Tributes to the Speaker

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

You have been given careers advice today, Mr Speaker, by people rather more experienced than I am, particularly the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), but I have been thinking a lot about this. At first I thought that perhaps you could be the host of the Radio 4 programme “Just a Minute”, but, given your experience, can you imagine no deviation, hesitation or repetition? No chance!

Then I thought of a programme of my childhood, which older Members may recall; you may recall it, Mr Speaker, and the Leader of the House may as well. I thought that there might be a remake of the programme “Call My Bluff”. You could be the Frank Muir character. Let me explain for the benefit of younger Members that each of the members of one panel would give a definition of an English word—most of the people listening would have no idea what it meant—and the others had to decide which version of was correct. “Chunter” is a good example, and now you have made it into a household word, Mr Speaker. It can be a verb, an adverb, a noun —almost anything.

You are the only Speaker who has been in the post during my time in the House, and I think that you have been a very fair, very decent and very honourable Speaker. Given the nonsense that you have put up with—here, in the press and everywhere else—it is to your credit that you have seen your way through it all. Your system, Mr Speaker, is based on what my children and my former employees have called my system: parenting and management by sarcasm. I think you should be very proud of that, because you have taken it to a new level. Sarcasm can be used as a way to control 650 people—as well as my children and my former employees.

You have fans everywhere, Mr Speaker. My mother has a large photograph of you on her mantelpiece at home, and I am continually asked, “Why can’t you be like John Bercow?” Harriet Rainbow in my office, the doyenne of the Watford parliamentary office, is also a big fan.

Every time I have stood up to speak in the Chamber, I have said, “Thank you, Mr Speaker”—so I will finish by saying, “Thank you, Mr Speaker.”

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is extraordinarily generous. He has talked about employees, and as well as being a very diligent Member of Parliament, he has employed a lot of people over the years. As his mum knows very well, before he came into this House he was an extremely successful business person. That is something that I have never been. There are lots of things I have never been, and I have never been a successful business person. I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he has said and for the way in which he has said it.

Business of the House

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

I agree. People on both sides who have taken a bold stance have suffered abuse and have been threatened with deselection by their parties, and that is absolutely the wrong way to deal with this.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Valerie Vaz]

Yes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Valerie Vaz]

indicated assent.

[Richard Harrington]

I thank the shadow Leader of the House for accepting my intervention and you for your patience, Mr Speaker. Before the point of order, it was mentioned by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) that people such as me who had disobeyed the Whip and resigned may have faced undue pressure from the Whips or our Conservative associations. I did not experience that myself, but some commentators and, indeed, Members of this House have said that voting for the amendment on Monday and supporting this business motion today marks a dangerous revolution or sets a constitutional position of terrible magnitude that could put the country’s future at stake. However, I do not accept that one of my constituents will criticise me for reversing the Order Paper for one, two or three days so that Government business does not have precedence. I refute that assertion and ask the shadow Leader of the House for her views on the subject.

[Valerie Vaz]

These are unusual times. Nobody asked the then Prime Minister to resign after the referendum vote, but he did nevertheless and a new one had to be found. We are in difficult and unusual times. This is one of the biggest issues of the day, and it will not affect the majority of hon. Members here, but it will affect our children and our grandchildren and future generations.

Let us face it: Europe kept the peace in Europe, where some terrible things had happened. I keep saying that the reason why we have the Human Rights Act is that every single human right was breached during the last war. Europe has moved on from that sort of forum into one whereby we trade with our biggest and nearest partners, and that is why we have a Union that more states want to join. For the sake of future generations, we need to think carefully about what we do today. This is about the will of the House. The House decided that there was a vacuum and the House filled that vacuum. Hon. Members from all sides wanted to move forward constructively, and that why we are in this position today.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson]

There was no commitment in the manifesto I stood on effectively to abolish the House of Lords.

We need to be brave enough to say that the Lords works. It is not perfect, but it works. These proposals will ensure that the Lords operates in a party political manner. Legislation will be blocked or supported for purely party political reasons, rather than simply because the Lords believes that the legislation is wrong.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I agree with most of the points my hon. Friend makes, but does he agree that it is possible to be in favour of reforming the House of Lords without supporting these ridiculous proposals and filling it full of party political hacks?

[Gareth Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Very few Members of this House think that the House of Lords is perfect in every way, but we do not want radical overhauls and an elected House of Lords, as suggested by this fundamentally flawed Bill.

Governments are currently created by single elections—general elections—and the reviewing Chamber acts as a check and balance without—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I reluctantly have to tell you that I will not support the Bill. The reason why is not that I am against reform of the House of Lords; I think that many of the criticisms of the House of Lords made by hon. Members on both sides of this House—for example, on grounds of age, demographics and lack of accountability—are valid. In fact, for many reasons I am in favour of reform of the House of Lords. Neither is my reason for opposing the Bill the one given by the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) in what I thought was a good speech. He said that, yesterday, some right hon. and hon. Members seemed to show venom against the Deputy Prime Minister personally. I am not one of those Members. Indeed, I am not one of the people whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned who dislike Liberal Democrats; in fact, some of my best friends are Liberal Democrats. I support very much of what the coalition does and what our Liberal Democrat colleagues do. I am passionately against the Bill, however, because it would perpetuate a monopoly of the political classes in the legislative procedure.

We have here a Chamber to which 650—or, as it will become, about 600—people are elected, properly and democratically. Nearly all of us belong to one of the legitimate political parties. That is a very good system for the core of democracy. We do not need to replicate it in a second Chamber, where people are elected for 15 years, from exactly the same gene pool—exactly the same pool of political parties as we all come from. That is fundamentally wrong. It would deny democracy in respect of a large group of talented people who would not dream of standing for a political party. I include my party in that, the coalition parties collectively and the Opposition parties.

Democracy and legislation are a lot richer if a way is found to bring into the process people who would never dream of standing on a party political ticket. I am against the privilege and patronage of the current system in the House of Lords. I am in favour of reforming that House significantly. I want a proper system of appointment, as happens in Germany, of people from different sectors of society representing people of different ages, regions and interest groups. Politics is essentially a system of balancing interest groups. We have to find a way to appoint people without the patronage of Prime Ministers, Opposition leaders, donors and all the people who have rightly been criticised for their role in appointing Members of the House of Lords.

Under the proposed system, everyone would be a slave to a party manifesto, because saying “I am a scientist,” “I am a footballer,” “I am an academic,” or “I am a talented musician” would not get people who should be in the House of Lords on to a party list. They would be elected not because of their specialty, but because they agreed to a general party manifesto, which we do —something I agree with.

My constituents in Watford are already faced with elections for parish councillors, three district councillors, a directly elected mayor, Members of Parliament, Members of the European Parliament and now police commissioners. Do right hon. and hon. Members really think that an eighth category of election will really make this country more democratic? I do not. The number of people voting is going down time after time. I cannot accept that having people on party lists, as in the proposed system, will make this country more democratic by making the House of Lords more representative.

Consequently, Mr Speaker, on this Bill, for the first time and, I hope, the last time in my short and somewhat less than illustrious political career—unlike that of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of this Chamber and, of course, yours—I will oppose my party’s view and my coalition’s view. I urge Members on both sides of the House to consider the proposals carefully and to do what I and many of my colleagues think they should do, which is reject the Bill, not because they are against reform but because they are in favour of the House of Lords being reformed in a responsible, modern and sophisticated way that does not make it a further tool of party hacks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

That is indeed correct. Sport England will experience a small dip next year, but after that the lottery reforms kick in and its income will be up by 14% at the end of this comprehensive spending review period.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

At the end of November, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), announced that he was setting up a UK film forum to plot the progress of UK film industry funding. Can the Minister for Sport and the Olympics inform the House whether the forum has met and what progress has been made?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are talking about sport, and I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to request a similar facility in relation to sport.

[Richard Harrington]

The point is that it is a form of sport for me.

[Mr Speaker]

Right. A one-sentence reply from the Minister will suffice.

General matters

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I am sure that I speak for everyone in the House in saying that this has been a most interesting and informative debate. I, for one, have learned a lot about subjects that I hardly knew existed as subjects, although I feel somewhat inadequate that my constituency does not have a race track or, indeed, a tyre factory—I hope that those things can be remedied as soon as possible.

I want to speak about unemployment levels, which is a subject that affects most hon. Members’ constituencies, and what I believe charitable organisations can do to help to alleviate it. I have done a lot of work on unemployment in Watford. At 3.1%, we do not have a particularly high unemployment level in gross terms, but we do have a lot of young people—the figure has nearly doubled in the past two and a half years. We also have quite a few people on incapacity benefit, many of whom wish to be taken off it and to move into work. I feel that the system has very much failed them. During the summer I commissioned a research project with some students to look into unemployment, speaking to young people in particular. We were quite amazed at how many of the 560 young people on jobseeker’s allowance were at home, demoralised and demotivated, making it difficult for them to go out and get work.

My central argument today is that we should encourage the charitable sector to help to alleviate the problem, because I believe that it can do far better than some of the commercial providers that are currently involved in the different job schemes. Last week I met a remarkable lady who is the mother of one of my constituents who is registered disabled. Lindsey Gibson has some problems with speech, but she is determined to get herself a job. She told me a tale of how firms such as Kennedy Scott are paid a lot of money by Government, with the best of intentions, to get people off jobseeker’s allowance or incapacity benefit. However, often people turn up and are told to leave after five minutes because there is no one there to teach them or because the computers are not working—they are given every excuse under the sun. It is quite disgraceful that such companies are not monitored, and my constituent is only one of a number of people who have mentioned this to me.

Let us look at the two new schemes that have been brought forward and how they use charitable organisations. Under the Work Together scheme, Jobcentre Plus encourages unemployed people to consider taking up voluntary work while looking for paid employment. Miss Gibson, whom I saw last week, was discouraged from doing that in the past, because people said that while she was doing voluntary work she was not able to look for work and would therefore not qualify for benefits. The Government are changing that, which is absolutely right. Doing voluntary work could mean working in a charity shop, which gives people confidence and allows them to network with other people. The hours are often flexible enough to allow people to go to job interviews and do what they really want to do. We have to encourage that. We cannot have rules that say that people cannot do more than 16 hours a week.

Work Choice, which is the other programme, is doing good work in Hertfordshire, and in Watford in particular, via the Shaw Trust, a charitable organisation that helps disabled people into work. Progress is being made. I would encourage the Government and charitable organisations to get involved in that work, because they can do it a lot better than private enterprise. If we had a race course or a tyre factory where people could work, things might be different, but we do not. We have to make do with Camelot—it is not involved in gambling, because people are playing a game—which employs 700 people. Camelot is a serious organisation; the reason I mention it is that it works in the community on helping people to get jobs. Some private companies are so fattened by the fees that they have received for training courses that I am reminded of that old advert—I think it was for Bran Flakes—in which people on a boat sang, “They’re tasty, tasty, very, very tasty. They’re very tasty.” This has to stop, so the more that we can deal with charitable organisations, the better.

I wish everyone a happy Christmas and a happy new year. I hope that hon. Members sympathise, as I do, with the Deputy Leader of the House, because how he will deal with all these different subjects between now and Christmas and the new year I do not know.