Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady may know, there is a £2.6 million access to elected office fund, and the wider access to elected office strategy was launched in July last year to deliver on the coalition agreement commitment to provide extra support to tackle the obstacles she mentions. The fund will be open for applications until the end of March 2014, and so far there have been 11 applications, including from independent candidates.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Can the Deputy Prime Minister assure the House that the Succession to the Crown Bill will give the public confidence that the relationship between Church and state will be unaltered, even if a future monarch should marry a Roman Catholic and the ensuing child is a Catholic?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I can give the hon. Gentleman complete reassurance that the provisions in the Bill will not in any way alter the status of the established Church in this country and the monarch as head of that Church. We have had monarchs who have married Catholics. I think Queen Anne of Denmark was married to James I of Scotland—I may be corrected by our historian, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), from a sedentary position. There is absolutely nothing in the provisions that will alter the status of the Church in the way feared by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner).

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Two weeks ago, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), gave evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and said that political and constitutional reforms were worth while only when there was a public appetite for them. Does the Deputy Prime Minister think there is a public appetite for any of the proposals he has just mentioned?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Clearly, the priority for all of us is to repair, rescue and reform the damaged British economy—the legacy left to us by Labour—but I have always been of the view that that does not mean that the Government cannot do more than two things at once. Those things could include mayoral elections, police and crime commissioner elections—which I know are close to the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s party—or other political reform enthusiasms shared by my party. Those are all things that we have tried to advance over the past two and a half years.

Charitable Registration

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

I entirely agree. I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point.

One option for trying to resolve this issue has not been mentioned: perhaps the case of the Preston Down Trust, which is, after all, a test case, could be referred to the upper tribunal, so that it was heard by a High Court judge of the chancery division and any decision would have appropriate status. That solution could be looked at. We certainly require a serious analysis by legal experts in this field, including an analysis of the case law on public benefit, what it means for religious organisations and how far organisations such as the Charity Commission should stand in judgment over religious groups. All those issues must be considered, and it is not merely an academic exercise, because the rubber has hit the road for the Plymouth Brethren. Who will be next?

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Fiona Bruce]

I would be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend, who was, I believe, the shadow Minister when the Charities Bill was debated.

[Mr Turner]

I was, and in a way this is a reflection on me because I allowed the relevant parts of the Bill to go through. However, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) backed us up, saying that the provisions would not make any change. There is a grave danger in terms of not only religion, but education and poverty; the trouble is that we may bring charities to a situation where they are no longer charities, and they will lose everything. If it were the Church of England, we would lose our churches—it is as dire as that.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I have read the debate that he mentions, and I give credit to him, because he raised these concerns and he was given assurances, but those concerns are now coming to pass. The implications that he highlights go to the heart of religious freedom in this country—that is how far this issue goes.

The concerns highlighted today are shared by a great number of other Members, who were unable to attend, because they have other commitments, but they have asked me to put on record the fact that they support my concerns. They are my hon. Friends the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who is now here, for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), for Macclesfield (David Rutley), for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson), the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), my hon. Friends the Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Waveney (Peter Aldous), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), my hon. Friends the Members for Fylde (Mark Menzies), for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson). If I have read out the name of anyone who is here, I apologise.

In closing, may I reiterate what I said at the outset: I am not an expert in this field, and I have had to research and come to understand it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

I will tell you what is not available at this time, Mr Speaker: an Opposition policy to deal with any of that.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will the Government tell me how many small and micro-businesses are engaged nationally or regionally?

[Miss Smith]

I do not have the number to hand, but I am happy to write to my hon. Friend to help him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Let me put it this way: a change of mind on my part on the issue as is likely as the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) going to Norway to accept the Nobel prize on behalf of the European Union. It is not going to happen.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Why does the Deputy Prime Minister oppose the proposals by the Boundary Commission today when he was all in favour of them last September? Did anyone expect him to change his view by 180°?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I was surprised when parties and Members in this House, having fought on a manifesto commitment to reform the House of Lords, decided against simply voting in favour of a timetable motion to do so. These things happen, and I think that everybody in the country understands that a coalition Government is a deal. It is like a contract, and where one part of the contract is amended another part of the contract is amended as well, and we move on.

Immigration

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I welcome the newly appointed Minister to the post. He was a popular Minister in his last job, but he will now find it easier to have every Conservative Member—and many others—supporting him.

Ever since I became an MP, and indeed since long before, it has been clear to me that we needed to take more seriously people’s views about immigration. However, both the Liberals and the Labour party took exactly the opposite view. They believed that there needed to be complete concealment from the public on this issue, and anyone who believed the contrary was a racist. The fact is, however, that many people were becoming so concerned they were prepared to accept being labelled as racists if the consequence was to do anything good on immigration. The number of migrants allowed into this country was far and away in excess of what we needed for economic growth, and many people in all parts of the country were sickened by it.

Let us go back to the year I was born. We took approximately 3,000 people into the country in 1953. By the 1970s, we admitted an average of 45,000 per year, and that did not include the 27,000 Ugandan Asians from Idi Amin’s genuinely racist regime. In the 1980s and early 1990s, 54,000 were admitted each year, rising again in 1999 to around 97,000. Let us make it absolutely clear. It was the intention of the Labour party to admit far more migrants than ever before. Its aim was to create a rainbow coalition—what it succeeded in doing was creating ghettos in many parts of the country. This is something that had long been suspected by Conservatives and was realised with the Labour party’s draft policy paper in 2001, which was thought to have mentioned “social objectives” within its overall migration strategy.

[Kate Green]

I do not recognise the history that the hon. Gentleman portrays, but does he recognise that many of my constituents, who arrived as migrants or are now second and third generation migrant families, will be incredibly hurt and offended by the way in which he characterises them as somehow undesirable in our society?

[Mr Turner]

If the hon. Lady would indicate what is wrong with what I have said, I will change it if necessary.

In the period between 1997 and 2010, we admitted 200,000 people per year. That is the same as creating a new city the size of Birmingham every five years, not including illegal immigrants as we had no idea where they were. When Lord Howard of Lympne led the party in the election in 2005, we were called racists for wanting to impose effective limits on migration. It was the first real attempt by even the Conservative party to stand up for the people who live here.

Labour, under the then Prime Minister, began to see the truth after many years of attack on a small minority of politicians, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) and, even more so, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for leading the debate. But even during the last election campaign, the then Prime Minister called a pensioner and lifelong Labour supporter a bigot for questioning the scale of migration.

In the 2010 election, we Conservatives promised to reduce the number of migrants to 100,000 per year by 2015. The question is whether we are doing enough, and the answer is clearly no. Our policy is not to offer free health care except in emergencies, to migrants from outside the EU, but there is no effective system in place to enforce that. The same goes for migrants from within the EU. Spain, unlike us, has this system under control, and migrants from the EU cannot get health care unless they produce the right papers. Migrants who intend to live in Spain for more than three months have to produce a job contract or evidence of their ability to support themselves, otherwise their requests will now be denied. We need answers.

There are other points that we need to press more strongly. First, there are still no controls on people coming from the EU. Quite clearly, we must effect such controls. Secondly, there are students. Some of them are false, and we congratulate the Government on how, even this week, they have been reducing their number. On the other hand, however, we do not intend to keep genuine students away. They must fill in the visa forms, and we must make it clear that they are welcome. Thirdly, there are the illegals. We must keep working at them in order to reduce their number, but the law is not 100% behind the Government in this area, and a change from the judges would be much welcomed. Finally, there must be genuine help for those who wish to return to their country of origin.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend identifies a number of things that need to be tackled. I wonder whether he agrees with me that although we have heard tough words on immigration from both sides of the House, both since the election and before it, what we really need are not only tough words but tough action. That is what we have not seen, but what we need to see from the new Minister.

[Mr Turner]

I am 100% behind my hon. and learned Friend. I must say that the actions of the Minister’s predecessor were very welcome, and I am sure that his own actions will be welcome too.

I was moving on to the question of what to do about those who live here but wish to go home. Europe provides money to pay for some people to get home, and we need to make that clearer, more broadly available and simpler to those who want the help.

[Chris Bryant]

Repatriation?

[Mr Turner]

Yes, that is the word.

[Chris Bryant]

Repatriation?

[Mr Turner]

Yes, that is the word and that is what it means. If someone chooses to go home, we may help them, and if possible that should be determined by our own Government, not the Europeans.

We are working through the system, but it appears to be a case of taking two steps forward and one step back, and it is one of the few areas where I would welcome more progress.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

3. What plans he has to cap the size of donations to political parties by individuals and organisations.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The Government are committed to limiting donations and reforming party funding. This is best achieved, as far as possible, by consensus. To this end, I will write to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition later this week, asking them to nominate representatives to take part in preliminary cross-party discussions.

[Mr Turner]

We know that the Government’s policy is against state funding. The Conservatives are and will remain that way. What is the Liberal Democrats’ view of the Liberal Democrats’ stance during the period of the next Government?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Last year, when Christopher Kelly’s committee published a report containing its ideas for a package of reforms of party funding, all parties made clear that it was inconceivable that any of us would advocate an increase in overall state funding at this time. I will therefore stipulate in my letter to the leaders of the other main parties that such an increase is not on the agenda for now. However, that does not mean we could not make progress on many other areas of party funding reform on what I hope would be a cross-party basis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman one way in which I think it is incredibly important that we as a country should show leadership. On 27 January, there will be a European Union summit of all European Union countries aimed precisely at, in my view, the most important issue of all, which is how we boost competitiveness and growth within the eurozone and across the European continent. We, as a coalition Government, will come to that summit with some bold ideas about how we can increase growth, increase competitiveness and increase employment across the European Union and—yes—we will stay until the end.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

In September last year, the right hon. Gentleman told the House:

“We promised a new politics. Today is the day we must begin to deliver on that promise…We must put people back in charge.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 44.]

Why was that true for the doomed referendum on the alternative vote but not for the public’s view on Britain’s relationship with the EU?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As he knows, we have legislated to make it quite clear—the Foreign Secretary has pioneered and led on this legislation—that if there were to be a major transfer of power from this House to Brussels and from the UK to the EU, there should absolutely be a referendum. We are the first Government to have guaranteed to the British people that if we give up more power to the EU, they will have their say. I do not think we could be more crystal clear than that.

House of Lords Reform

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Article 21 of the universal declaration of human rights declares:

“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”

I cannot believe that in the 21st century anyone could seriously argue for a wholly or mainly appointed second Chamber. I believe that the nation should move to a 100%—or, if that is not possible, at least an 80%—elected Chamber. That the Deputy Prime Minister is fronting this charge should not prejudice us unduly. I, for one, would be pleased were we to see the end of that very British creation—peer creation. Under the Blair Government, the number of peers increased by 37 per year, but let us not forget that it was that Government who abolished 555 hereditary peerages—so a net reduction of 181. Under the Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), on average 11 peers were added per year, but under this Prime Minister—the Prime Minister who wishes, by non-consensual methods, to abolish 50 Members of this House—the number of peers in the House has increased by 117.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady aware that 50 of those were appointed by the current Prime Minister, and 54 by the former Prime Minister?

[Susan Elan Jones]

I would welcome the hon. Gentleman saying that he would support the consensual method for retaining the number of MPs. I thank him for that.

Let us consider where we are with the House of Lords at present. It is the second largest parliamentary Chamber in the world behind only—would you believe it?—China’s National People’s Congress, which has 3,000 members, and which meets for two weeks a year. It is not an upper Chamber. The House of Lords is the biggest upper Chamber of the 80 upper Chambers recorded by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and the United Kingdom is the only bicameral country in which the second Chamber is bigger than the lower. It has been argued in this debate that somehow, as if by osmosis, the House of Lords works rather well. We have heard how it brings in the shy who would never stand for election—those rare creatures who suddenly, by osmosis, will find themselves in the second Chamber. I cannot accept that, and I cannot accept that we can seriously be thinking of any Chamber in this Parliament being predominantly or wholly un-elected.

The House of Lords reform White Paper plans to reduce the size of the Lords to 300 Members, but let us not forget the coalition agreement—even if, sometimes, the coalition partners do. The agreement states:

“Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.”

However, such proportionality might give us 86 more Tory peers and 99 more Liberal Democrats, and therefore a Chamber of 977 Members if no new Labour or independent peers were created. Some of the proposed transition arrangements to the new system would leave all the current peers alongside the new peers for several Parliaments, which would mean approximately 1,000 or more Members next door.

We have to go down the route of a more democratic upper Chamber. I would be slightly concerned to see 60 appointed Members. For all the good that the Bishops do as individuals, there is a case for giving the matter some consideration. I say that even though I am a member of the disestablished Church in Wales. We also need to consider whether the single term of 15 years allows proper electoral accountability. I was interested to hear that when the new Iraqi constitution was drawn up, the west commended it because it was democratic. There was a strong commitment to elections, but there was no mention of an upper House, and there was certainly no mention of an appointed Chamber. It is extraordinary that as so many countries around the world are exploring democracy—just think of the middle east—we are sitting in this House and seriously suggesting that there can be any merit in a wholly or mainly appointed second Chamber. The modernisers need to speak in this place for a new and modernised pluralistic Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

On 18 August 2011 it will be the 100th anniversary of the Royal Assent of the Parliament Act, which has been used on only seven occasions. It is probably one of the most important, if not the most important, Acts of Parliament, for the simple reason that it establishes the primacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords.

Having read some of the debates from 1910 and 1911 on the Parliament Bill, I find it interesting that at that time further change was expected. Indeed, the preamble to the Bill actually states this. No less a person than Winston Churchill said that the Parliament Bill was not meant to be the last word but the first. Speaking in the 1911 debate, he said that further legislation would include

“a measure for creating that fair and evenly constituted second chamber.”—[Official Report, 22 February 1911; Vol. 21, c. 2036.]

It is clear that when the Parliament Bill was being debated back in 1911, further reforms were intended. At that time, some suggested the abolition of the House of Lords and that we should have just one Chamber but generally, overall, the view was that there should be two Chambers, and that view still prevails today. Interestingly, during the last 100 years we have effectively had a muddle. We had legislation in 1949, 1958, 1963, and more recently in 1999, but we have ended up in a thoroughly unsatisfactory mess. We now have an opportunity to put that right.

All three main parties in their manifestos have made a commitment, however lukewarm, to reforming the House of Lords. We have been talking about reform of the House of Lords for years, and it is about time that we got on and reformed it in such a way that we do not need to be debating it for the next 100 years but have a settled will. To achieve that, two key issues need to be dealt with. The first is the principle of reform, and the second is the practicalities of reform—the composition of the House of Lords and its powers. For today’s purposes, the most important is just getting across the principle of reform. To deal with that there are three key issues.

The first and most important issue is, quite simply, that we live in a democracy and power belongs to the voters. Voters exercise that power through the ballot box. As democratic authority derives from the electorate, the composition of any chamber or council should be decided by the people. It is extraordinary that we elect members of councils, MEPs, Members of devolved Assemblies and parish councillors, we even elect captains of golf clubs—

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Does my hon. Friend think that there would be any objection to electing magistrates?

[John Stevenson]

We are talking about the democratic institutions that make laws and byelaws, so I would take a different view on that point. We elect Members of this House, but for whatever reason we do not elect those who sit in the second most important part of our democratic institutions. For that reason, the House of Lords lacks true legitimacy and accountability. However great its expertise, diversity or experience, it is simply not elected. Of the 71 major Parliaments around the world, 61 have an elected or partly elected second Chamber. In fact, Canada is the only other major democracy with a fully appointed upper Chamber.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

To start at the end of my speech—if there is time, I will move towards the beginning—the main problem with the House of Lords is not a lack of accountability, independence or democratic accountability, it is the sheer number of peers. Let us take the number of peers appointed since the last election as an example. The former Prime Minister appointed 58 new peers in his working peers and dissolution honours lists. In November, the current Prime Minister appointed another 54. This is not sustainable, but there is no reason in law why it cannot go on for ever.

We should set a limit on the number of peers by Act of Parliament. That would prevent a Prime Minister from overriding the limit without changing the law. I believe that the limit could be 850 or 450, but let us take 850 to see how such peers would emerge. If we start with the current figure of 828 peers and, for argument’s sake, let us say that 20 peers die over the course of this Parliament, there would be 42 vacancies to fill in 2015. If the turnout at the next election was 60%, then 40% of voters would have chosen not to vote for any political party. Let the Prime Minister—or better, someone else—appoint that 40% of new peers from among people with no political affiliation. That means that 17 of the newly appointed peers would have no political affiliation, leaving 60%—or 25 seats—to fill with political appointees.

If the Conservative party won a majority of, say, 60% of seats in the House of Commons, the Conservative Prime Minister could appoint 60% of the remaining vacancies in the House of Lords—that is to say, 15 peers. The Leader of the Opposition, having won, say, 25% of the seats, could nominate that 25% of the remaining vacancies, or six peers, and so on. Therefore, the outcome in the House of Lords would be proportional to the number of seats in the House of Commons, thus representing the views of voters and those who did not vote. That would be a much more efficient way of achieving the Deputy Prime Minister’s aim of creating an independent, accountable and democratic upper Chamber.

Let me turn to how the House of Lords can be more democratic. An elected upper Chamber would, in fact, confound our democracy. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 emphasise the supremacy of the House of Commons as the representative body of the people. However, if these reforms go ahead, that statement will no longer apply. The second Chamber, also elected by popular vote, will have as much of a democratic mandate as the House of Commons. It would quite justifiably claim to be a representative body of the people. As representatives of the people, those in the elected upper Chamber would have as much right to refuse to ratify legislation as we in the lower House do. That would cause a constitutional crisis of epic proportions. That would be the danger if the newly elected upper Chamber, with as much of a democratic mandate as the House of Commons, decided to amend statutory instruments. That would be the consequence of making an unelected House an elected House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently say to the Deputy Prime Minister and to the House that I do not think he is responsible for what is said at meetings of Conservative Members of Parliament?

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Should the right hon. Gentleman not drop this unpopular policy, which does not resonate with the majority of the public, and concentrate instead on finding a solution to the problem of the West Lothian question?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am the first to acknowledge that, whether it is the West Lothian question or reform of the House of Lords, these are of course not matters that are raised by our constituents or on the doorsteps as we campaign at election time, but it does not mean that they are unimportant. We discuss many things in this House, from local government finance to world trade rules and all sorts of things that are not raised from day to day in our local communities, but that are none the less important. That is why we as a country have been struggling with this dilemma for more than 100 years and why all three parties have a manifesto commitment finally to make progress on reforming the other place.