Fairness and Inequality

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

Well, a principled abstention by the Labour party is news to me, but I take on board what my hon. Friend says.

I was talking about hunter-gathering. I was not so much hunting Labour Members as asking why they did not go through the Lobby on the 50p tax rate. I was discussing why people have certain outlooks in life. I think that when people view the fruits of their success as being the result of a hunt that involved a great deal of good fortune and support, they might have a tendency to be slightly more left wing, whereas those who think the fruits are the result of their own individual hard graft might have a tendency to be more right wing and view their gains as a gather. I will make no further judgment on that idea—I just want to put it out there and let people chew it over—but I think there is something deep-seated in our own personal biases as to why we arrive at certain points of view.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacNeil]

It would be a great pleasure to give way to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he will tell us why Labour did not vote against the cut to the 50p tax rate.

[Michael Connarty]

I would be quite willing to brief the hon. Gentleman later about the technicalities of why the vote was not called on that particular night.

The hon. Gentleman is talking about a sociological analysis, but some people have moved on since then and done a socialist analysis. When society is divided into those who support capital and those who support labour, what happens is that the forces of those who have the power in the land—the landed classes—join with the merchant class to support capital, and they have succeeded in increasing the value of capital by driving down the cost of labour. That is why we have the inequality we have, and that is the structure of the society we—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. It is very good to have a lecture, but not during an intervention. If the hon. Gentleman wants to catch my eye later, I am sure he will be able to do so and give me a lecture then.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman underestimates voters and the public when he says that they have difficulty distinguishing between list Members, who might have stood and lost, and those who have won on a constituency basis. I have not come across anyone who has had any difficulty understanding the process.

[Michael Connarty]

I would not want to accuse the hon. Gentleman of trying to distort my words; I just think he might not be swift enough to understand them. I said that people resent it. They know that they did not choose the Member who lost under first past the post, and they are not happy that that person then turns up as a list Member. They believe it is important that when they make a choice under first past the post, they choose between candidate A and candidate B. I take the point made earlier that every party does it, but it is wrong because it distorts the will of the electorate.

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[Michael Connarty]

That is an easy question to answer. It is quite clear that most people in this Chamber, if asked to list them, would not know all the regional list MSPs in their area. That is not the way I like to see the issue, however. It is not so much about confusion among the electorate; it is more that the electorate are not well represented. It is not because they are confused, but because the system invites certain behaviours that run counter to good representation. People do not know who is accountable to them and it is quite clear that list members are not accountable to the electorate. They are accountable to their party, because it is the party that puts them on the list and into the system.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Michael Connarty]

I am not giving way yet.

If this is about the electorate—I hope it is, rather than about the manipulation of party machinery—it is important that the electorate know who is representing them. The system at the moment is not clear—indeed, it is deliberately confusing for the electorate. It has nothing to do with the intelligence of the electorate; it is a matter of how all the political parties use the list system. We should genuinely consider moving to a system that can be recommended for its clarity. Having two constituency Members for the Scottish Parliament and one Member for this Parliament would be correct and clear, and people would like it.

What has happened is that people in this place do not care whether the electorate like it or not. This is the key point: they do not treat the electorate properly. I have to say that the SNP argument is completely flawed. It has nothing to do with whether SNP Members respect the electorate; it is about whether their party can get an advantage out of it. It is the same with all minority parties. If my party acts in the same way, it is equally wrong. I therefore believe that new clause 1 deserves serious consideration and support. If parties want to top up to a certain number because they cannot run the place without 129 Members, that is where the additional Members should come from. We should call these people what they are—party-nominated Members. That is what happens in Germany: people are nominated by their parties to appear on the list to stand for Parliament or for the European Parliament. People are clear about what they are getting, but what they are not getting is representation.

On new clause 2, the use of resources must be controlled in some way. In Scotland, people are running party machinery in constituencies using the list system resources. To have an office in Whitburn, someone should be representing all the Lothians. For that office to be used only for one Member who is trying to become the first-past-the-post Member for the Linlithgow constituency is the wrong use of resources—and we must find some way of controlling that.

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[Michael Connarty]

Before the hon. Gentleman disappears off the map of the maritime borders of the UK, may we return to the subject in hand? As someone who represents the busiest port in Scotland, Grangemouth, it concerns me that the ships that come in and out of it travel more in non-Scottish waters than in Scottish waters to reach that port. Dividing the forces that need to be gathered to fight the terrible cuts in the entire UK coastguard service that are coming from the Government and hiving off Scotland would not greatly advantage the people who come in and out of the port that I represent. Is it not better that we stand together and fight the cuts than try to divide into two different land masses and two different Governments?

[Mr MacNeil]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I am also sure that he would like to see a busier port in Grangemouth and a Government able to incentivise greater activity in Grangemouth. I therefore expect him to support my new clauses.

These measures will mean that the Scottish Parliament and Government can get on with the job of making Scotland better and allow the rest of the UK to focus on what it considers to be important. This is a litmus test that will show Scotland which of its MPs stand for Scotland and which of them focus on party advantage. I intend to press new clauses 3 and 12 to Divisions.

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[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman says temporarily, but in my lifetime I have seen an awfully lot of time that he might call temporary—the 18 years from 1979 to 1997. We then had Labour saying that it could do this, that and the rest of it and that we should vote Labour to stop the Tories, and that did not work once.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North said that the new clause would not resolve the issue, but surely it would at the very least lessen the problem by moving responsibility for the coastguard to Scotland. He said that he wants a properly co-ordinated national system. That is what I want, but I fear that we will not get it because of the cuts. I recognise and respect his input and involvement in Piper Alpha. He probably misses the point that the Isle of Man has its own coastguard and seems to co-ordinate well with Liverpool, and presumably with the Republic of Ireland as well. I am disappointed that he descended into making slurs; he could have done better. The new clause is about saving coastguard stations in Scotland and keeping a coastguard in Scotland.

I of course welcome the Minister’s encouragement on ports, but he should be aware that I am trying to keep a level of coastguard service in Scotland. Regardless of the party in power in Scotland, I am quite sure that such savage cuts should not be made to our marine insurance policy, the coastguard stations. In short, the Minister sees London as the only way, and that there can be no other way such as on the Isle of Man.

[Michael Connarty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacNeil]

No, I will make progress.

I see that the Minister was happy that the sea area was taken from Scotland in 1999, and he revealingly made a Freudian slip by saying “mythology”. Why was that change made in 1999? I fear that he has given up his birthright for a mess of pottage.

I shall seek to divide the Committee on new clause 3 and—I hope—on new clause 12.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Michael Connarty

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs McGuire]

I am not into the Simon Cowell approach to voting. Some of our younger colleagues who entered the House at the last election might see that in the future, but I do not have as much confidence in voting by mobile phone as the hon. Gentleman may have. We must make it as easy and straightforward as possible for people in varying circumstances to cast their vote. That is why the extension of postal voting has been such a welcome addition.

We should consider seriously the way in which the House wants to see its elections and the count of those ballots conducted. I would be disappointed if we based all our analysis on the situation that arose four years ago. It was an unusual situation. There was a coincidence of circumstances which made the count difficult. If the Government are serious about achieving consensus on a major constitutional issue, I hope they will not just rely on the good will of electoral returning officers, but take account of the will of the House, which is, I hope, to count our ballots overnight for the Scottish Parliament elections.

[Michael Connarty]

It strikes me that all political parties are like Simon Cowell—they want the person they own to win whatever campaign they are involved in, so we have a vested interest, although I would not go as far as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) might go.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) was right about the myths regarding the errors of 2007, as if it was all down to the ineptitude of the Scotland Office at the time, or of the returning officers. It is clear that the complication in 2007 was the counting of two ballots for two different purposes on two different mandates, combined with the construction of a ballot paper that did not make sense to the elector and clearly, in the count that I watched at great length until I retired to bed at about 4 am, was not fully understood by the returning officer in my area.

[Mr MacNeil]

To be clear, by electronic voting I do not mean the Simon Cowell, light entertainment version, but the serious version used in many countries around the world.

[Michael Connarty]

I know a little about that, as my son lives in Australia, which has a totally electronically registered electorate who all must register and vote. He travels a great deal all over Australia with his job and finds absolutely no difficulty in voting, because he can pop into any electoral office in any town at any time up to three weeks before a ballot and cast his vote for the area in which he lives, so it is a very sensible system. It is surprising that we have not caught up with the technology. It would certainly be a great advantage if we did, as that might engage people much more in the ballot.

The idea that we had a problem because we counted overnight is wrong. Although those of us who soldiered on might not have been quite as excited by the process as my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), it was clear to us that the muddle was created by there being two ballot papers. The other question relates to the training of returning officers, because I do not think that the returning officer I watched was competent enough to deal with the ballot, and some crazy errors occurred. For example, he did not tell a candidate who had lost in a council election going on at the same time that he had lost by one vote. The candidate did not discover that until the next day and so was not allowed a recount. Whether that was the result of incompetence, or just the fact that the returning officer was so fatigued that he wanted to get home to his bed and not have another recount in that crazy system running parallel to the Scottish election is another problem.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) seemed to argue that at whichever level an election takes place—Scottish Parliament level or UK Parliament level—that level should have control over its own type of ballot. By that argument, local councils would be put in charge of their elections and allowed to decide all the things that have been argued for, including exactly who would be elected, how they would be elected and what the franchise would be. That is a nonsense. Presumably for Scottish Parliament elections it would be the First Minister who decides, certainly in the present Scottish Government, as only one person seems to make all the decisions in that Government. Those aspects must be determined by the level above that being elected. For example, the Scottish Parliament, quite correctly, controls the methodology for local elections, just as this sovereign Parliament, which set up the Scottish Parliament, should decide if it wishes to change that, possibly in negotiations. That is not saying that there is not a dialogue to be held, but the idea of putting it down does not make much sense.

Therefore, I support the amendment. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling said, the important point is that when people put their ballot papers in the ballot box, they expect it to be transported securely to the place where they are to be counted. One of the reasons why that was set up for UK elections was to let people know that ballot boxes are not stored somewhere else where they might be tampered with, so there is no split between the process of voting and the process of counting. To push that back to the next day is to add to people’s cynicism about how elections are conducted and how the count comes out.

It is clear to me that the lesson we should learn from 2007 is that we should not have two counts on the same evening. Therefore, we should not have the two processes of electing representatives and choosing the method of election at the same time. That argues strongly against the Government’s proposal to have a referendum on a voting system on the same day as the Scottish elections, because that is asking people to postpone the count for the electoral amendment to the next day. It might be fine, because I think that it will be the great yawn of the century—I can just see people getting as excited as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North about exactly what little deviation in the electoral system they will be allowed in the process of choosing which system to use.

European Union Bill

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty]

As you see, Ms Primarolo, I am surrounded by a large number of papers. I have asked many questions during my time as a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, and I hope that I shall not need to rehearse much of the evidence that we received. I hope that Members have taken the trouble to read that evidence rather than merely bringing their prejudices to the Chamber, warmed up for the day.

This is a joke Bill, and clause 18 is the biggest joke in it. It is a silly Bill. As we have already heard, it gives us no ability to change anything. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) quoted a Member who said today that at least the clause did no harm. In fact, it does nothing positive at all.

I respect the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), who has often spoken very emotionally about sovereignty and our Parliament’s ability to hold back the tide of European power. He emphasised that repeatedly during our debate on the Lisbon treaty, and he spoke very well tonight about many principles that we all hold dear. The joke lies in the suggestion that those principles—of self-government, the will of the people, and the things that we wish to do—have been filtered through clause 18 to give it some force, for it is clear that the clause makes no difference to what went before or what will come afterwards. Section 2(1) of the European Communities Act 1972 gave primacy to EU law by the will of this Parliament. That will continue, regardless of whether we pass the Bill—and in particular, regardless of clause 18.

The joke is also being played on the Eurosceptics on the Back Benches, and I think that they know it. The joke is being played on them by the Government, who are suggesting that the clause somehow constitutes a response to the promises that they gave to their constituents. They are saying, “This Conservative-led Government will give you back some kind of sovereignty.” As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), if we pass clause 18, these matters may be judged in court. Professor Tomkins said in his evidence that this was a dangerous clause because it put down a written constitutional principle, and any principle that is written down can then be challenged in court. The measure may therefore tempt Back Benchers to go to court when they feel they are not getting a hearing from Front Benchers.

If the Eurosceptics did not put their careers, and maybe their finances, before their principles, the true solution for them would be to leave the Conservative party, which is clearly not a Eurosceptic party—it is not going to challenge European sovereignty—and to join the UK Independence party instead. They could then try to build up UKIP into a force that people might vote for. It would be a party that wished to change things fundamentally by opposing and overturning the 1972 Act—perhaps by making laws in this place that challenge and ignore current EU law, as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) suggested—and thereby causing that to be judged in a court of law. Would a judge strike it down or not? Would the European Court of Justice try to strike it down by some other means?

That would come about only if UKIP Members were in the majority here in Parliament. It will not come about under this Government. The terrible thing is that this is a joke being played on the British people—on the people who voted for a Conservative party that cloaked itself in Euroscepticism without ever meaning to deliver any change in the relationship between the EU and this Parliament.

When the Lisbon treaty went through I said that it marked a tipping point, in that it was tipping power to Europe in a way that could not be changed unless we changed the 1972 Act, because we cannot get out of the deals that have been done. I was Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee at the time, and I think the rest of the Committee agreed with me.

I happen to like the progress that has been made, however, as I am a Europhile. I think that Europe is our saviour, rather than our enemy. I think that as part of Europe we will go forward as a stronger community and with a better culture than we would have if we broke away from Europe. I have no wish to see my world shrunk politically or culturally, or for the people’s rights, defended by Europe, to be taken away by our going back into partisan fights between right-wing capitalists and left-wing statists.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of Europe—Brussels—being the sovereign Parliament, or London or Scotland? As a Scottish MP and a Scottish Member of the southern Parliament, where does he want the major power to reside—Edinburgh, London or Brussels?

[Michael Connarty]

When I observe the behaviour of the current Scottish National party Government in Scotland, I see my world—where I live—shrinking. I see it shrinking to the point of stupidity, wrapped up in trivia and false history. That has no attraction for me at all. The forces of nationalism are very dangerous, particularly in small countries.

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[Michael Connarty]

I will make some progress.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[The Second Deputy Chairman]

Order. Hon. Members are fully aware that only one Member should be on their feet at any one time, rather than everyone standing up and shouting together. Mr Connarty has the Floor. Perhaps Members will bear that in mind, and perhaps they will also bear in mind the clock, in order to ensure that the final Member to be called gets a chance to speak.

[Michael Connarty]

I certainly will bear that in mind. I am very aware of the clock, and I think—

[Mr MacNeil]

What’s the answer?

[Michael Connarty]

I think that the—

[Mr MacNeil]

What’s the answer?

[Michael Connarty]

The hon. Gentleman is showing why my world is shrinking. The bullying culture of nationalism is very fierce.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—