Consultancies (MPs)
Helen Goodman Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
Yes, I fear Labour also misunderstands the nature of the relationship of a director to a company, and, where a director is a Member of Parliament, the relationship between those two responsibilities. Someone may act as a director and have a responsibility to the company as a whole in certain areas—I freely admit that for one year in the more than 16 years I have been in this House, I was a director of a company while also a Member of Parliament. I entered into an explicit contract that I would not undertake any activities for that company that drew on my interests and responsibilities as an MP—[Interruption.] No, we did not publish the contract, but I entered into a contract that made it clear that where there was any conflict of interest, the company would expect me to declare it and remove myself from any activity with the company concerned. I was very clear about that, so the question of a conflict of interest between my responsibilities as a Member of Parliament and to the company would not arise.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman has described beautifully how the contract he drew up with the company protected the interest of the company, but not how it protected the interests of this House or of his constituents. Even the right hon. Gentleman must know that he who pays the piper calls the tune. That is the point.
Mr Lansley
On the contrary, I was explaining to the House how it is perfectly straightforward not to prejudice one’s responsibilities as a Member of Parliament. Members in this House are very clear about that and that is why such matters are published in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The fact that the hon. Lady has stood up and said that he who pays the piper calls the tune will be an entertaining thought for us to take forward and I look forward to my hon. Friends making that very clear.
The hon. Member for Hemsworth knows that I have written to the Leader of the Opposition about the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, published today, to say that if he and his colleagues wish to follow through on the principle initiated by the Leader of the Opposition that members of trade unions should be able to exercise a deliberate choice about their participation in a political fund, the Bill is available. I invite the hon. Gentleman to come forward and say whether or not he will do that. If he does not, we will know that it was all rhetoric with no follow-through.
The conclusion of the Committee on Standards in Public Life was that Members of Parliament should remain free to have paid employment unrelated to their role as MPs. That was widely accepted, and I have seen no evidence or argument that questions the validity of the conclusion and the hon. Gentleman mentioned no individual case that prejudiced that conclusion. We have clear rules on lobbying and the registration of interests that were put before the House by the previous Labour Government and agreed in April 2009. As we heard, the hon. Member for Hemsworth, who was on the Government Benches at that time, supported that and was against the exclusion of other earnings. The then Government did not go further down that path and they were right not to do so.
We have mechanisms for investigating any alleged breach of the rules and proper procedures for taking action where necessary. The Chairman of the Standards Committee, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is in his place and if he wished, he could take action—although I suspect he would not need to do so, as no case arises. I do not think we have any lack of rules that would enable us to act when any conflict of interest took place. We do not need new and arbitrary rules.
John Hemming
The last such resignation was in the 1960s, when the practice went against the then Government and was brought to an end. The second job of being a Minister is clearly demanding, and it undermines that Member’s constituency activity.
The wording of the motion is absolutely dreadful in that it would pick up one of my businesses but not the other. Why is that? What is the sense in picking up one structure of ownership and not another? The Opposition are also suggesting that we should not take the earned money, but they have no problem with those Members who are shareholders taking unearned income. Traditionally, Labour Members thought that earned income was more acceptable than unearned income, but they now seem to be arguing that we should have our unearned income. That is easy enough for me to structure, as I am in control of my corporate structures, but it is difficult for other people in other circumstances. The whole thing is frankly absurd. It drives us on again to what I think the hon. Member for Derby North was arguing for—the development of a political class. He did say that. He said that the Labour party wants a political class—a concept according to which we work only in politics and do not have any experience outside it.
Helen Goodman
No, no, no, no—the hon. Gentleman completely misses the point. It is perfectly possible to do as I did and have three different jobs before entering this House. That gave me more than 20 years of working experience in different institutions, which I can bring to bear on the politics—without having another paid job alongside being a Member of Parliament.
John Hemming
The point I am making is a very simple one: I do not think we should have a political class. An Opposition Member has called for a political class—he said those words, and I see nods around the Chamber—but I think that is very dangerous. It is dangerous to have a situation where external bodies beyond the Government, who do control votes in Parliament, control people in Parliament. Apart from being extremely badly drafted, the motion drives things further towards a political class. Thus people who have not had real jobs go through the special adviser process and all that sort of thing, ending up not being in the real world. That moves against the concept of people being able to be Members of Parliament for a short period of time, and what do we gain from it? Nothing.
Mr Buckland
I had better not give way any further because I am running out of time. I accept that it is for individual Members to make judgments about the balances they have to strike—believe you me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I view it as a great honour and privilege to serve the people of my constituency, and I think about that every working moment. However, I do feel that I strike a fair balance in the work I do. I am available for my constituents and I work as hard as any other MP to fight for their interests. Bringing into this place the work that I have done in the past and the experience that I have gained, and keeping in touch with it in the way I do during the recess is beneficial.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman, too, is being sincere in what he is saying, but does he not think it slightly incongruous that this House is the last place where what he describes is possible? Even in the other place people are not allowed to be part of the Chamber and part of the judiciary.
Mr Buckland
I do not think that is actually right, because the office of recorder was not included in the exemptions in the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which, of course, was passed by the previous Labour Government. I make no apology for that, because I believe that individual—