Kettering General Hospital

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Gentleman is right, of course. He gives a tantalising flavour of the climax of my speech, which will be about the urgent care hub proposal for Kettering general hospital, on which he, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough have been working together.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Before he moves on to the climax, which we are all waiting to hear, may I mention, in addition to the work of the hospital and its staff, the contribution of support organisations? One of those is Crazy Hats, a local breast cancer charity run by Glennis Hooper, who is a remarkable lady. All three of us MPs took part in the charity walk on Sunday.

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes—not only have we three north Northamptonshire Members worked on a cross-party basis to secure the future of our local hospital, but we all dressed up in funny outfits on Sunday to walk around Wicksteed park in Kettering in support of Glennis Hooper and the marvellous work she does for Crazy Hats, which raises money for cancer treatment and care for our constituents. I suppose that it is part of an MP’s job on occasion to dress up in a funny costume and look silly for the benefit of constituents, and we are all pleased to do that.

Some further good news about Kettering general hospital, from Department of Health statistics, is that finished consultant episodes when any procedure took place in the hospital—which I think is bureaucracy-speak for the number of operations—went up from 49,638 in 2010 to 53,869 in 2013. I am told that there are 43 more hospital doctors and 55 more nurses than in 2010 and there is a 24% increase in diagnostic tests, a one third increase in the number of people treated for cancer and a 71% increase in the number of MRI scans performed. Of course just two years ago the £30 million foundation wing was opened. It has a 16-bed intensive care unit, a 28-bed cardiac unit and a 32-bed children’s unit. That was massive new investment in our local hospital.

It should not be forgotten—and we three Members of Parliament for the area do not forget—that increasingly Kettering general hospital offers our constituents world-class health care. The latest example of that is the cardiac investigations department, which has received national recognition for its high standards in heart ultrasound scanning. Every year 8,000 of our constituents are patients through that unit, which provides ultrasound scans of the heart. Those can reveal diseases such as heart failure and valve diseases.

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is a good example of the way Kettering general hospital has raised its game to tackle local health needs. Increasingly, our constituents do not have to go to Glenfield, because they can get better care at their local hospital. In the case in question, that is because of the £300,000 investment in three state-of-the-art ultrasound scanners, which can show the heart in three dimensions. The 16-strong cardiac investigations team has been awarded accreditation by the British Society of Echocardiography, which is an affiliate of the British Cardiovascular Society. That accolade is not given lightly. Kettering hospital is one of only 38 in the country to have achieved that accreditation; some specialist centres, such as Glenfield, Papworth, John Radcliffe and Coventry, have not yet attained it.

The £4 million upgrade of the maternity department at Kettering general hospital started in December. An average of 10 babies per day are delivered at the hospital—including the babies of Members who are here today. It is part of an £18 million investment in the hospital.

In coming to the climax of my remarks, I want to talk about the innovative proposal for an urgent care hub at the hospital—my colleagues will appreciate this, because we have been working on it together. Over the past few months, the hospital has been liaising with partners and developing a strategic case for an urgent care hub on the hospital site to tackle long-term, urgent care pressure relating to population growth, about which we have spoken; age and acuity; and increasing public demand for prompt access to urgent care.

In December, the trust shared its strategic case with the foundation trust regulator, Monitor, which is currently considering the proposal. If Monitor approves the case, it will go on to an outline business case and finally a full business case for approval by Monitor, the Department of Health and the Treasury. The key to its success is that the hospital has been working in close collaboration with its health and social care partners. It is developing what is essentially a one-stop shop for our constituents who need urgent medical care.

The aim is to develop a £30 million urgent care hub on the hospital site that will combine secondary care, hospital A and E and urgent care assessment with primary care—in other words, GP services, minor injury care and social and community care services. The proposal has arisen because there has been significant growth in demand for that type of urgent care in the local health economy of our three constituencies, partly due to a 30% population growth over the past 19 years, with another 9% expected by 2020, and a rise in the population of older people, about which we have spoken. There has also been a massive 83% increase in the use of A and E over the past 20 years as a means of accessing urgent care.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is outlining an exciting new project. The scheme will include a minor injuries and accidents unit at the Isebrook hospital, which will relieve up to 40% of my constituents from having to go to Kettering. It is bang next to a 24-hour GP service, so that is exciting for my constituents, too.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend has rightly made that issue a priority for his constituents, and he has led an effective campaign on it. That facility will be similar to the facility currently in operation in Corby. The idea is to treat people as locally as possible so they do not have to present themselves at Kettering’s A and E department. It is all part of making local health care delivery more efficient and effective, and my hon. Friend is right to highlight it.

Crown Dependencies

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

I apologise for not saying earlier that we have an advantage in Westminster Hall in that if any hon. Member wants a second go, they may do so.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for the chance to remind the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) that, although he gave a good answer to the first part of my question, it was so detailed that he forgot the answer to the second part about the relationship between the Crown dependencies and the European Court of Justice.

Accident and Emergency

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Kettering general hospital will be well known to the Secretary of State, because he was good enough to visit it a year ago to see the excellent service provided by its doctors, nurses and ancillary staff. The hospital has been in existence for 116 years and it is badly needed and much loved. At one time or other, every resident of Kettering has had a member of their family go through the hospital.

The hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and I have put our party political differences aside and joined forces to campaign for extra investment for the accident and emergency facility at Kettering general hospital, because it is needed by all of our constituents. We are working as one on the issue. The other good news is that both the hospital trust and the local clinical commissioning groups are working as one on the issue.

I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), who is not in his place, for meeting all three of us, together with representatives from the hospital and the CCGs, over the summer. He has been good enough to agree to meet us again on 15 January.

All the professionals have come together and agreed that, despite their best efforts and despite following the advice of the Department of Health’s intensive support team to the letter, whichever Government are in power would have to face the fact that the A and E at Kettering is, sadly, not fit for purpose and needs extra capital investment. Their bid to the Department of Health will be for £20 million for Kettering A and E and an extra £3 million to create community hubs—in other words, urgent care centres-plus—in Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough. The three hon. Members, the CCGs and the hospital trust will make a joint bid for that money when we meet the Minister in January.

The challenge the A and E at Kettering general hospital faces is serving one of the fastest growing populations in the country. In the last decade, Kettering’s population growth ranked 31st out of 348 districts around the country and it had the sixth highest increase in the number of households. Few other parts of the country are growing as fast as the Kettering area, which also has an increasingly ageing population.

The A and E department at Kettering general hospital was constructed in the 1970s for about 25,000 to 30,000 attendances a year. In 2001 attendances had hit 56,000 and that figure is now 85,000. The A and E centre is effectively bursting at the seams, and attendances show absolutely no sign of falling off. Typically, there could be between 170 and 230 attendances a day—the highest has been 260 in a 24-hour period this year.

The professional staff—the clinicians—in the A and E have made multiple operational changes. They have adopted all the best practice ideas provided by the Department’s intensive support team, but the key issue remains the estate, and the only way to solve that problem is an injection of capital investment. With that investment and with the development of community facilities in Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough, the professional clinicians are confident that the A and E department could at long last start hitting its A and E targets. At the moment, it is treating only 89% —well below the 98% target specified by the Government—of patients within a four-hour period.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I apologise for being out of breath, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just wanted to ask my hon. Friend whether the proposal he is talking about has all-party support in the north of the county?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Mr Peter Bone has just arrived in the Chamber, but one is normally expected to be in the Chamber for more than just a few seconds so as to hear the debate before intervening. I am sure the hon. Gentleman apologises to the House.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am very grateful for the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough because he has many duties to attend to in this House on behalf of his constituents and he has been at the forefront of the campaign to get extra investment into Kettering’s A and E, and also to develop the community hub patient facilities in Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough.

With the £3 million capital expenditure bid going to the Department, one of the options would be for a community hub at the Isebrook hospital, which would help to serve my hon. Friend’s constituents in Wellingborough and, by doing so, would take the pressure off the A and E at Kettering. If we are successful in this cross-party bid, the A and E at Kettering would be transformed into an A and E plus an urgent care centre on the site of Kettering general hospital. It would be a one-stop shop for local patients. The A and E at Kettering has the confidence of local people, but the local population growth means that capital investment is needed more than ever, and we look to the Government to provide that in early January.

[Mr Bone]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the House for the discourtesy shown, but I was very surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) was called so early in the debate.

Wellingborough Prison Site

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the proposed sale of the Wellingborough prison site and for being granted this Adjournment debate so early on by Mr Speaker. I am pleased to be joined by my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). I thank Eliza Richardson, my researcher, for all her efforts in preparing this speech and for the extra hours she has put in.

I thank the prisons Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), for taking the time to be present this evening. As was said recently in the House of Commons, and as was endorsed by the Secretary of State for Justice,

“we have a most excellent prisons Minister who has many superb qualities… One of the best of his qualities is that when he has made a decision and new facts are put to him, he has the courage to reconsider and change his decision.”—[Official Report, 12 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 799.]

I agree totally with that endorsement.

I shall start by talking about the sorry history of how we have got to this situation. When the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was Secretary of State for Justice, he had the kindness and respect for Parliament to phone me from Downing street one day at 6 am to state that Wellingborough prison was going to be put out for market testing and that he would be making a statement in the House of Commons later that day. He answered my questions privately and I was in a position to ask a sensible question when he made his statement.

I worked with prison officers, management and members of the public to improve Wellingborough prison and to put in an excellent public sector bid. I would particularly praise the prison officers for going against union advice and co-operating with the project. Wellingborough was so improved that it was the third-cheapest prison in the country and the Ministry of Justice decided not to privatise it. So all was well; the prison operated efficiently and with the support of the local community.

But then, without warning, on 17 July 2012, the last sitting day of Parliament before the summer recess, the then Secretary of State for Justice announced the proposed closure of Wellingborough prison. I was given no warning of the decision and found out about it only during a live BBC radio interview. In my opinion, that was a totally unacceptable divergence from parliamentary protocol and utterly disrespectful to me as a local Member of Parliament, but more importantly it was disrespectful to my constituents.

I immediately applied for an emergency debate under Standing Order No. 24. In turning down my request, Mr Speaker made it clear that it would not be possible to grant it as the House was going into recess the next day. The then Secretary of State kindly wrote me a handwritten letter apologising for what had happened and saying that it should never have occurred. That was followed by a debate in Westminster Hall on 5 September 2012—I think it was the prisons Minister’s first debate—in which I made clear my displeasure at the appalling handling of the situation. He said:

“The way in which he heard about the announcement of the closure is, as he said, profoundly unacceptable. It should not have happened, and I apologise to him for that.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2012; Vol. 549, c. 125WH.]

He was also kind enough to visit the prison and see its potential for growth.

I also presented a petition on 4 September 2012 from many residents of Wellingborough and the surrounding area against the closure of the prison. On 13 March 2013, a press notice from the Cabinet Office announced that HMP Wellingborough had been sold, but after an emergency question the prisons Minister said the site had not been sold and that it had been a clerical error. There were also a number of private meetings with him and the Secretary of State.

Given this history, one would have thought that the Ministry of Justice would be extremely sensitive about making any changes to the Wellingborough prison site without contacting and discussing the matter with me, the local MP. One would have thought there would be huge red flags on both the file and computers saying, “Make sure the local MP knows what’s happening”. That makes the events of the last few weeks completely baffling.

On 3 September, I wrote to the prisons Minister requesting a meeting. I was going to bring along a local prison officer who had some radical ideas on how Wellingborough prison could be reopened. Apparently, that letter was lost in transit. In any event, I received no reply. Next, the Minister told me privately that he was writing to me to say the site of Wellingborough prison was to be sold. At the beginning of November, I received that letter, which was short and gave no indication of why the site was surplus to requirements.

So yet again a decision about Wellingborough prison had been taken without consulting the local Member of Parliament. If the Department was considering selling the site, it should have discussed it with me in private so that at least I could have put my concerns and those of my constituents before a decision was reached. It is also unacceptable that this was done at a time when a request for a meeting was outstanding. In my view, this was yet again disrespectful not only to me, but to Parliament and my constituents.

Tonight’s debate is not a party political matter, but one that directly affects the lives of many of my constituents. However, it is a debate about something that has national consequences. I will be arguing strongly for the Secretary of State for Justice’s policy on prisons. He recently said:

“My intention is to have more adult male prison capacity available than we had in 2010 but at a much lower unit and overall cost. Our strategy for achieving this is to replace accommodation which is old, inefficient or has limited long-term strategic value with cheaper modern capacity which is designed to better meet the demand for prison places and supports our aim to drive down stubbornly high reoffending rates.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 22WS.]

I could not agree with that policy more: keep open and develop low-cost prisons and close expensive, Victorian prisons. What a splendid policy—one that any Conservative should be able to support, and a significant shift from the previous Secretary of State, whose policy seemed to be: “Close prisons and let’s hope the prison population falls.”

As the Member of Parliament for Wellingborough, I could not be happier, as Wellingborough has the third cheapest prison in the country and the second cheapest in its category. Official Ministry of Justice figures show that the cost of a prison place in 2011-12 at Wellingborough was £17,894—the second cheapest out of all male category C prisons. Not only that, but the prison has significant room for expansion, a local population that supports it and a council that wants to encourage its development. It has a superb location as an overspill prison from London, yet is an easy location for people from the rest of the country to reach. Wellingborough prison absolutely fits the Government’s policy. Terrific: another success story for the Conservative-led coalition. Er, well, no, I am afraid not. Instead of developing Wellingborough prison, the Justice Department first closes it and then, this month, decides to sell it. It flies completely in the face of the Department’s stated policy.

Wellingborough prison lies midway between Bedford and Leicester prisons, 22 miles from Bedford and 45 miles from Leicester. The cost of a prison place in Bedford is £33,679 per person, while in Leicester it is £41,855. Let us compare that with the cost in Wellingborough, at £17,894. It does not take a rocket scientist to say that we should close Bedford and Leicester prisons and keep Wellingborough open. That is what should happen, if the Government policy was implemented. After all, the Secretary of State said we should

“replace accommodation which is old, inefficient…with cheaper modern capacity”.—[Official Report, 10 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 22WS.]

I do not understand why the prisons Minister does not want to support the Secretary of State in implementing this sensible Government policy—it is surely in his career interests to do so, if for no other reason.

We will hear the argument tonight that Wellingborough prison is somehow located in the east midlands, where there is no shortage of prison places, and miles from London, where there is a huge lack of prison capacity. When that was suggested to me, I am sure I saw a fleet of flying pigs doing somersaults and belly laughing. Wellingborough prison has for a long time been an overflow prison for London. It is located 50 minutes from central London by train and has superb road links from the M1. However, it is just over an arbitrary line drawn by the Prison Service to say that it is in the east midlands. Wellingborough looks to London and is the ideal location to take surplus London prisoners.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend not only on securing this debate but on the way he is delivering his excellent speech. I do not think any Member of Parliament could have mounted a better campaign in defence of their local prison than he has. I can confirm exactly what he has just said about the population of the prison largely coming from London. When I visited Wellingborough prison, it was fairly obvious that most of the inmates were from London, and many of his constituents will work in London. Wellingborough is only 70 miles from London, and if anyone goes down the high street in Wellingborough and says, “Where do you live?”, they will be told, “Wellingborough.” People will not say, “The east midlands”.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and his support. He is absolutely right: this “east midlands” thing in Wellingborough is a sort of invention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning that, which is an issue I shall develop a little later in my speech.

Wellingborough prison also has the huge advantage of being a very cheap area in which to build and develop. If that were not enough, the Wellingborough prison site has a massive amount of land for development, a proposed new road link to the A45, a community that supports and wants the prison, a council that is keen to see the prison develop and many prison officers living just minutes from the site.

In addition, there is another difficulty for the Ministry of Justice in trying to sell the site. If the sale of land were to go ahead, there would be serious questions about whether the Government would remain financially responsible for the prison-owned sewerage system on the site, which is used by the local housing estate. We could end up having to fork out more money for a site of which we are not even making use. I cannot see how that is cost-effective on any level. Much more than that, most of the prison is very modern and has, in fact, won prizes for its design. In the five-year period from 2004-05, an incredible £22.4 million was spent on the prison—all to be thrown away if the site is to be sold.

Clearly, we have a golden opportunity to knock down the 1960s old prison blocks, to extend the existing modern blocks and facilities and to build new blocks within the existing boundaries. We should then implement new prison operational procedures, mix both state and private employees on the same site, allow prison officers to do the essential running of the prison, while allowing private contractors to carry out other functions. We would then have the cheapest prison in the country per prisoner place and a model new prison, which could be the basis for the rest of the prison estate and provide additional overflow capacity for London.

[Mr Hollobone]

Would my hon. Friend advise us on how many prisoners there were in Wellingborough prison?

[Mr Bone]

At the time, it had a capacity of 600, of which the overwhelming majority were from London.

[Mr Hollobone]

What, then, is my hon. Friend’s understanding of the extra investment that the Ministry said it needed to bring the prison up to what it regards as modern standards?

[Mr Bone]

That is a very good question. The figure of £50 million has been bandied around; I always think that when something is around the sum of £50 million, it cannot really be based on anything. That was for revamping the existing prison, but I am arguing for something different. I say we should knock down the old bit, which is the minority of the prison, and build new blocks to make a much bigger, cheaper prison, with a capacity of more like 1,000 prisoners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I am very interested to hear my hon. Friend’s answers. Earlier today, in the statement from the Secretary of State for Wales, it was confirmed that the Ministry of Justice is about to build a new prison in Wales for 1,000 prisoners at a capital cost of £250 million. My hon. Friend is telling us tonight, however, that the Government could have provided modern accommodation for 600 prisoners at a fraction of that cost.

[Mr Bone]

I thank my hon. Friend again. I would argue even further that for that investment, we could actually get 1,000 prisoners accommodated. Let me correct my hon. Friend on one issue, because I believe that the proposed prison in Wrexham is going to be for 2,000 prisoners. I shall comment on that later in my speech.

Just for a moment, let us look at the London problem. The Ministry of Justice’s own figures say that it needs 18,000 prison places and has capacity for 11,000. The prisons Minister will say that he is going to build a 2,500-place prison at Feltham. Well, even if that is possible, there will still be a shortage of 4,500 prison places. The prisons Minister may say that he is going to extend other London prisons, but—hand on heart—he knows that thousands of prisoners from London will have to be imprisoned outside London. That is why the Wellingborough solution is such a sensible option. I hope that some of the extremely expensive Victorian London prisons will be closed, because that would make Wellingborough even more important.

The Minister may have been sold the idea of super-duper prisons with places for 2,500 prisoners. That may be the whizz-bang new policy at the moment, but I believe that the strategy involves a great deal of risk. I think that there will be considerable management diseconomies of scale which would make such huge establishments exceptionally difficult to run. I also think it extremely unlikely that they would be opened on time. Indeed, I think that there would be much opposition to them, and that they might never be built.

My argument, in a nutshell, is that Wellingborough prison is the right size for future development because of its location, because expanding it would be cheap, and because its running costs are very low. The Minister may say that his other plans render it surplus to requirements, but can he be sure of that? I do not think that he can, and I suggest that the prison site should remain on the Ministry of Justice estate for at least another 12 months. If by then the Minister is sure that all his plans are working and there is no need for the site to be retained, then let him go ahead and sell it; but if, as I believe, there are likely to be significant problems, let us look again at the possibility of opening and expanding Wellingborough.

In short, keeping the Wellingborough option open is simply a sensible insurance policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

rose—

Sittings of the House (22 March)

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I rise to support the amendment, because in my view the House should sit on a Wednesday in preference to a Friday. I am second to none in my admiration of the skills of the Leader of the House. He is a politician of legend throughout Cambridgeshire. He has had the good grace to visit Kettering general hospital in the past, and he is a politician without equal in his knowledge of this country’s health service. I am thus second to none in admiring his political skills, but I get the impression that he is feeling his way gently into his present position, and I feel that he has misjudged this element of his portfolio.

I give him 10 out of 10 for setting out the parliamentary timetable well in advance. I really think he has done his very best to inform the House and the House authorities about when the Chamber should be sitting, but there has been a miscalculation over the Budget. I do not know whose responsibility that is. I doubt that it is the responsibility of anyone in the Leader of the House’s office. I expect that the guilty suspect probably works somewhere in No. 11 and has not communicated the dates far enough in advance to the Leader of the House. We are therefore where we are tonight.

We are debating this matter at gone 7.30 on a Wednesday evening because the House has voted for the debate to continue until any hour. If any Members were keen to get away early this evening but voted for that motion, they would have only themselves to blame.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend makes a fundamental point. Hundreds of Members voted for the resolution, so it is quite clear, at least on the Government Benches, that they want this debate to continue until any hour so that everyone can have a chance to speak.

[Mr Hollobone]

As always, my hon. Friend is right. In both the last Parliament and the present one, he and I have ploughed quite a lonely furrow on the issue of the House rising on a Wednesday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I have done my best to apprise my constituents of the value of tuning into the parliamentary channel on one of the 13 sitting Fridays, and to lead by example by watching my hon. Friend from my room, even if I am not in the Chamber myself, and listening to his words of wisdom on so many issues. I am afraid that the message is not getting through to my constituents yet, but I will keep on trying.

My constituents do, however, want to watch Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesdays, and the problem with the motion as it stands is that they will be denied the opportunity to hear the Prime Minister being questioned on the Budget a week after it has been announced.

Let me attempt the near impossible and not view this issue through a party political prism. I think that my constituents, whichever party they vote for—and whether they vote for any party or none at all—want to hear what the Prime Minister has to say about the important issues of the day before the House rises for a long recess, and that, on any level, that is not an unreasonable proposition. I think that the Prime Minister himself would be keen to do that. What I am questioning is the advice that the Prime Minister is being given in this respect. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset observed, the Prime Minister does extremely well. Indeed, most Prime Ministers do well at Prime Minister’s Question Time. It is not a level playing field: the balance of advantage lies with the Prime Minister of the day. I think that the Prime Minister would be up for it, but I think that he is being badly advised.

I also think that the timetable proposed by the Leader of the House does a discourtesy to the House. That is to do with private Members’ Bills. Half a dozen Members have tabled important Bills for debate on 22 March, which have been listed on the Order Paper for the whole House to see for many, many weeks. Three of them have been tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. Also tabled for that day are the Gift Vouchers and Insolvency Bill, the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007 (Amendment) Bill, and—perhaps most important of all—the Charities Act 2011 (Amendment) Bill, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), which was given a Second Reading by one of the largest majorities given to any private Member's Bill in the history of the House.

[Mr Bone]

I would vote for the Government motion if the Leader of the House assured me that if the Budget debate finished early on that day, the business listed for the day could then be proceeded with and include the private Members’ Bills. Would my hon. Friend support that proposition?

[Mr Hollobone]

I certainly feel the Government should give some ground on this issue, just out of generosity to the Members I have mentioned in the course of my remarks, because those Bills would be extremely worthy legislation, and given that the parliamentary timetable is not exactly chock-a-block at present, I think there is some room for manoeuvre for the Leader of the House.

My main contention, however, is that Wednesday is, rightly or wrongly, in many respects the most important day of the parliamentary week. I think it is a great shame that following the Budget—one of the pivotal events of the parliamentary year—the House and the country are to be denied the opportunity of holding the Prime Minister to account for the contents of that Budget a week after it has been delivered. Our parliamentary democracy is eroded as a result. I will support the Opposition amendment tonight, and I hope the Leader of the House takes my remarks in the spirit in which they are offered.

EU-UK Relationship (Reform)

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It is also a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I return his compliment by saying that he spoke exceptionally well, and of course I disagree with every word that he said. He has a great ability to speak for the Labour party, which has made it clear that it wants more Europe, not less. That should be the message that goes out from this Chamber: Labour wants more and more Europe. That is perfectly fair, and I congratulate him on saying it.

I do not know whether you have noticed, Mr Hollobone, but more than 20 Conservative Members of Parliament have attended this debate. There are two Members representing the Democratic Unionist party and one representing the Liberal Democrats, but as for Labour, until the hon. Member for Rhondda came along, there was just the shadow Minister and her Parliamentary Private Secretary. It shows how little interest Labour has in Europe.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing this debate and on how well she spoke. I regret that she was able to make that speech; in my opinion, she should have been in Government. She is highly talented. The only reason why she is not in Government is that she put her principles first and voted for the EU referendum. She is a highly respected Member and deserves to be listened to. Equally, I am delighted that we have a Minister who should also have been in Government a long time ago. I am sure that now he is here, there will be a change in the direction of Government policy. I live in hope.

A few years ago, I could have made the speech that my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire made. I have now come to realise that what she described will not be achieved by staying in Europe. The only way that we will achieve it is by leaving Europe and renegotiating. I think that it would be simple for the Prime Minister to unite the Conservative party, give us a huge leap in the polls and bring UK Independence party members back to voting Conservative. He could use the idea suggested by my hon. Friend, which is to renegotiate, then put two options to the British people: accepting the renegotiation or coming out of the EU. After the renegotiation, the Prime Minister can decide whether he will campaign for the new terms or for coming out. That would unite the Conservative party, and it is what I want to see our Prime Minister do when he leads us in the next general election.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I call Julian Lewis, then Bill Cash and Alec Shelbrooke.

HMP Wellingborough

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries.

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), the new Prisons Minister, to the debate and congratulate him on being appointed to such an important ministerial role. I know from personal experience that he will bring energy, integrity and common sense to his position. I appreciate that he will not have had time to acquaint himself with the situation at Wellingborough prison and that he will have to read a speech largely prepared by his officials, but I hope that the debate will allow him to reflect on the situation and postpone any immediate closure of the prison. It would be most unfortunate if the first action of a new Prisons Minister was to close the third most cost-effective prison in the country. When it was announced that Wellingborough prison was to be closed, I knew that 600 jobs were at risk in my constituency; I did not know that it would also lead to every Minister in the Justice Department losing his job. I would like to thank Mr Speaker for granting me this debate in the first week back after the summer recess.

At 9.30 am on 17 July, the House’s last sitting day before the summer recess, the Secretary of State for Justice announced the proposed closure of Wellingborough prison. I was given no prior warning about the decision and found out about the announcement only during a live BBC radio interview. That was an unacceptable divergence from parliamentary protocol and utterly disrespectful to me as Member of Parliament for Wellingborough; more importantly, however, it was disrespectful to my constituents.

By contrast, when Wellingborough prison was placed into market testing, the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), personally phoned me from Downing street at 6 am to inform me of the decision. He was gracious enough to warn me in advance of the announcement and to answer any of my questions on the matter. In addition, he made an oral statement to the House of Commons during which hon. Members from all parties, including myself, could ask him questions. That was a far cry from the miserable, secretive and back-handed action taken by the previous Secretary of State for Justice in this Government.

I am afraid that this is yet another example of Departments wanting to ignore Parliament, ignore scrutiny and avoid debate, and of the Executive thinking they know best and that anybody else’s ideas are irrelevant. They regard Parliament as an annoying irritant that should be avoided as much as possible and think that, when it cannot be completely avoided, policies should be rushed through with the absolute minimum scrutiny.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on the excellent way he has run the campaign to save Wellingborough prison on behalf of his constituents. No constituency could ask for a more hard-working Member of Parliament.

In the light of all the bad practice that my hon. Friend has highlighted, is not this a wonderful opportunity for the new Minister to stamp his authority on his Department and his civil servants from day one, and to say clearly that what has gone on is not up to standard and that they should go away and think again? That would earn him the respect of the civil servants under him and force them to think again.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for the kind words of my hon. Friend and neighbour, and for his usual sensible advice to the Government, which I urge the Minister to take on board. The Minister’s mind must be in a whirlwind at the moment, given all the things that he has to deal with, but this is not just a little local matter—it needs to be addressed.

Immediately after I heard the announcement on the closure of Wellingborough prison, I applied to Mr Speaker’s office for an emergency debate under Standing Order No. 24. Although Mr Speaker was sympathetic to the important issue, he was unable to grant me an immediate debate, partly because the announcement was made on our last sitting day. It is rare for the Speaker to allow a Member even to make a Standing Order No. 24 application. Parliamentary protocol requires a Minister from the relevant Department about which a Standing Order No. 24 application is made to sit at the Dispatch Box and listen to it, yet the Ministry of Justice failed in this regard—no Minister was present. Yet again, this was gross discourtesy to Parliament.

The key reason given by the Ministry of Justice for the decision to close Wellingborough prison was cost. According to the Government, its closure would save the taxpayer £10 million a year and a further £50 million in renovation costs. However, if Wellingborough prison is so expensive to the taxpayer, why do the Government’s own figures show that it is the third cheapest prison in the country? The National Offenders Management Service annual report shows that there were 122 state-owned prisons in 2010-11, and that Wellingborough prison had an annual cost per prison place of £27,898, with the national average being £39,175. In other words, according to the Ministry of Justice’s figures, Wellingborough prison is £11,277 cheaper per prisoner than the national average—more than 28% cheaper. Wellingborough is therefore more than a quarter cheaper to run than the average prison in the country. Only a Department dominated by lawyers could think that closing Wellingborough prison would make good economic sense. Only lawyers could think that closing the third cheapest prison in the country on economic grounds would be right. If there is a need to close a prison, that should be an outdated Victorian prison with a higher cost per prison place.

It is estimated that £50 million is needed to renovate the prison but, as a chartered accountant, I am always wary of an estimated figure that happens to be a neat rounded sum. To me that is almost saying, “Let’s make up some huge figure to make it appear that Wellingborough is uneconomic.” I have looked into the economics of the capital investment and that is exactly what has happened. At this stage, I shall thank my researcher, Adam Trundle, for many of the facts and figures that I am using today.

First, the cost is a capital one, which would be spread over the useful life of the asset being built, which in this case is around 40 years. It would not be a revenue cost and it would not be £50 million a year. It would be only a small extra cost per prison place per year, and it might even work out that there would be a saving to the cost per prison place. If a new, modern building was built to replace the older 1960s part of the prison, the number of prison officers needing to manage that building would be dramatically reduced. There would be significant savings in the costs of lighting and heating, and significant savings in repairs. Instead of increasing revenue costs, they might actually be reduced. Even if there was no saving to the revenue cost due to running a new building—of course, that is nonsense, as there would be a significant saving—the cost per prison place at Wellingborough would increase by only around £2,000 per year, which would mean that Wellingborough prison would still be well below the national average for cost per prisoner place.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is desperate to kick-start the economy into growth through capital infrastructure projects. The renovation of Wellingborough prison is therefore exactly the type of project that the Chancellor and the Government are looking for, so I do not think that the new Prisons Minister should cross the Chancellor at such an early stage in his ministerial career. If we had some joined-up government between the Ministry of Justice and the Treasury, the renovation of Wellingborough would be a win-win situation: the Treasury would get a quick and relatively inexpensive infrastructure project to boost jobs and the economy; while the Ministry of Justice would get a more energy-efficient and modern prison that would last for years.

In the response of the previous Secretary of State to my letter about the announcement on closing Wellingborough prison, he painted the prison as a 1960s borstal that was outdated, deteriorating and falling to bits. He did not mention, however, that half—actually, it is more than half—of the prison is less than a decade old, with modern facilities and the ability to hold 300 prisoners. In fact, the contractor for the new prison buildings at Wellingborough received a national award of excellence in 2006.

If the reason for closing the prison is because it was originally constructed in the 1960s, and that it is therefore outdated, although more than half of prison was built in the past 10 years, how does the Ministry of Justice explain two much older prisons that are close to Wellingborough—Leicester and Bedford—remaining open while the more modern Wellingborough prison is closed? Both Leicester and Bedford were constructed in the early Victorian era. They are also not as cost-effective as Wellingborough, as is shown by the Government’s figures. They both cost more than £50,000 a year per prisoner, which is £20,000 more than Wellingborough for each and every prisoner.

The following category C prisons—the same classification as Wellingborough—all cost more than £40,000 per prisoner place: Brixton, Bullwood Hall, Canterbury, Castington, Coldingley, Kennet, Kingston, Lancaster Castle and Shepton Mallet. If we were to close any one of those prisons, we would save more than £10,000 per prisoner place compared with Wellingborough. It is absolutely absurd to say that Wellingborough prison is being closed on the basis of economic cost.

Another reason that is given for allowing Wellingborough prison to be closed is the supposed decline in the prison population, but that comes after years of announcements by the Ministry of Justice that prisons were full and overcrowded, which forced the previous Labour Government to let out prisoners early before they had completed their sentences. The Ministry of Justice’s figures show that, in 2005-06, the prison population was 76,564 in 139 prisons throughout the country. In 2011-12, the prison population had increased to 86,638 in only 136 prisons. That represents a 10,000 increase in the prison population over six years, with the actual number of prisons declining. Today, the prison population is even higher—at 86,801. How can the Ministry of Justice claim that the prison population is falling when, in every year over the past decade, the Department’s own figures have shown a constant increase in the prison population? I suggest that the Ministry of Justice is as good at predicting the prison population as G4S is at hiring enough staff for the Olympics.

Last week, a review by the highly respected Prison Reform Trust claimed that almost two thirds of prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded. In fact, the trust said that there are 7,294 more prisoners than the system was designed to hold. Even with a supposed spare prisoner capacity of 3,500, the prison system will still be almost 4,000 places short to deal with overcrowding. The overcrowding is so severe that one of our closer neighbouring prisons, Leicester, is running at 171% of capacity—it has a designed prisoner capacity of 200, but it actually holds 342. The overcrowding means that there is a higher ratio between prisoners and prison staff, which leads to prison staff having less time to spend rehabilitating inmates, thus further increasing reoffending rates and putting more pressure on the prison system. Closing Wellingborough prison would only make an unacceptable situation even worse.

The governor and staff of Wellingborough prison have been recognised by the former Secretary of State for Justice and the former Prisons Minister for their excellent work improving the prison. The independent monitoring board reported that Wellingborough improved from being a level 2 to a level 3 prison, which is one of the highest levels possible in the prison system. Wellingborough prison has also moved from 123 out of 130 in the prison rankings to 93, because of the hard work and commitment of its governor and staff. The prison has also become far more cost-effective, with efficiency savings of 5% in 2011-12 and a further 3% planned this year. In fact, the number of staff members has reduced by 12 since Wellingborough prison was put into market testing, which shows how efficient the prison staff have been in maintaining high standards.

I should mention the determination of the prison staff to make those improvements to Wellingborough prison. They are following the debate carefully. Moreover, the local prison staff have ignored their national union to implement change, so they should be applauded by the Minister for their actions, not kicked in the teeth.

There has been overwhelming local support for keeping Wellingborough prison open. The most recent meeting of Wellingborough borough council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Government’s decision to close the prison and supporting my campaign to keep it open. There was a united front from all political parties on the council in support of the resolution. Lynne Holcomb and Martin Fields have organised an energetic campaign to keep the prison open, and they organised the “Save the Prison” petition with 3,000 signatures that I presented to Parliament last night. There was a massive protest meeting in Wellingborough town centre on Saturday in support of keeping the prison open. There have also been community meetings that have been attended by me, the leader of Wellingborough council and other councillors. Even today there was a protest outside Parliament by prison officers, their families and members of the public.

I have a simple proposition for the new, excellent, understandable and understanding Minister, who takes on board arguments and acts accordingly. I request that the new Secretary of State for Justice postpones the decision to close the prison for at least six months and stops the transfer of prisoners from Wellingborough. That would allow time for a proper and fundamental review of the prison system throughout the country. It would also allow the costs and benefits of closing any prison in the country to be analysed to see what prison, if any, is suitable for closure. That would allow for a well-thought-out decision, and for the most expensive prison to be closed. It would also surely prove that there are no financial grounds whatever to close Wellingborough prison. Let us have a proper prison closure plan, if necessary, that is based on clearly identifiable costs, not a random knee-jerk closure of one prison. I firmly believe that this is the wrong prison being closed for the wrong reasons at the wrong time.

Sittings of the House (20 and 23 March)

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

I give notice that I shall endeavour to press amendments (a) and (c) to a Division, so the Whips can get on their BlackBerrys and signal the troops that their presence in the Chamber will be required later. I do so more in disappointment than anger because I thought that the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House were bigger men than this. On this occasion, much against their normal form, they have shown a lack of imagination and a lack of innovation. Although they do a tremendous job for this House, it is at times like this that we gently need to remind them that they are the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, and that they are here to represent the interests of Back Benchers as well as those of Her Majesty’s Government. On occasions such as this, there is a simple solution to ensure that the accountability of Government is maintained.

The Government motion proposes

“no sitting in Westminster Hall on Tuesday 20 March”.

The reason for that is entirely understandable. Her Majesty the Queen is coming to Westminster Hall on that day to celebrate her diamond jubilee, so it is entirely appropriate that normal sittings in Westminster Hall should be cancelled for that day. No one has any argument with that. What the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House should have proposed, however, is the rescheduling of that lost parliamentary time at some other point in the parliamentary calendar, because effectively some of our precious parliamentary air time is disappearing. My amendment (a), supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—to whom I must say a huge thank you—suggests that that air time should be replaced on the previous day, Monday 19 March, while amendment (b) suggests Friday 23 March as an alternative.

Westminster Hall is an important part of parliamentary procedure. The Leader of the House and his deputy have previously told the House that they support it and feel that it does a valuable job, and evidence from the Table Office supports that. The hard-working, diligent, capable, lovely, kind people in the Table Office have told me that they receive an average of some 60 to 70 applications a week for Westminster Hall time from Back Benchers, that there can be as many as 150, and that the number never falls below 40. What better evidence could there be of the popularity of Westminster Hall among Members? Effectively, however, the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House are denying Back Benchers the opportunity of a day’s debate there.

[Mr Bone]

We heard the Deputy Leader of the House suggest that the real problem was that the Government did not want to dictate what was debated on Monday. Is there not a simple solution? The ballot could proceed in the normal way, the listing for Tuesday could be provided, and the Government could then accept it and transfer it to Monday. That would help everyone out.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful for that suggestion.

When I flagged up the issue during business questions earlier today, the Leader of the House said that the Deputy Leader of the House would provide a powerful response to my amendments during his speech. I do not know whether the Deputy Leader of the House left his notes in the Leader of the House’s office, but his contribution certainly did not constitute a powerful response to the amendments, which I found disappointing. This could have been the occasion for the establishment in the Chamber of a new doctrine, the Heath doctrine, to celebrate Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee. The Heath doctrine could have stated that whenever a sitting in Westminster Hall is cancelled for understandable reasons, the parliamentary air time must be replaced by an alternative sitting. The Deputy Leader of the House would have been applauded by Members on both sides of the House, and I am disappointed that he did not choose to grasp that chalice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough is right: there are all sorts of innovative ways in which the Government could overcome the difficulty of allocating the time. If we accept that, as the rules stand, it is up to the Government to decide what debates take place, the Government could say, for example, to the Speaker’s Office through the Table Office, “We must allocate this time, but will you invite applications from Back Benchers to fill the slot? We will then take your recommendation for filling the time appropriately.” That would have been the imaginative and innovative solution that I would expect from our two colleagues, and I am sorry that they did not think of it.

There is no shortage of potential debates in Westminster Hall. Only today, we heard 37 Back Benchers call for debates on a range of subjects: cosmetic surgery, north-east regional strategy, the Royal Bank of Scotland, drought and the national water grid, the Olympics, working tax credits, youth unemployment, music exports, Syria, international women’s day, elected mayors, design patents, directory inquiries, high streets, defence procurement, work experience schemes, unemployment in the north-east, business in the community, the Backbench Business Committee, arms exports to the middle east and north Africa, apprenticeships, local heating schemes, music licences in public places, bans on protest marches, the economy, education and manufacturing, employment law, Professor Ebdon, job clubs, small and medium-sized enterprises in retail, manufacturing, energy companies and their customers, and the efficiencies of police services. That is just the list for today; I am sure that in most weeks many further requests are made to the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House.

Representations to the Backbench Business Committee continue to flood in, too. There is a long list of outstanding issues for which it has not been possible to allocate any time, simply because the Government have not allocated the Committee sufficient time to be able to debate them. When the Backbench Business Committee was established, we were promised that it would get 35 days per Session. The gentleman’s agreement—to use a sexist phrase—was that that would, in effect, be 35 days per year. This Session lasts for two years, however, and although I am not a great mathematician, I believe that the Backbench Business Committee should therefore be allocated 70 days for the discussion of issues Back Benchers wish to raise, but today’s Order Paper reveals that it has been allocated only 53 and a half days, and we are about to go into March. It appears that we will fall well short of that 70 total, therefore. Some of these outstanding issues could be scheduled for debate in an extra day in Westminster Hall. That would go some way towards dealing with the large number of issues that have come before the Committee.

Amendments (a) and (b) are reasonable measures intended to preserve the power of this Chamber to hold the Government to account and to allow Back Benchers on both sides of the House to raise constituency interests and concerns. Even at this late stage, it is not too late for the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House to have what was called this morning a Pauline conversion and to say, “Yes, this is a good idea from the Members for Kettering and Wellingborough. We wish we had thought of it, but we’re going to be charitable because we know that these two fine gentlemen have the best interests of the House at heart. We will support amendment (a).” If they were to say that, no one would cheer them louder than my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and me.

Amendment (c) would allow for an extra sitting day on Wednesday 28 March. That is a separate issue from the rescheduling of Westminster Hall time. It is, in part, to do with the issue raised by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) about Prime Minister’s questions, but not for the reasons she suggested. I think the Prime Minister does extremely well at PMQs. It is an occasion when the great British public tune in to see Parliament at work. If we ask our constituents whether they watch any of the parliamentary television coverage, most of them will say that they do not, but most of those who say they do will watch PMQs. It is a regular half hour each week that people know is worth watching for information, news and, frankly, entertainment. The great British public look forward to Prime Minister’s questions and I think that, just on the basic level, it is a shame that the nation and the House is denied an opportunity for Prime Minister’s questions, regardless of who the Prime Minister is and of which party is in power, because it is a great British occasion. It is a shame that by having the Adjournment on the Tuesday, we do not get Prime Minister’s questions on the Wednesday.

On a partisan point, I take completely the opposite view to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), because I think that the Prime Minister does extremely well at PMQs. I understand her point of view—she thinks he does particularly badly—but these differences are what makes for good debate and for the sense of occasion. I suspect that the Prime Minister enjoys Prime Minister’s questions and that he will be disappointed that he is not able to come here on that Wednesday. I suspect—this will doubtless be written down and used against me at some future point—that the Prime Minister is being given bad advice. I do not know whether it is coming from the Leader of the House or the Government Chief Whip, but someone is telling him, “Look, it would be a good idea to have the Adjournment on the Tuesday, so that you don’t have to go through all the hassle of Prime Minister’s questions on the Wednesday.” That is bad advice, wrongly given, and I suspect that the Prime Minister is disappointed that he will not have the opportunity to address the nation on that day.

On a serious level, all this does mean that the nation goes without Prime Minister’s questions for a month when it need not do so. According to the Government’s timetable, the last Prime Minister’s questions before the recess will be on Budget day, Wednesday 21 March, and the next Prime Minister’s questions will take place on the first Wednesday when Parliament comes back—Wednesday 18 April. So for almost a month the nation will be deprived of Prime Minister’s questions. Will the wheels come off the country, will the nation stop working and will everything grind to a halt? No, of course that will not happen, but there is no need to have a month between Prime Minister’s questions. We are talking about the Prime Minister of our country, and it would be a good precedent—perhaps this could be the Young doctrine—if the sign-off note before entering a recess were the Prime Minister answering questions from hon. Members in this House, to set the nation off for the recess. Would that not be a wonderful parliamentary occasion?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), who made a most excellent case that has probably already persuaded the Deputy Leader of the House to agree to the amendments. The danger of my speaking, of course, is that I might dissuade him. Now we are to have Heath time and Young time, the Deputy Leader of the House might have to consider declaring an interest in the debate.

I start by congratulating the Government on doing something that we never saw under the previous Government. Whenever these motions on the sittings of the House came along and were opposed, they used to be objected to at 10 o’clock at night and rather than arranging a debate, the then Government tabled them night after night, hoping that we would not turn up to object. Of course, we did turn up every night and eventually they had to give way. The Government have seen straight away that they needed to give the opportunity for this debate and they have done so very quickly, albeit on a Thursday when there are not normally many Members about, which could have meant that they risked losing the debate. Then I realised that this is a House matter, so they would not possibly be considering putting a Whip on. I have had an electronic message saying that we are suddenly on a three-line Whip, but that must be a mistake and I dare say that the Whip will disappear to change the whipping any second now. I am making a serious point, however, and I am very pleased that the Government have allowed this debate. I want to speak briefly about the three amendments, but I should say at the very beginning that I have had a text message from Thomas and I must make it absolutely clear that he regards the Deputy Leader of the House as a goodie.

The Government are absolutely right to put the extra day on Friday 23 March. I agree entirely, as it makes eminent sense that the Budget debate should run consecutively, so I welcome and support that decision. It also makes a great deal of sense, because of the timetable of the Budget debate, to have that debate on a Friday.

I also take the opportunity to thank the Government for the introduction of the Backbench Business Committee; they were instrumental in setting up one of the greatest movements towards parliamentary democracy for a very long time. Having said that, there is the issue of the Westminster Hall sitting, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) referred, to address. It is a scrutiny day and its loss denies people the right to a debate. I have to say that the Deputy Leader of the House’s argument that the Government would have to choose the topics was a little hard to swallow. Some people do not think that Westminster Hall is a very important Chamber or that the debates in it are important. I absolutely disagree. Westminster Hall debates are equally important as those in this Chamber. Indeed, I often chair Westminster Hall debates and I would argue that debate in Westminster Hall is better.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, as usual, to which I am listening with close interest. Perhaps one reason why there are not more Members in this Chamber to hear this debate is that there is a packed Westminster Hall debate taking place on cycling campaign being run by The Times’s . Does that not illustrate the point about the power of Westminster Hall and the importance attached to it by hon. Members?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful in one way for that intervention. The only problem is that that was exactly the next paragraph in my speech. Westminster Hall will now be packed with people discussing cycling. That was close to being the lead story in a lot of media outlets this morning, so the suggestion that Westminster Hall is not important from a national point of view is incorrect.

Let me give another, more personal example of how important Westminster Hall is. More than two years ago, the Speaker graciously granted me a Westminster Hall debate to discuss a constituent of mine—a five-year-old boy who was suffering from a very nasty cancer called neuroblastoma. Due to red tape, he was not allowed to enter a trial that could have increased his chance of survival from 20% to 70%. To cut a very long—and unfortunately continuing—story short, the excellent Health Minster at the time, Ann Keen, turned up to that debate, listened to the argument and went away and sorted the problem out. That little boy then got treatment on the NHS in Germany. I believe that if it had not been for that Westminster Hall debate, that little boy would not have got that cancer treatment. So, the loss of a Westminster Hall day could be very damaging.

In amendment (a), Monday 19 March is selected as a day for the relevant Westminster Hall sitting. That would be a suitable day because it is close to the day we are losing on Tuesday 20 March. Also, the House will be sitting on that day, so it will not inconvenience Members in any other way. On 26 May 2009, our excellent Prime Minster, who was then simply the leader of the Conservative Party and was about to embark on a very successful election campaign, produced a speech called “Fixing broken politics”. Anyone who does not have it should really get it and have it on their wall. It tells how Parliament is going to be transformed and many of the things in that speech have been done. There are one or two other things that are still to be sorted out, but we are getting there. In that speech, he said:

“The House of Commons should have more control over its own timetable, so there’s time for proper scrutiny and debate.”

That is what we are arguing about tonight. I think the Prime Minster put his point across perfectly and I could not agree with him more. By moving the Westminster Hall sitting, we would be fulfilling the Prime Minister’s desire by allowing Back Benchers to have a say in the timetable. We would also be fulfilling the Prime Minister’s desire for more and proper scrutiny of government. As we all know, Westminster Hall is one of the best places to scrutinise the Government on a particular issue. Therefore, if we move the Westminster Hall sitting, rather than cancel it, the House will definitely benefit.

I am fully aware, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, that there is no precedent for Westminster Hall to sit on a Monday, but by being the first Government to have a Monday sitting, we would really show the House and the public that the Executive are determined to be scrutinised and to put Parliament first. That would be an extension of what the Government are already doing and it is quite appropriate and right that it should be called the Heath doctrine. I remember that when the Deputy Leader of the House and I sat on the Opposition side, he had rather similar views to mine. I do not know why, but sometimes when Members move to the other side of the Chamber their priorities and judgment are affected. He could show that that has not happened to him and we could have this wonderful doctrine.

I understand that there is a problem with Mondays because, according to the rules of the House, the debate would have to start at half-past 9 in the morning, which might make it difficult for Members from further away to attend. That is why I also support amendment (b), which would put the lost Westminster Hall day on the Friday when the House is already sitting for the Budget debate. Members would already be here and therefore would not be inconvenienced. Of course, all the arguments we have made for not losing the Westminster Hall day apply equally to that Friday. If the Government do not want to accept amendment (a), I think amendment (b) would do the trick and I would be happy for it to be made.

I do not want the Deputy Leader of the House to worry that he would lose the title of Heath days, because there is no precedent for Westminster Hall to sit on Fridays, so that, too, would be a new and good way of putting Parliament first. One of the concerns I have heard is the difficulty of getting Members to turn up on extra days, but of course only the Members interested in the matter being debated need to turn up for Westminster Hall and there are no Divisions, so it is not the case that everyone would have to come along.

I will concentrate on what I think is the main amendment, amendment (c). In essence, it would make Wednesday 29 March the final sitting day before the Easter recess. We have heard the argument that it should be a Wednesday so that we can have Prime Minister’s questions. When the previous Government avoided sitting on a Wednesday, I argued from the Opposition Benches that it is essential that Prime Ministers are scrutinised as often as is practically possible, because the House does not sit for a full year and there are huge gaps, and I still argue that now that I am on the Government Benches. If we have the option of breaking up on either Tuesday or Wednesday, let us make it the Wednesday. If Members want to call that Young time, I am more than happy to agree.

I heard the argument that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) made about not having the Prime Minister here. The idea, from an hon. colleague, that the Prime Minister turns up so often because he does not want the Deputy Prime Minister to answer questions—I mean, how far-fetched can she get? When the Deputy Prime Minister speaks at the Dispatch Box, he sounds to me like a Tory, and we should hear more of that. Actually, it would be a very good idea for the Prime Minister, even if he was available on the Wednesday, to step aside so that the two deputies could have a go. I think everyone in the House would enjoy that.

I will come now to what I think is the most important and serious part of the debate. It is a slightly complex issue. The Backbench Business Committee, which has been given the Tuesday for Back-Bench business at the end of term, has allocated it for a debate on assisted dying. We have done that because we recognise that assisted dying is an important matter that the whole House should vote on, and on a free vote—I am sure that all parties will have a free vote. We also wanted to give notice of the debate so that Members who are interested could prepare for it. It is not a debate that we can have the following week, as we need time to prepare for it. The usual channels had promised us a date in March so that we could tell people when there would be a debate on assisted dying, but we were not given a date.

We were in a dilemma. How could we give a future date for a debate on assisted dying so that Members could prepare for it? The only date we could possibly give was the end of term, 27 March, but by doing so we had to get rid of the Hollobone day—the pre-recess debate on the new format, in which Ministers come along and answer groups of Back Benchers. Many Back Benchers who do not normally speak in the Chamber speak on those days about important constituency matters. So we had to decide, should we have the Hollobone day or the debate about assisted dying? We felt that we had to have the debate about assisted dying, and that was the only way we could schedule it, on a fixed date in March, and give people the notice that they deserve, but we were conscious that we would lose the end-of-term debate, which many people think is important.

So the solution is to make Wednesday the last day of term. It would be a Back-Bench business day, and we could have the pre-recess Adjournment debate then, too. We would have Prime Minister’s questions and then the Adjournment debate, and the advantage is that we would not only get to scrutinise the Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister, which any parliamentarian would want, but let Back Benchers raise issues that were important to them, with a Minister or, sometimes on those occasions, a Whip responding to the debate.

That is why on this particular occasion, amendment (c) is very important. The Deputy Leader of the House did not address it in his speech, perhaps because he had not thought or did not know about it, but now that I have explained it I hope that he will accept it. If he does, we will not need to press amendments (a) or (b), because the great advantage of amendment (c) is that it also involves a day on which Westminster Hall sits. There would be none of the problems to which he refers, because it would be a normal sitting day, and the Backbench Business Committee or the Speaker would be able to allocate the debates.

The Deputy Leader of the House and the Leader of the House have done much to improve parliamentary scrutiny; I genuinely mean that. On this occasion, without any detriment whatever to the Government, we can move Parliament forward, so I urge the Deputy Leader of the House to support at least amendment (c).

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The media are reporting that the House business for next week has been changed, and that the Backbench Business Committee debate on a European Union referendum Bill is now to be not on Thursday but on Monday. First there is the issue of the media being told first, rather than the House, but secondly, that is Back-Bench business time. Although the Government can allocate that time, they cannot dictate to the Backbench Business Committee what business is done on what particular day. This seems to be a breach of the orders of the House, and I wonder whether you have had any indication that a statement will be made to explain the situation.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Have you been informed by Her Majesty’s Government that, if the business for Monday is to be changed, the designation of the European Union business will change from Back-Bench business to business of Her Majesty’s Government?

You will well remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, that last week Her Majesty’s Government went to great lengths to protect the Hillsborough debate, which was scheduled as a result of an e-petition. The debate on an EU referendum is also in response to a public petition, but the Government’s response seems to be at odds with their previous behaviour.

House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Friday 9th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

Time is limited but I will address that later if I get to it.

This is not an attempt to denigrate or try to get rid of individual Members or right hon. Members of Parliament who are Whips at the moment. Almost without exception, they are talented, thoughtful, hard-working Members of Parliament who would be better employed as Executive Ministers in the Government, as shadow Ministers or on the Back Benches scrutinising the Executive. It is a waste of their considerable talent to have them in the Whips Office. I should like to single out and praise two Whips—the Government Chief Whip and the Government Deputy Chief Whip, who have been exceptionally helpful Members of Parliament and who have certainly produced a system of whipping that is fairer, freer and better than in the previous Parliament. In my opinion, they should both be Executive Ministers and should not waste their huge talents in the Whips Office.

The problem is not with the individuals or the tone of the Whips Office but with the institution itself. One could argue that when there was slavery in the southern states of the USA, there were benign slave owners, and the tone of slavery definitely improved over the years, but that does not take away from the fundamental fact that the institution of slavery was wrong because it sought to control other human beings through various methods. Similarly, the Whips Office seeks to control the minds, actions and votes of individual Members of Parliament. That is fundamentally wrong. I would argue strongly that we have a benign set of Whips at the moment, and the tone of whipping has definitely improved considerably over the years, but it is the institution of whipping that is wrong.

Looking elsewhere, let us imagine what would happen if any other organisation, private company or individual told a Member of Parliament when to speak, what to say or how to vote. They would be hauled before the House for contempt, but that is exactly what the Whips try to do every day. They will flatter, cajole, threaten or even use blackmail to achieve this. They are a perfect example of people who believe that the ends justify the means. I have lost count of how many times the Whips have shouted or sworn at me. The institution of the Whips Office is secretive and highly efficient. It is exceptionally talented at getting what it wants.

Before I go into the detail of the Bill, I shall briefly mention a television programme that many of us have probably watched. In 1980, “Yes Minister” aired for the first time. It went on for a further four series. It is of course a satirical sitcom about a hapless Minister and Parliament, but I understand that it is also the training manual for Ministers. However, I mention the programme for one episode and one scene alone. Jim Hacker, the hapless Minister, says to his private secretary when the Division bells sound, “What’s the vote?” The secretary goes on to explain that it is about the education Bill, and continues to explain about the details of the education Bill and what it hopes to achieve. However, before he can finish Jim Hacker cuts him off and says, “No, don’t tell me about the Bill; tell me which Lobby the Whips want me to vote in. I don’t need to know about the Bill. I just need to know which Lobby I have to vote in.” That was 30 years ago, and nothing has changed over that period.

Most Members of the House, on most occasions when Division bells ring, have no idea what they are voting for. Many do not even know the basics of the Bill; they are just voting the way the Whips tell them.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is not the fact that Members do not know which way to vote exposed whenever there is a free vote in the House and individual Members have to make up their own mind on an issue? They are standing by the doorways, not knowing which Lobby to enter—which way to vote. It shows how mechanical the system has become.

[Mr Bone]

As usual, my right hon. Friend—he should be right honourable, but he is in fact my hon. Friend—is right. We have just seen an example of that. Allegedly, Labour Members had a free vote in the Division a few minutes ago, and outside in the corridor Members were asking which way to vote. They had no idea what they were voting on. Luckily, there were some Labour Whips there, helpfully indicating which way they should go on the free vote. We have had a problem in Parliament for more than 30 years. Members of Parliament are voting, not according to what a Bill is about, but according to what the Whips say.

May I explain how most Bills go through the House of Commons nowadays? A Bill

“gets sent to the House of Commons where it’s debated without diligence—because automatic guillotines cut time short. It’s passed without proper scrutiny—because standing committees for Public Bills are stuffed with puppets of the Government. And it’s voted through without much of a whisper—because MPs have been whipped to follow the party line.

We’ve got to give Parliament its teeth back so that people can have pride in it again—so they can look at it and say ‘yes: those MPs we elect—they’re holding the government to account on my behalf.’”

[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] No wonder there were cheers for that, because they are not my words, they are the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), the Prime Minister.

By stopping Members of Parliament becoming Whips and stopping Whips telling Members of Parliament how to vote, we would help to address many of the Prime Minister’s concerns; and as with so many other things, the Prime Minister is absolutely right: we need to bring power back to Members of Parliament and away from the Executive. The Bill would enact the Prime Minister’s wishes.

I have not had the opportunity to discuss the Bill with the Prime Minister, but I am sure that if he is available and my Bill goes to a Division, he will be in the Aye Lobby. One may even say that his words were uttered in the same spirit as those of Edmund Burke, that great Conservative thinker, who once said about the perfect MP that,

“his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice…to any set of men living.”

That is what we Members of Parliament should do, and it is what Parliament itself was set up for us to do. We should act on behalf of our constituents, and use our unbiased opinion and mature judgment to scrutinise every piece of legislation that comes our way so that we hold the Government to account, regardless of party politics. Burke could surely not have foreseen how hard it is today for a Member of Parliament to live up to his ideal. Sadly, all too many of us succumb to pressure from a particular set of men living: our flatterers, cajolers and bullies who make up our party Whips.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s powerful contribution immensely. Does he agree that the better that Back Benchers do their job, the better the Executive will do their job, because we can raise the bar and hold them to account properly?

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I think it was the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), when he was Leader of the House in the previous Parliament, who said that there had never been a piece of legislation that had gone through the House and received proper scrutiny that had not become a better Bill as a result of that scrutiny. The thinking of the Whips—that pushing stuff through without proper scrutiny achieves the best for the Executive—is the wrong way round, because that actually results in completely the opposite.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is a totally different Parliament. There has been huge progress by Parliament and the coalition. Now is the time to press for even more reform. The one group of people who are absolutely opposed to any lessening of the Executive’s power are the Whips, because they see their whole job as getting the Executive’s business through. This is an opportunity that we should not miss and may I say, as heartily as the hon. Member for Streatham does, that I acknowledge the huge improvements that the Government have made to parliamentary scrutiny?

[Mr Hollobone]

As the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) rightly states, Select Committees in this Parliament have more power and authority than they did in the previous one, largely because of direct elections by all Members for their membership. However, there have been retrograde steps such as the huge increase in the number of PPSs, which increases the Government’s payroll vote and reduces the opportunity for Members to scrutinise the Executive.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is correct. Although we may take two steps forward, we sometimes take one step back. The Whips Office have found it difficult to deal with the fact that their patronage has been taken away. They cannot appoint Select Committee Chairmen any more, so they have gone to a different camp and we have many more PPSs. We have probably got PPSs to PPSs—it is getting to that stage. At any time, the Government can probably rely on 150 votes in the House. I regret that control by the Executive over Parliament, and it would help enormously if it were not possible for MPs to be Whips.

Moving on to a more controversial part of an uncontroversial Bill, I shall describe the problems with the Whips Office. There is a story about a new Member who went into the Labour Whips Office and said, “Does it mean that we can’t beat people up any more?” That is probably an urban myth that has been widely cited, but there are other stories that are clearly true and are much more worrying. In fact, not a single hon. Member would deny that the Whips Office uses a whole arsenal of weapons including patronage, flattery, misinformation, which is highly effective, and the direct threatening of parliamentary careers should the unfortunate victim of their attention not comply with their wishes.

Occasionally, the operation of the Whips Office becomes public knowledge. Let us go back just a few weeks to June, when a Backbench Business Committee debate on wild animals in circuses dominated the news outlets. First, I must say that this reforming Government have set up the Backbench Business Committee which, for the first time, has allowed Back Benchers to table business in the House. We have 35 days per Session to allocate debates, which is a huge step forward in parliamentary reform. It allows better scrutiny of the Executive and allows issues that would not otherwise be heard to be debated on the Floor of the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) secured a debate on wild animals in circuses. Unfortunately, the Whips had not embraced the idea of non- Executive business or the notion that Parliament should take a view on the matter different from that of the Executive. They still tried to influence my hon. Friend with their normal bag of tricks: flattery, inducements and threats. However, my courageous and independent hon. Friend stuck to his guns and forced a change to Government policy. He said in the Chamber:

“I am not going to kowtow to the Whips or even the Prime Minister of my country on an issue that I feel passionately about and on which I have conviction.” —[Official Report, 23 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 548.]

He also said that MPs should show “a bit of spine” and that he would not be bullied.

The result of my hon. Friend’s bold stand was that the Government caved in and allowed a free vote on his motion, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Commons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said, it produced better legislation as a result.

Private Members’ Bills

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

There are two things wrong with that. First, when Front Benchers agree on something, it is almost certain not to be the correct way forward. Secondly, the alternative Queen’s speech proposed by certain Members had a reason behind it beyond thinking that all those Bills would be debated.

There are three ways in which private Members’ Bills get debated. Most people think that that happens only through the ballot, but there are also ten-minute rule Bills—they must be debated in the Chamber, when they get an opportunity for Second Reading as a private Member’s Bill—and, of course, presentation Bills. I shall not speak to my amendment, which was not moved because of all the wonderful things that the Deputy Leader of the House said. That is a shame, because I could have quoted what he said in his previous guise as an Opposition spokesman. I will not do that, but he was certainly much more in favour of additional days then than he is now that he is in the Government.

[Mr Hollobone]

In his intervention, the Deputy Leader of the House seemed to imply that the large number of private Members’ Bills was a bad thing, but actually, it is a very good thing. Parliamentarians are coming forward with proposals for legislation to improve our country and the way of life of our people. Having only four days in the extended programme in which to cram all those Bills is a totally inadequate allocation of parliamentary time.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend puts that argument much better than I could have done.

I want to go back to the list of Bills, to give the House a flavour of the matter and to show that it is not just three or four Members who are involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who has not been mentioned so far, has a non-controversial Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill before the House on 21 October. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has his Master’s Degrees (Minimum Standards) Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) has his Waste Recycling (End Use Register) Bill. I could go on and on, but my point is that these Bills are important to the Members concerned, and they might well be important to their constituents and to the country. They should be heard, and we should not try to restrict debate on them.

European Union Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support and her argument. In fact, I would take it a stage further. Because there is support for the new clause on both sides of the Committee, and because I am moving it in a coalition spirit, as Members will discover, I have every expectation that there will not be a vote tonight and that the Minister will accept it.

Let me explain why the Committee should support my new clause. First, it would not alter in any way the purpose of the European Union Bill. The Bill is designed, under certain circumstances, to give the British people, through a referendum, a say on our relationship with the European Union. My proposal would merely extend the referendum lock, under certain circumstances, to whether we should remain part of the European Union.

Why do I think that this would improve the Bill? If the British people have a chance to approve or disapprove of a transfer of power in the future, and they say yes, then there is clearly no need for an in/out referendum, as it would show that the British people are happy with their relationship with Europe. If they say no, clearly they are unhappy with a proposed change to the European Union. Surely it is right that the alternative question is then put as to whether the British people wish to remain in the European Union.

An added advantage is that the in/out referendum would be triggered by an event, not by politicians. In the past, referendums have been timed to favour the proponents of the referendum, not necessarily for the benefit of the British people.

[Mr Hollobone]

Would not my hon. Friend’s new clause strengthen the referendum lock, because Her Majesty’s Government, in proposing a transfer of powers to the European Union, would have to think even more carefully about doing that, if they did indeed value our membership of the European Union, because they would know that if it failed, they would then be subject to his referendum as well?

[Mr Bone]

As usual, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Again, I will return to that point later.

I was talking about the gerrymandering of referendums, and that brings me rather nicely to the AV referendum, which is being gerrymandered for a particular day to maximise a particular outcome. Because my trigger for the in/out referendum would be decided by an event, such gerrymandering could not take place in future.

The last time the British people had any say on our relationship with Europe was under the premiership of Harold Wilson, on 6 June 1975, when a national referendum was held asking:

“Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?”

This referendum took place nearly 36 years ago, which means that only people who are lucky enough to be over the age of 54 have had any say on the European issue. It is wholly unacceptable that a generation of Britons have not had a direct say on their relationship with Europe.

[Mr Bone]

As usual, my hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. Again, I want to explore that a little later in my speech.

The relationship with Europe affects everybody, no matter what their walk of life, in the most profound of ways. Other countries have consulted their citizens through a referendum, but not the United Kingdom. The issue raised by the 1975 Wilson referendum was whether we should stay in the Common Market: it was about an economic relationship, not a superstate. In 1975, guess what our net contribution to the Common Market was: £1 billon, £500,000 million, £250 million, £25 million? No—the EEC paid us. They paid us £56 million, but of course that was at 1975 value; the current equivalent is £500,000 million. In fact, as far as I can see, this is the only time it paid us a net contribution. Strange that the European referendum was held in that year. It rather backs up what my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) said about the facts and figures.

Since then, of course, things have changed. It is no longer just a free trade area: it is a European union, with a huge price tag for Britain. Instead of receiving money from the EU, over the next five years our net contribution to it will be a staggering £41 billion. However, it is not just our economic relationship with Europe that has changed. There is a European state with its own president, Parliament, flag, currency and courts. It now has its own foreign service and its own embassies.

The European Union came into force on 1 November 1993. The British people have never had a referendum on the EU.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend mentions the astonishing sum of £41 billion that will be paid over the next five years by the coalition Government. Is he aware that that is more than twice the £19 billion that was paid to the European Union under the previous Labour Government?

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. This is a fascinating and amazing debate that would clearly take place if the in/out referendum came about, but if we could now focus on new clause 11, perhaps we could make a little progress.

Prisoners (Voting Rights)

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

The previous Government’s two consultations, which they did, by the way, to avoid having to make a decision—they kicked the issue into the long grass for five years—involved a pathetically small number of respondents. Given that there were fewer than 100 respondents, the statistical relevance of those consultations is almost meaningless. If I asked my constituents whether prisoners should be given the right to vote, the vast majority would say that they should not. I strongly suspect that if the hon. Lady spoke to her constituents, she would get a very similar reaction.

I also want to pray in aid the words of the now Attorney-General when he was in opposition:

“The principle that those who are in custody after conviction should not have the opportunity to vote is a perfectly rational one. Civic rights go with civic responsibility, but these rights have been flagrantly violated by those who have committed imprisonable offences. The government must allow a parliamentary debate which gives MPs the opportunity to insist on retaining our existing practise that convicted prisoners can’t vote.”

I absolutely, 100%, agree, and I hope that this morning’s limited debate will be a warm-up act for a proper debate on the Floor of the House.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I apologise for sitting on the opposite side of the Chamber to my hon. Friend, but there are 20 coalition Members in here, and there is just not enough room. My hon. Friend’s one-and-a-half-hour debate is very important, but the issue surely deserves much greater coverage elsewhere in the House.

[Mr Hollobone]

As on so many issues, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are lots of Select Committee sittings on Tuesday mornings, and many hon. Friends and Opposition Members who would like to be here to voice their views are unable to do so.

We are talking about this issue because the European Court of Human Rights has decided once again to interfere in Britain’s domestic affairs.

Sentencing (Green Paper)

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The previous Government made an almighty mess of this. Even though I disagree with the main thrust of this Green Paper, I commend the coalition Government for taking an organised and proactive interest in trying to address this issue sensibly, which the previous Government did not do.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has been extremely generous in giving way. The fact that four Members have already contributed to this debate from the Back Benches shows how important the issue is. Prison officers came to my surgery and said, “What we need, Mr Bone, is not these short sentences of a year. We put them on community service for a couple of occasions, but when they come back the third time, we should put them away for five years so that they can get the proper training and education that they need in prison.” What would my hon. Friend say to that?

[Mr Hollobone]

I would say that my hon. Friend is spot on. He has provided me with a helpful link to the next part of my speech which is about the length of sentences. In 2006, the Home Office report “Re-offending of adults” concluded that

“re-offending rates are lower among offenders discharged from a custodial sentence of at least a year (49 per cent.) than among those discharged from a shorter custodial sentence (70 per cent.)...This suggests that custodial sentences of at least a year are more effective in reducing re-offending.”

It is worth repeating those figures; prisoners with sentences of up to one year had a reoffending rate of 70%, while in the case of prisoners with sentences of more than two years the reoffending rate dropped to 49%. The report also showed that for people who had spent more than four years in prison, the reoffending rate was merely 35%. Looking at those figures, my constituents would say, “Well, that says to us that we need to put these nasty people behind bars for longer, so that they can be rehabilitated properly before being released and being at large again”.

I also want to address this myth that we have too many people in prison in this country. In terms of absolute numbers, yes, we have a relatively high prison population, but we are a relatively highly populated country. If we look at the number of prisoners that we have for every 100,000 people, we are nearer the average but still quite high. However, the only meaningful measure of the size of the prison population is how many prisoners there are in relation to the number of crimes committed. On that measure, I would suggest that the evidence is startling—we do not have the highest prison population in the western world, but the lowest. Compared with the US, Canada, Australia and the EU as a whole, the UK has the lowest prison population of all. For every 1,000 crimes committed in the UK, we have approximately 13 prisoners, compared with approximately 15 in Canada and Australia, well over 20 for the EU as a whole and a whopping 166 in the US.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

That is the very point that I wanted to address today. My constituency neighbours my hon. Friend’s and it contains Her Majesty’s Prison Wellingborough, which now appears to be under threat of closure. HMP Wellingborough is under market testing. However, the market testing has been abandoned or put back. HMP Wellingborough has gone from being a rather poor prison to being the best category C prison in the east midlands. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should not be considering closing that type of prison?

[Mr Hollobone]

I agree with my hon. Friend. However, prison conditions are far too luxurious. I think that it is 1,500 prisoners who have Sky TV in their cells. I have lots of constituents in Kettering who cannot afford Sky TV. It is a scandal that prisoners receive a bigger allowance for their daily meals than our troops in Afghanistan. In many cases, prison accommodation is too comfortable.

On the other hand, I accept that when a prison is overcrowded it makes rehabilitation more difficult and it is appropriate that we have the right number of cells for the prisoners whom we need to house. However, there must be a limit on the quality of the accommodation on which we are currently spending lots of money.

The other point that I wanted to draw to the House’s attention is the fact that the country with the lowest prison rate—the UK—has the highest crime rate. Is that a coincidence? I do not think so. We have more than 10,000 crimes for every 100,000 people. The country with the highest prison rate, which is the US, has the lowest crime rate; it has about 4,500 crimes for every 100,000 people. Canada, which is the country with the second lowest prison rate, has the second highest crime rate. The EU has the second highest prison rate and the second lowest crime rate. That is not a coincidence. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has done a lot of very good work in this House in highlighting these statistics, which I think blow apart this namby-pamby approach to having soft community sentences to tackle the behaviour of some very nasty people.

Information for Backbenchers on Statements

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

That is a most helpful intervention, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making it. I have huge respect for those who work in news organisations. They have a difficult job to do and, by and large, they do it very well, whether in our local newspapers or as representatives of the national media. What I would say to my hon. Friend is that news is not really news anymore. In the olden days, news used to be about things that had happened; nowadays, news is about things that are anticipated will happen. Often, by the time the event actually takes place the news has moved on to something else. The broadcasters in particular, with the appetite for 24-hour coverage, are distorting the news picture and confusing a lot of our constituents.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is making a powerful and historic speech that will go down in the annals of this great Parliament. The reason the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is unhappy is that there were no amendments to the motion from hon. Members, which is a shame. However, if he was minded to divide the House this evening because the motion did not go far enough, he would be giving all those Ministers who leak the opportunity to vote against it.

[Mr Hollobone]

There’s food for thought. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent contribution, and I hope the Procedure Committee will take it into account. I am sure he would want to put the point that he just raised to that Committee.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. Should we not take very seriously the point raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) because, after all, he is a poacher who has now become a gamekeeper?

[Mr Hollobone]

That is right: the hon. Member for Rhondda has seen things from both sides of the fence. I am sure he was very careful about the release of information when he was a Minister, and I am also sure that he appreciates how difficult it is—I understand this—for Ministers of the Crown to control the release of information when, over the years, this culture of news management has developed. In Government Departments and in political parties, there are spin doctors and advisers whose job it is to manage the news, but the message should go out to these people that they are getting in the way of our democracy. They are not the most important people in our democracy; the people’s representatives are the most important. All of us here can, in theory, bring Governments down if we have the guts to do so, and we should hold the Government of the day to account for their behaviour.

Foreign National Prisoners

Debate between Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Weir. I thank Mr Speaker for allowing me to have the debate and I congratulate the new Justice Minister on his well deserved appointment.

I have come here today, on behalf of my constituents in Kettering, to advance a proposal that would save Her Majesty’s Government quite a substantial sum of money and free up quite a large amount of prison space, and that would enable us to advance a sensible policy on law and order—putting criminals behind bars so that they cause less crime. The proposal is basically that we should send back to secure detention in their own countries the 11,500 foreign national prisoners in our jails.

Those 11,500 foreign nationals make up some 13% of the present prison population. It is a staggeringly large figure, and I understand that it has more than doubled in the past 15 years. The figures available to me show that in England and Wales, as of 30 June 1995, there were just over 4,000 foreign nationals in our jails. I believe that the latest figure is some 11,500. I should be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation of what the most up-to-date figure is.

I also understand that, on average, foreign national prisoners serve nine to 10 months in jail, including for some extremely serious offences, and that the numbers of foreign national prisoners are now so large that we have dedicated whole prisons to holding just them. I should welcome the Minister’s confirmation that HMP Canterbury, HMP Bullwood Hall and HMP Morton Hall are reserved, either entirely or almost entirely, for foreign nationals. This is a national disgrace. We cannot go on like this. We should arrive at a sensible situation in which we can return these people, who have done very bad things in our country and abused our trust, to serve out their sentences in their own countries.

It is no exaggeration to say that Britain has become the “United Nations of crime”. I understand that we are now paying for the board and lodging of criminals from some 160 countries, out of only 192 recognised countries; 80% of the world’s nations are represented in our jails, and there are some pretty nasty people. Apparently, one third have been convicted of violence or sexual offences and almost one fifth are guilty of drug crimes. Other offences include robbery, burglary and fraud. They come from some pretty exotic places. Apparently, 10 countries account for almost half these foreign offenders, with the leading countries in the league of shame, according to the numbers as of 18 December 2009, being Jamaica with 963, Nigeria with 752, the Republic of Ireland with 647, Vietnam with 620 and Poland with 617. By my reckoning, those top five countries as of last December accounted for 3,599 foreign national prisoners—one third of the total.

My contention is that we ought to send these people back to their country of origin. I am not a lawyer, and I am rather pleased that I am not a lawyer, but I understand that there are weighted meanings to words that most of us would regard as meaning the same thing. Repatriation, I understand, is different from deportation, which is different from removal, but to my constituents in Kettering, they all basically mean the same thing. We want these nasty people back in their countries of origin. I am not particularly fussed as to whether they are repatriated, deported or removed—I just want them there, not here.

I understand that until very recently, we did not really have any kind of prisoner transfer arrangements with any countries in the world. We then established some voluntary agreements so that prisoners could be transferred if they volunteered, and very recently we have just begun to look at compulsory transfer agreements. I would like to see more of those. I was pursuing the matter with the previous Government and not getting very far. I hope that with the enlightened good offices of the new and far-sighted Minister, we shall make rather better progress.

In the questions that I have asked so far, I have concentrated on the countries at the top of the list of shame, because that seemed a sensible place to start. I asked whether there were agreements in place with Jamaica. That is a Commonwealth country, to which we send very large amounts of development aid each year. My understanding is that a transfer agreement is in place. It was signed in 2007. However, it is still subject to ratification and also requires legislation in the Jamaican Parliament. I am unclear about whether it is a compulsory transfer agreement or just a voluntary one.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing such an important debate. Does he know that our coalition partners were far ahead of us on this issue? In their wonderful manifesto, “change that works for you”, they say on page 76 that they will

“Prioritise deportation efforts on criminals”.

Our coalition partners should be congratulated on that, and we should follow their lead.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that most helpful intervention from my hon. Friend, who I know has a prison in his constituency. I am sure that there are foreign nationals there as well. Of course, that is not the only policy from which we should learn a lesson from our coalition partners. It is a very helpful move forward.

Nigeria is second in the list of shame, with 752 prisoners as of December. I understand that we are looking for a compulsory transfer agreement with that country. Again, it is in the Commonwealth. I understand that a Bill is before the Nigerian National Assembly. I hope that we are using our diplomatic efforts abroad to encourage these countries to get a move on.

I also understand that at the end of last year, the United Kingdom brought into force the additional protocol to the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons. That took place on 1 November. Under the additional protocol, the United Kingdom can transfer prisoners, without their consent, to 34 signatory countries, provided that the prisoner is subject to a deportation order. The consent of the receiving state is required in each case. However, the written answer that I received on 1 February 2010 stated:

“To date no prisoners have been transferred under these arrangements.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 115W.]

Thirty-five countries are affected by compulsory prisoner transfer agreements, and of those 35, most are in Europe. There are 3,069 foreign national prisoners from the 35 countries in British jails, which is 28% of the total. The list of shame in this case is headed by the Republic of Ireland, with 647; Poland has 617; in third place is Romania with 357; Lithuania comes in fourth at 330; France is number five with 163—and so the list goes on. I also understand that we have an agreement for compulsory transfer with Libya but, to date, no prisoners have been transferred under those arrangements, although I understand that Scotland has been involved in sending prisoners back to that country even if England and Wales have not.

I should very much like to find out from the Minister the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail for a year; I understand that it is about £30,000 to £40,000. Given that there are 11,500 foreign national prisoners—again, the number is to be confirmed by my hon. Friend—that would imply that the cost to this country of keeping those nasty people in British jails is something between £300 million and £400 million a year. That is a substantial amount.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is being extremely generous in giving way. Matters go further than he has described. Wellingborough prison is in my constituency, and it is overcrowded all the time. Its prison officers, who do a wonderful job, tell me that they never have enough time to work with prisoners and get them educated, so that when they go back on the streets, they reoffend instead of being model citizens. That is partly due to the overcrowding, which is caused by there being so many foreign national prisoners.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The purpose of prison, in denying people their liberty, is to be a punishment, but it is also to rehabilitate them so that, when they go back into the real world, they do not reoffend. If we are having to spend such a length of time dealing with people, many of whom do not speak English and do not understand our customs and how we do things in this country, it makes prison officers’ jobs, which are already very difficult, far more difficult and challenging. That will have an impact on the rehabilitation of British prisoners, who are likely to stay in this country for a long time.