Business of the House

Debate between Lord Harper and Anne Main

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I had not heard that specific piece of information, but even if it is not the case, if the Bill does go through the other place very rapidly, in effect a Bill with significant constitutional effects will have been passed without proper scrutiny in either House.

[Mrs Main]

Before the political point that was just made, my right hon. Friend was making the extremely valuable point that the House of Lords is a revising Chamber. We do the Lords a great disservice if we do not give them adequate time to advise and revise. This House will have very little time to take advantage of all the expertise in that House if its Members are not allowed to do their job in a proper fashion.

[Mr Harper]

I completely agree, but my major point was that I do not like the process whereby we do not consider Bills properly and then expect the Lords to do all the scrutiny. Certainly, when I was taking constitutional legislation through this House a number of years ago, as Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, I tried to ensure that we had sufficient time to debate it properly, because for important constitutional matters, and particularly for this matter, which is effectively about enacting the result of a referendum of the people, it is important that it is elected Members who make the final decisions, not Members of the other place. My principal point on the substance of the business of the House motion is therefore that it provides insufficient time to allow proper scrutiny of the Bill.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) all referred to precedent. I think that a dispute broke out on the SNP Front Bench, because the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire acknowledged that this process was indeed a precedent, and the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West then tried to differentiate it and say that it was not really a precedent, arguing that Brexit is such an unprecedented process that we cannot draw any lessons from the use of this procedure. I think that they are mistaken.

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green made very reasonable points. As a former business manager, I think that future business managers will note that Members from a number of different parties have accepted this as a legitimate process. It is perfectly true, as the shadow Leader of the House said, that Clerks would not allow anything disorderly to take place. That is correct, but a majority in this House can override Standing Orders and ram things through, and it is convention and self-restraint that stop Governments using their majorities in inappropriate ways.

Members on both sides of the House ought to reflect on the fact that if in future a Government with a significant majority choose to use that majority to override the usual conventions and procedures of the House and ram through pieces of controversial legislation in a day, those Members cannot complain that the Government are behaving inappropriately. I would deprecate that behaviour and would not want any part in it, but the people will be watching these proceedings and following this precedent. I am pretty sure that someone will try to use this precedent again at some point, and Members may regret supporting it today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

No, I fundamentally disagree, for this reason. I will give the hon. Lady a couple of examples. First, I suspect that there are many people—I do not know this, but it is my assumption—who supported the Cabinet’s withdrawal agreement and political declaration who, if we attached a referendum to it, would no longer support it, because those of us on the Conservative Benches made a commitment to implement the result of the referendum. Indeed, when the hon. Lady stood for election on these Benches, she made the same commitment, I believe. The public made a decision—it was a once-in-a-generation decision—to leave the European Union. That is what I want to deliver, and I promised not to have another referendum. If we added on a referendum, people who have currently supported the proposition would no longer support it. I for one will not vote for another referendum.

There is also something that I have spotted. It is no surprise to me that those who want to remain in the European Union want to have a binary choice between the Cabinet’s deal and remain, because they have spotted that the proposition put forward by the Government is very unpopular in opinion polls. They have also noticed that many people who campaigned for leave do not believe that it is really leaving, and they think that if that is the binary choice presented to the public, it will be the best opportunity to get remain. They do not want a referendum with a range of choices. For my part, the only referendum that would be even vaguely justifiable is one that accepted that the public had asked to leave and simply gave them the choices of how to leave. That might be defensible, but nothing else.

[Mrs Main]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware of this, but I want to put it on record that when the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) pressed her amendment on having a people’s vote, it got 85 votes. Revisiting the matter, as she did just now, does not make it more popular.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I note from the indicative votes on Monday that, again, the motion on a confirmatory vote was supported by fewer people than the Cabinet’s withdrawal agreement and did not achieve a majority.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Debate between Lord Harper and Anne Main

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I will follow your strictures, Madam Deputy Speaker, and be relatively brief.

Let me take first the words on the Order Paper, which do not bear any relation to what the shadow Secretary of State said. She said she was asking the House to support a motion to pause and fix universal credit, but that is not what it says. It is what the title said yesterday, but between yesterday and today all the Opposition are now calling for is for us to pause universal credit and not bother doing any fixing at all.

[Mrs Main]

Perhaps my right hon. Friend needs to look at the Annunciator. We have moved on. We are now not pausing; we are just discussing. There is no mention of “pause”.

[Mr Harper]

I was grateful for my hon. Friend’s earlier intervention, which was taken up. It is a serious point. The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), made the point that pausing the roll-out of universal credit does not help anybody, given the positive effects it is having on getting people into work and allowing them to progress in the workplace. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the point that this is both an in-work and out-of-work benefit. That means that those who are out of work and are thinking about taking a job can have the confidence to do so, because it will not mean throwing up in the air all their existing arrangements for paying for their house and supporting their family. They will have the confidence to take on that work and to take extra hours, because they know they will be better off and that if it does not work out they will not have to go back to the drawing board.