Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

The Deputy Prime Minister is a man of great integrity. I recognise that this is his Bill, and once he has heard the force of my argument he will rush here and demand a rethink from his Front Benchers.

Speaking at the Institute for Government in January, the Deputy Prime Minister called for the House of Commons to be reduced to 500 and for the number of Ministers across both Houses to be cut to 73. The Government’s demands are much more moderate. They are talking about reducing the size of the House to 600, but if we reduce it to 600, following the Deputy Prime Minister’s logic, we should reduce the number of Ministers by 15. That would tally with his mathematics, but, as I said, my new clause is modest. I am not calling for a reduction in the number of Ministers by 15. I know that many Members are demanding that I do that, but I shall not hear it. I am simply demanding a reduction in the number of Ministers by eight.

Many people here have argued privately in the corridors that there is no link between the size of the House of Commons and the number of Ministers. That is total nonsense. We know that as far back as the Bill of Rights of 1689 this House expressed concerns about the Crown having a presence here in the form of Ministers. The 1701 Act of Settlement tried extremely hard to remove Ministers from this place, because the politicians of that time wondered how one could serve the Crown as well as one’s constituents. Unfortunately, that never saw the light of day because the Executive got their way in 1706. As recently as 1926, if someone became a Minister of the Crown, he was required, in between general election periods, to resign his seat so that his constituents could decide whether their Member of Parliament could serve two masters—the interests of the constituents and the interests of the Crown.

That is where I am coming from. I am arguing for a modest reduction in the number of Ministers. We have had enormous ministerial inflation since 1983. Margaret Thatcher—we all remember her, that great lady—had 81 Ministers to run this country in 1983. We now require 95. Is the world so much more complex? I say to those who argue that it is that since 1983 we have privatised a large number of previously Government-owned industries and we have allowed Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to have their own devolved Assemblies. The number of Ministers has still risen inexorably.

I do not want to try your patience, Mr Streeter, by straying off new clause 7 and talking about inflation in the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, but we are now seeing 50 PPSs adding to an already burgeoning payroll. Although these people are not even paid, they are called the payroll vote. As far back as the 1960s, one could be a PPS and vote against the Government without danger of losing that role, but that is not the case today. The civil service code of conduct says that a PPS is required always to support their Government.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am mystified as to what the role of a PPS has to do with the civil service code.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to correct me. It is the ministerial code, which is similar to the civil service code.

Those on the Front Bench might well argue that they have made progress in reducing the cost of the ministerial payroll. They will argue—it is a bit of a red herring—that on taking the seals of office, Ministers took a 5% pay cut. In reality, they did not take a pay cut, because they went from being in opposition to being in government and took a 25% to 50% pay rise. It just was not as large a pay rise as it could have been.

The savings to the ministerial payroll are about £500,000, not an insignificant sum. Lord Turnbull said to the Public Administration Committee that the average cost of maintaining a Minister, with private offices, cars and private secretaries, is £500,000 per Minister. By reducing the ministerial payroll by eight in 2015, we will save the taxpayer a further £4 million. While we are at it, we might like to consider the 10 unpaid Ministers we have across the two Houses, because if we got rid of them we could save another £5 million. However, that is an argument for another time and another place.

Mr Streeter, you know better than anyone that we live in an age of austerity. Things are changing. We are dismissing senior permanent secretaries from across the civil service. We are removing chief executives of councils and their directors. We are attacking senior and middle management across the country, yet there is one group of senior management that is completely immune to these cuts and that is the ministerial corps. Yes, we are all in it together, but not quite if one is a Minister. I do not think that any good argument could be presented from those on the Front Bench for not reducing the ministerial head count.

I am an enormous fan of the coalition and the Prime Minister, and I think that the coalition is what the country needs at this time. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have talked about new politics, a new way of doing things and a new optimism. New clause 7 is the litmus test for new politics, because I do not understand how we can have new politics and oppose reducing the Government’s patronage at the same time. I hope that Front Benchers can respond to that point.

To colleagues who are, perhaps, being leaned on by the Whips, I say that this is our chance to take ownership of new politics, which cannot be driven by Front Benchers and the Executive because the Executive are all about taking and retaining power and extending the tentacles of patronage even further. We as Back Benchers will take ownership of new politics tonight; we will do the heavy lifting for the Executive. By going into the Lobby and supporting new clause 7, we will be able to look our constituents in the eye when we go for reselection after the boundary review or the general election and say, “I was different.” When they challenge us with that worn cliché, “You’re just the same as the rest of them. You’re only in it for yourself,” we can say, “You are wrong. I was one of those Members of Parliament in 2010 who voted to reduce the number of Ministers.”

I have spoken for too long. In conclusion, new clause 7 is the very essence of new politics. The House and my colleagues have the chance to do the right thing tonight and I hope that they take that chance, because they will be respected for it if they do.

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We have a choice this evening with new clause 7. If the Government are being straight and sincere, they should accept the spirit of the new clause. I know that we will need other provisions to ensure that one way round this is not suddenly to increase the number of Ministers in another place or whatever—but the full spirit of new clause 7 should be embraced. The Government tell us a lot about the big society. They are against big government out there, but they are all for big Government in here. New clause 7 really is the test for the Government. In particular, it is the test of whether they will allow their own Back Benchers to vote according to their conscience on how they want this House truly to operate under the banner of the new politics.

[Mr Jenkin]

I rise briefly to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on the spirited and coherent way in which he moved his new clause. I should also like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who also made a coherent and spirited defence of the new clause.

It is not my intention to speak for very long. In fact, it had not been my intention to speak at all in this debate, partly because I am losing my voice, so this speech might not continue for long. In fact, it might be cut down in its prime. However, I have been watching the Deputy Leader of the House nodding at some interesting moments during this debate, when he seemed to be endorsing the past statements of his party’s leader. I am waiting with bated breath to see how he melds the previous position of his party’s leader with the present position of the Government.

While he is preparing his remarks, I hope that he will reflect on the fact that the very office of Deputy Leader of the House is, in itself, rather a modern invention. I think that it was invented during the previous Labour Government. I do not know whether it ever existed before—I look to my hon. Friend the Father of the House—because it had never been deemed necessary for there to be a deputy to the Leader—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was the embodiment of the invention. The post reflected the desire of the Executive to create more jobs for the boys—if I may put it that way—than existed before.

There is a simple test that we need to apply to this Bill, and to new clause 7 in particular, which is: does it strengthen the House of Commons? It was axiomatic before the election, and in the aftermath of the expenses scandal, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, that every party leader should speak in grand terms about the need to strengthen the accountability of Government and to strengthen the House of Commons. Can the Bill do that? It cannot, unless we reduce the number of Ministers pro rata to the reduction in the number of MPs. I should point out that my remarks are not some manic attack on the power of Government. There are plenty of ways in which Governments can appoint people to jobs in order to get things done. Indeed, I should say to the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who spoke just before me, that it is possible to appoint more Members from the other place. It is also possible to appoint more special advisers—and let us face it—we have a rash of special advisers in Government these days compared with what we used to have. There are all kinds of ways both of ensuring that there are ambassadors for the Government in office and people to implement the Government’s policy and political direction, and of ensuring that the Government remain accountable to the House.

Ministers do not need to be Members of the House in order to be accountable to it. It is worth reflecting on the fact that as we have grown the number of Ministers in this place, we have left Whips and even Parliamentary Private Secretaries to speak for the Government in the other place, because Governments are so interested in filling ministerial offices with Members of Parliament, to secure their influence in this place. However, if there were more Ministers in the other place, there is no reason why they should not be invited to the Bar of the House to answer questions. That reform is long overdue. There are plenty of alternatives.

I should like to reflect on the term “the new politics” that has crept into political parlance. I am not quite as old and wise as my noble Friend Lord Heseltine, who sat for many years in this place, and who I saw opining, at the very formation of the coalition, that there was no such thing as the new politics; there was only the old politics, and politics would always be the same. That is of course true, but if the new politics is going to mean an increase in the domination of the Executive in the House of Commons, that would seem to be the antithesis of what those who coined the phrase were seeking to convey.

In fact, politics is changing. When I was first elected in 1992 there was still quite a strong element of deference in the House of Commons towards authority and the Whips. Members who were first elected in the 1950s would have served in one or both of the world wars, and virtually every Member of Parliament at that time had done national service of one sort or another. That Edwardian deference has gone from today’s politics, however, and Governments will have to accept that the House of Commons is becoming more assertive. An example can be seen in the whole expenses debacle. I refuse to call it a scandal, because what the newspapers uncovered was much less a scandal in respect of individuals and much more a scandal in terms of the system that had developed, in which the press itself had connived. The outcome of the expenses debacle sent a message to everyone that it was time for Parliament to reassert its role, and it seemed that the party leaders took that message up. What really came through in that episode was how useless Parliament had become.

What is Parliament’s job? It is to ensure that the laws of this country are fit for purpose, to stand up for the liberty of the citizen and to control the supply of money to the Government. Looking at those three tests, we can see that the House has performed miserably over the past decade. More and more legislation, particularly secondary legislation, is passed that is unfit for purpose and not scrutinised properly. The House has completely failed to control the massive growth in public expenditure that has led to the deficit crisis that we now face, and as for protecting the liberties of the individual, I am afraid I think that most of our constituents would feel that the House has been found wanting.

If we are to improve the way in which we do our job, will we be helped if we allow the Government, of whichever party, to have patronage over and to give hope to a wider and wider group of Members, and to instil into the principle of politics in this House that the be-all and end-all is ministerial office? Would that be conducive to a more accountable system? We do not have the separation of powers in our system, but we nevertheless rely on a degree of separation between the Executive and the legislature. I submit that the new clause is exactly the signal about our determination to hold the Executive to account that the House needs to send not only to the Government of the day but to the people at large. We must send this signal that we take our jobs seriously and that we are not going to be seduced, cajoled or flattered into accepting the Executive agenda more and more.

I end with this point. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, who moved his new clause so ably, is a member of the Public Administration Committee, which produced the report “Too Many Ministers?” in the last Parliament. I am afraid that I have to inform the Government that we have already launched a new inquiry, asking “What do Ministers do?”. That might seem a cheeky question, but at this time when there are so many Ministers, we know from the revelations in various biographies that Parliamentary Under-Secretaries have jobs and activities created for them to keep them busy.

When it comes to the Foreign Office, I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Rhondda is right to say that we need ambassadors for Britain, representing both Parliament and Government, but I simply do not believe that to be true of all Departments. Do we need more Ministers to represent the Government in this House? It was suggested to our Committee that Whips speak for the Government in the other place, so why cannot Whips speak on behalf of the Government in this place? Why do they have to remain mute and silent here, as if they had no views of their own and no speaking purpose in a House of whose being speaking is the very essence?

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the irony that his Committee is carrying out this inquiry, but the Government are using that fact as a reason why our hon. Friends should not vote against the Government position tonight—because it is all going to be sorted out in the future by my hon. Friend and his Committee? Can he put my hon. Friends right, and tell them that they need to be in the Aye Lobby for this new clause?

[Mr Jenkin]

I can put them right. As Chairman of that Committee, although I do not act as Chairman in this capacity, I will be in the Aye Lobby myself on new clause 7. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne said, it represents a very modest maintenance of the status quo. That is what this is about—checking an advance or a further incursion of the Executive into the House of Commons. It is a holding position, while my Committee completes its work.

[Mr Heath]

I think this has been an interesting and illuminating debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for tabling his new clause and for the way in which he spoke to it. I am also particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee, not only for contributing to this evening’s debate but for his Committee’s work—and that of its predecessor, which, as he rightly said, published the first report.

We have heard from a number of Members of all parties, including from the Father of the House. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) often gets criticised—or, perhaps, slightly cheesed—for his lapidary style, but I know from my experience over many years that he is well worth listening to on many issues. Although I do not agree with everything he says—I do not think he would expect me to—I always find listening to him a useful exercise.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is not in his place at the moment, intervened earlier and sought to persuade the Committee that the Republic of Ireland is the epitome of prosperity, which I am not sure is an argument that holds great water. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who is also not in her place, was moved to tell us why during the last Parliament she asked to be a Minister no longer.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said repeatedly that the Government of whom he was a part were too slow to take on these issues. Too right they were! They never took on these issues one single bit; there was never the slightest attempt to reduce the size of government or to relax the grip of the Executive on Parliament. It is only since the present Government have been elected that we have been able to deal with some of these issues. He also said, in passing, that he was suspicious that Parliamentary Private Secretaries were not acquainted with the ministerial code. He is quite wrong on that; of course they are—they are given the ministerial code to sign on taking up their positions. That is as it should be. The hon. Gentleman will have to look at the websites himself.

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[Mr Heath]

I will let the hon. Gentleman into a secret: I am not the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister who makes appointments. I am simply saying that I do not think we would improve the present position by putting more Ministers in the House of Lords. In the last Parliament, members of the Cabinet—Secretaries of State in charge of Departments—were in the House of Lords, and we had no way of holding them to account. That was an affront to this elected House, and I am pleased that we have put it right.

Let me explain why I cannot support the new clause, although I have a degree of sympathy with the view of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

First, however, I will give way to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex.

[Mr Jenkin]

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously saying that there is something unconstitutional about having a Secretary of State in the other place?

[Mr Heath]

I said that it was undesirable, and I believe that it is undesirable. I said that in the last Parliament. I called for Secretaries of State in another place to be brought before this House for questioning, because I think it is wrong for Members of the House of Commons not to have access to those who lead Departments. That remains my position, and I am not going to change it.

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[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman will have to put that question to the Prime Minister.

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman’s honesty is touching. Will he explain very simply why 95 is the correct number?

[Mr Heath]

I think it very well might not be; it is likely that at some stage in the future we will reduce the number of Ministers. The hon. Gentleman is refusing to accept that I agree with a great deal of the thesis that has been put forward.