Nomination of Members to Committees

Debate between Nigel Evans and Pete Wishart

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

So there we have it: “Great power grab 2”, the sequel, the return—“Then they came for our Committees.” This is an incredible, totally undemocratic power grab from a Government who do not command a majority in this House.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I will make a little progress, and then give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Not content with giving themselves unprecedented powers under the repeal Bill, the Government are now trying to manipulate the Committees of this House in their favour. The nation should be very worried about what is going on, because this Government are showing nothing other than contempt for democracy in their desire to ignore and circumvent the democratic verdict of this country.

[Mr Evans]

I say to the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), that this is how it is done: a Member seeks to intervene and that is granted, and they rise to speak and then sit down. That is what a debate is all about.

It has just been said that this is undemocratic and a power grab, but we are in the Chamber of the House of Commons with a motion before us. We are going to have a vote; if the Government do not have a majority in the House, they will lose that vote. If the Government win the vote, they have a majority in this House of Commons. So let us not beat around the bush; let us get to the vote.

[Pete Wishart]

I am almost grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Yes, the Government with their grubby £1 billion deal with the Democratic Unionist party have a confidence and supply arrangement on the Floor of the House; what they most definitely do not have is a majority on the Committees of this House, which are determined by the country and how the people voted.

This minority Conservative Government have 317 Members out of the 650 Members available in this House; that amounts to 48.7% of the membership of this House. What they are therefore entitled to is 48.7% of the membership of the Committees of this House. But that is not the case for this Government; for them, democracy is a mere impediment as they grimly hold on to power and ensure they get their way in everything they try to undertake. This is a Parliament of minorities, and the structures and arrangements of this House must reflect that reality and that fact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

All these great concerns about chaos and arrangements that will lead to this and that are an indictment of the Members of this House. They say, “If we were to respect parliamentary arithmetic when it comes to this, all it would lead to is chaos.” That says something about the membership of this House. More critically and crucially, it goes against the advice of the Clerks on the membership of Committees. I say to the hon. Gentleman: have a look at what the Clerks determine as to how these Standing Committees should be established. The fact that this House is prepared, in this vote, to overlook the good advice of the Clerks on a matter they are obliged to determine is a shame on this House.

I want to come back to Margaret Thatcher. I never thought I would be quoting her in the House. It is a novelty, and I do not think I will ever get used to it or be comfortable with it. Let me get back to what I was saying about the 1970s and to what Conservative Members are asking us to do here. They are saying that just because the Labour party did something rotten in the 1970s, we must do something rotten too, in order to address this. That is totally unacceptable to Scottish National party Members who say, “A curse on all your houses. Deal with the parliamentary arithmetic. Accept the realities and get on with it.”

I will make two points about the 1970s, and again I was intrigued when I looked into this. The Harrison amendment was introduced in the most despicable way to this House, by subterfuge and sleight of hand, but the amendment created this set of conditions for a couple of months. At that point, the Labour Chair of the then Committee of Selection died and it stopped; we went back to the normal arrangements and for the rest of that Labour minority Administration, the parliamentary arithmetic of the House was respected. The second thing about that minority Labour Administration was that it became a minority Labour Administration––that Labour Government actually won an election. The current Conservative Government never experienced that a few months ago, so we will take no lessons on this.

Let me deal with this “chaos” thing. Sometimes democracy is not all that convenient and it throws up strange results. Sometimes we just have to get on and deal with it. What you do not do is try to circumvent democracy; what you do not do is table motions like this one, which is so disrespectful to the people who voted in the election.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I have given way to the hon. Gentleman before and I want to make some progress.

What you do is respect the way that the people would do this. The most ridiculous and audacious thing in all the anti-democracy that these guys are up to right now is this new Committee of Selection. As a Select Committee of this House, it should be subject to the formula determined by the Clerks, but the Government want to give themselves an inbuilt majority. They will determine the numbers on Committees with this, so on anything contentious—anything that we are likely to object to—they will determine that an odd number will be used and so they will get their way. This is absolutely disgraceful.

I want to say something to my friends in the Democratic Unionist party, because it is important. I have heard quite a lot about this working majority issue, and I want to explore it a little. I say to them that we used to campaign together for the rights of minority parties in this House, as we all were then. I hope that they reflect on that when they vote tonight and do not just give that crowd over there a majority in these Committees. I hope they remember the campaigns that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and I fought together to ensure that the smaller parties in this House were properly represented in these types of Committees. We fought long, hard fights together, and it is shameful to think about completely giving this over to the Conservatives.

There is another aspect to this: if DUP Members vote with the Government tonight, it will leave questions about their Opposition status and raise further questions about their entitlement to Short money. It would have to raise those questions because it would look like the Government are paying a rival political party. It is also worth noting that a High Court ruling is coming up soon about the whole grubby DUP deal.