Nomination of Members to Committees

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Scrutiny by the House is of vital importance—the hon. Lady makes a very good point—and it has long been established that the Opposition must have time to scrutinise Government business, but it is also well understood that the Government of the day must have a realistic opportunity of making progress with getting their business through the House. The motion that the House is being asked to agree guarantees that the party with a working majority is able to do exactly that.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Leader of the House keeps referring to having a working majority. For the purposes of this Parliament, the Government have a working majority only for matters of confidence and supply. Matters of confidence and supply are not committed to Public Bill Committees; they are dealt with on the Floor of the House. In Committees, the Government should not have—because they do not have in this House—a working majority.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government do have a working majority on the Floor of the House, and as they are extensions of the Floor of this House, it is right that the Government must be able to have a realistic opportunity of getting their business through Committees.

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[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady knows that that is far above my pay grade. I do not think that secret deals have been done, but I do know this: the Government have commanded a majority in the House on the basis of the 17 votes connected with Government business.

I have been good-natured this evening, because I want the debate to be good-natured. I take being Chairman of the Procedure Committee incredibly seriously, and if at any time I felt that the Government were doing something untoward, I would hold them to account, as I have done time and again in the House. I say genuinely to Opposition Members that I really do not understand what the upset is.

[Mr Carmichael]

May I presume from what the Chairman of the Procedure Committee says that he will join us in the Lobby to support my amendment? If it were passed, the Government would of course still have a majority on the Selection Committee, but would just have to use it in accordance with the procedures of the House as they have always been accepted. Why is that objectionable?

[Mr Walker]

Nothing that the right hon. Gentleman has said is objectionable. I will not be joining him in the Lobby, but not because I find what he is proposing objectionable—I just happen to disagree with it.

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[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I rise to speak to the amendment standing in my name and in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), as he is a man whom I hold in very high regard. I served with him in the coalition Government for five years as a Minister. Indeed, for part of that time, I sat beside him at the Cabinet table. Therefore, with substantial regret, I say that what he has just given us was not his finest contribution. What he described was some sort of parliamentary game-playing or sport. When he spoke about the functions of Opposition, he missed out the most important one. The most important job that we as Opposition Members of this Parliament have to do is scrutiny, which is why the composition of the Committees to which we commit Bills upstairs matters. That is why it is, in fact, a matter of quite fundamental principle.

I think that we might all acknowledge that, from time to time in this House, we indulge in a little bit of hyperbole, occasionally even straying into polemic. I think of some of the matters that the right hon. Gentleman and I opposed during the years of the Blair-Brown Government. One example is when they tried to extend detention without charge to 90 days. I remember also the passage of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. He and I and others described them then as constitutional outrages—it was a “power grab” and an “affront to democracy”. I may even on occasion have indulged in a small measure of hyperbole and rhetoric myself. [Hon. Members: “No!”] We all do it. I am reminded that when Paddy Ashdown was leader of my party, it was a joke popular among other parties—obviously not to me or the media at the time—that the message on his answering machine was, “Thank you for calling Paddy Ashdown. I am not able to take your call. Please leave your message after the high moral tone.” We have all done it, but the difficulty that is caused by relying on rhetoric and hyperbole is that it is difficult then to know what to say when we come across a proposal such as that which the Government bring to the House today. I can describe it as others have done as a “constitutional outrage”. I can say, as others have done, that it is an affront to democracy. However, to say that suggests that that is somehow just the same as those measures that we have previously described in those terms, but it is not. It is much worse. It is an obnoxious measure for which I know of no precedent in my time in the House.

In this country, we do not have a written constitution. We proceed much of the time according to the process of convention and principle, and so it is also for the ordering of our proceedings in this House. Here, too, we often rely on the process of convention and precedence. It is a delicate system of checks and balances. I am certainly not saying that it is one that is incapable of improvement. I have supported many improvements to it over the years, but we have to approach these matters in a rather more holistic manner than is being taken by the Government tonight. Once we start removing these checks and balances, we risk at least one of two things.

First, we can bring the machinery of Parliament to a grinding halt, and tonight the Government risk breaking our machinery beyond repair. The alternative prospect is that we raise the possibility of other parts of the system reacting in a way that is designed to compensate for our breaking of the checks and balances. It is known in this House, surely, that their lordships in the other place proceed on the basis of the Salisbury convention. They respect our right to be the superior Chamber because we have the democratic mandate from the voters. Now, if we are not going to demonstrate respect for the democratically reached decision of the voters, how can we expect their lordships at the other end of the building to do so?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Quite a number of peers, including Liberal Democrat peers, have questioned whether the Salisbury-Addison convention applies. Lib Dem peers have said that they do not feel bound by it as they had nothing to do with it when it was agreed in the first place.

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[Mr Carmichael]

That is indeed the case. My party was not party to the discussions that resulted in the convention and have not felt themselves to be bound by it. But it remains the fact that it is something on which the majority within their lordships’ House have proceeded until this time, and which continues to be the case to this day.

It is a fundamental principle of this House that the composition of Committees should reflect the composition of the House. That means that if the Government have a majority in the House, they will have a majority in Committees. It goes beyond that. On matters where we decide things by way of a free vote and the matter then goes upstairs to a Public Bill Committee, the composition of that Committee reflects the vote of the House here. That is the most fundamental principle that we have, and I use these terms advisedly. It is not a convenience, nor something that is just here to be discarded when it becomes difficult or messy. It is absolutely fundamental to the way in which we do and have always done our business.

The Prime Minister went to the country. She asked for a bigger majority. She was denied it. She was returned as the largest party and that offered her a number of different options: she could have sought to govern as a minority; she could have entered into a coalition and got a majority that way; or she could have entered into a confidence and supply arrangement. She chose to take the latter approach. As a consequence, she has a majority on the Floor of the House for matters of confidence and supply. Matters of confidence and supply do not go upstairs to Public Bill Committees. They are dealt with on the Floor of this House. So it is simply wrong for the Leader of the House to assert—as she has done tonight along with others on the Treasury Bench and Government Benches—that the Government have a working majority. Beyond confidence and supply matters, they do not.

[Mr Harper]

I do not like disagreeing with the right hon. Gentleman, but he is just wrong. I have looked at the agreement. It does not just cover confidence and supply. This is rather pertinent given how much legislation there will be. It also covers matters pertaining to the country’s exit from the European Union and legislation pertaining to national security. So the agreement is much wider, and Brexit will be a big chunk of the legislative agenda of this Parliament.

[Mr Carmichael]

The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that constitutional matters such as the question of the future of our membership of the European Union are also dealt with on the Floor of the House, so although the agreement may go slightly further than that which is normally understood by the terms of confidence and supply, it is not a comprehensive deal that gives the Government a majority on the Floor of the House. If it were, the Democratic Unionists would not be on the Bench behind me; they would be on the other side of the House on the Government Benches.

There is no direct precedent for this. There has been talk in this debate about the position that pertained relating to the Labour Government from 1974 to 1979. The clear distinction—this is an important point, of which the House should not be ignorant—is that, on that occasion, when the country was asked to choose a Government, it chose a Labour Government by a very narrow majority. That Government started with a majority—something the present Government simply do not have. I do not like what the Harrison motion did. My party opposed it then, as we oppose this measure tonight, but let us not pretend that it is somehow the same thing.

That takes me back to my quarrel with the right hon. Member for West Dorset. Surely, in advancing a change as profound as this, there has to be something more substantial by way of argument to support it than, “They did it when they were in government.”

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

As the right hon. Gentleman says, we have had a long period of co-operation, and he was a fine Minister. However, did he not notice that my argument was actually that this proposal is necessary for the smooth conduct of business, subject to a clear check on the Floor of the House on Report? Does he not agree that, under those circumstances, it is perfectly reasonable for a Government to seek to govern the country smoothly?

[Mr Carmichael]

Of course it is reasonable for a Government to seek to govern the country smoothly, but the right hon. Gentleman seems to think that what happens in Committee is just some administrative inconvenience. It is not; it is much more fundamental than that. It is the job of this House—not just the Opposition—to hold the Government to account. That is why I say to right hon. and hon. Members on the Government side, many of whom I hold in high regard, and many of whom I regard as personal friends, that they know that what they are doing tonight is wrong. They also know that if it was being done to them, they would oppose it root and branch.

We know why the Treasury Bench—the payroll—will support this measure, but those on the Back Benches have a duty that is higher than their duty to their party: it is their duty to their constituents and to this House —their duty to democracy. I ask them to consider that duty before they go into the Lobby this evening.

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[Mr Bone]

No. I am taking a leaf out of the shadow Leader of the House’s book.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bone]

Of course.

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[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman misrepresents the case that is being made on this side of the House. We are not saying that this side of the House has a majority; we are saying that his side of the House does not.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. I was surprised that the official Opposition had not tabled an amendment to the motion, which I could have supported and I think he could have supported. I do not agree with his amendment because it simply removes part of the motion. A sensible amendment would have instructed the Selection Committee to ensure parity on all Public Bill Committees. What the Bill actually says is that if a Committee has an even number of Members, there will be parity. The simple answer would therefore be to ensure that all Committees had an even number of Members, but Labour did not table such an amendment.

[Mr Carmichael]

The effect of my amendment would be perfectly simple. It would allow the Government to have their majority on the Selection Committee but thereafter to use the rules that we have always used. Why does the hon. Gentleman think he should be allowed to change the rules simply because they do not suit him?

[Mr Bone]

That is somewhat unfair, Mr Speaker, because you know that that is not what I would do if I thought the House was being done down by the Executive. In fact, I would be the first one to complain about it. It seems to me that the result of the election means that we should have parity on Public Bill Committees, and that could have been achieved by a simple amendment, which I would have supported. That did not happen, however.

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[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

This has been a very entertaining debate in many ways. It is quite germane because, although a lot of people around the country may not understand the niceties of statutory instruments, secondary legislation and the myriad different things we do in this place, they want us to govern efficiently in their name.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Fysh]

I will not give way at the moment because we are short of time.

The reality is that if the Opposition were to succeed in gumming up the system completely using legislation that they do not agree with, we would not have time in this place for all the other ambitions that the people of this country have. That is why it is absolutely in their interests and the public interest for this motion to be passed this evening.

I want to say on behalf of the people of Yeovil— the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) mentioned the high moral tone of a previous MP for the area—that they have ambitions other than Brexit, but they also want the Brexit vote to be respected, rather than for the system to be gummed up. That, in short, is why I will vote for the motion.