Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

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

The other motion tabled for that day is in the name of members of the Public Administration Committee, and invites the House to give its opinion of our recommendation that the adviser on ministerial interests should be able to instigate his own inquiries instead of having to wait for a referral from the Prime Minister. Given that this is a very topical issue and that the Government have yet to respond to our latest report, may I ask my right hon. Friend to find time for that debate, not least because I am sure he would not want the impression to be given that the Government were reluctant to debate the issue?

[Sir George Young]

The subject that my hon. Friend has raised is indeed important, but my own view—without any disrespect—is that the crisis in the banking industry is even more important, and that it is entirely right for the House to find time to debate it. I can tell my hon. Friend that we plan to honour our commitment to the Backbench Business Committee to find at least 27 days for debate on the Floor of the House in each Session. I hope to say a little more about the time available, but the Committee already has half a day next Wednesday, and I hope that it will also have the last day before the House rises, so it is not the case that it has been totally starved of time.

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

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

The first thing I would say to the House about this debate is that it represents a failure of government and a failure of our politics. The exchanges that have just taken place between the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who is showing extraordinary forbearance under immense pressure, demonstrate that this is not the forum, the place or the way to resolve these issues. It should never be necessary for such a motion to be tabled.

Earlier this year, the Public Administration Committee, which I chair, again made the recommendation that would render motions such as this redundant. Our report, entitled “The Prime Minister’s adviser on Ministers’ interests: independent or not?”, was published on 17 March, before the controversy about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State arose.

Our principal recommendation, as has already been advertised by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), is that the independent adviser should be empowered to instigate his own investigations. There is nothing radical about that. Our predecessor Committee made the same recommendation in the last Parliament, and I would say to my Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Newport West, that although he might be tribal, and although he might be excoriating about this Government, he is completely consistent, because he was just as excoriating about the previous Government. Our predecessor Committee, on which he served, made the same recommendation.

That is exactly how other regulators work, and it is how our own Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards operates. He would command little public confidence if he could not instigate his own investigations. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has recommended the same thing for the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial interests, on more than one occasion. The mystery is why these recommendations have not been implemented, and why the previous Labour Government did not accept them. The Opposition are now proposing this motion precisely because their Government refused to implement them.

[Greg Mulholland]

I am pleased to serve under my hon. Friend’s chairmanship on the Public Administration Committee. Does he agree that this would be a great opportunity for all three party leaders to commit to fulfilling our Committee’s recommendations, and to agreeing that the independent adviser—who is not currently independent—should clearly be able to instigate his own investigations? Does my hon. Friend believe that we could get such a commitment from all three party leaders today?

[Mr Jenkin]

I would very much like that. This is not a difficult recommendation for the Government to accept. No legislation is required. The Prime Minister could simply accept it and implement it.

We are still waiting for the Government’s response to our report. The previous Government declined to take up the recommendation, explaining that

“it must ultimately be for the Prime Minister to account to Parliament for his decisions and actions in relation to the appointment of his Ministers”.

So the Opposition have no one but themselves to blame for the fact that they have had to table this motion today.

Why would it be desirable for the independent adviser to decide what to investigate without waiting for a referral from the Prime Minister? The expectation that that should be the case is generated by the official job title. It is hard to see how any adviser on Ministers’ interests can be deemed to be independent if he is unable to investigate prima facie breaches of the ministerial code without the permission of the Prime Minister. It is only his independence from Government that can provide the necessary assurance that Ministers, including the Prime Minister, will be held objectively and impartially to the standards of the ministerial code. If we deprive him of his independence by depriving him of his initiative, we remove the assurance that we want the public to have.

Above all, it is surely beneficial for Prime Ministers to be absolved of the invidious duty of deciding whether or not to refer potential breaches to the independent adviser. With that responsibility comes a great deal of controversy and public opprobrium. A Prime Minister is damned if he does and damned if he does not. Either he condemns his colleague by referring him, placing him under immediate pressure to resign, or he condemns himself, because it looks as though he is protecting someone from proper scrutiny. I wonder whether, if the Prime Minister had referred this matter to the independent adviser immediately, the Secretary of State would already have been investigated for any breach of the ministerial code by now, and exonerated. This situation places the Secretary of State in an invidious position.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I am following my hon. Friend’s argument carefully. Does he agree that the Opposition cannot have it both ways? They cannot spend weeks running around saying that Sir Alex Allan should investigate this matter, and then, when he says that he cannot add any more, say that he is not really independent and should not investigate the matter anyway.

[Mr Jenkin]

I will come to that point. It is ironic that the hon. Member for Newport West describes Sir Alex Allan as a poodle. That is not what we said in our report, incidentally. We were concerned about the manner of his appointment, and about whether it was appropriate for a recently retired civil servant to take that role, because he would not be seen as independent. We did not say that he was not fit to fulfil the role.

[Paul Flynn]

May I recommend that the hon. Gentleman re-read the report, and especially the minority report that I wrote, which I commend to him for its literary qualities alone? The report that was agreed by the majority of the Committee stated that Sir Alex Allan

“was unsuited to this role because he did not convince us that he would be able to demonstrate the independence the post requires.”

In more vigorous language, that means that he is not a rottweiler but a poodle.

[Mr Jenkin]

Those are the hon. Gentleman’s words, but the Committee went on to say:

“In fairness, it is unlikely that many retiring civil servants will have had the opportunity to demonstrate the necessary independence from Government in their career to date.”

I think that that places the right emphasis on the matter. If the role is to be seen to be independent, the manner of the appointment needs to be different and it would help to have someone who had demonstrated independence in their career to date.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that an investigation should happen only if it is needed and merited?

[Mr Jenkin]

That would be a matter for the independent adviser, not the Prime Minister, to decide.

At the start of the present Parliament, the Committee resolved not to inquire into individual cases. Accordingly, we have made no judgment of any of the evidence on the conduct of the Secretary of State, which others in the House seem to have done. It is therefore not for me to say whether the Prime Minister should refer the Secretary of State to the independent adviser. It is highly unlikely that there are many right hon. or hon. Members who take a disinterested view of the evidence. Indeed, some of those named on the motion have already called for the Secretary of State’s resignation; they have already made up their minds. I put it to the House that this is effectively a vote of confidence in the Minister, rather than a decision of the House whether or not to refer.

That is precisely why it should be for the independent adviser himself to decide whether to investigate. That would take the decision out of the political arena and place it firmly in the hands of a person who is impartial in these matters. That is the basis of everything I have said on this matter. I have never made a judgment about the merits or otherwise of the case in question.

[Angie Bray]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jenkin]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not.

Now that Sir Alex Allan himself has said that the Leveson inquiry’s probing and taking evidence under oath means that he does not believe that he could usefully add to the facts in this case, I personally wonder why the Opposition are persisting with the motion.

This does not absolve the Government from addressing many awkward questions. I have too many remarks for the time available, but they concern matters that the Government might not want to hear about, including the role and function of special advisers. I am happy to inform my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) that the Public Administration Committee had already embarked on an inquiry into this subject before the resignation of Adam Smith, which served only to intensify the debate about numbers of special advisers, about what they are really there for, about whether the new code of conduct for special advisers is effective, and about how special advisers should be held accountable for what they do, and to whom. Under the Blair Administration, the role of special advisers was changed. Happily, it has now changed back, but this has done something to change the terms of trade for special advisers in government, and Whitehall is still adapting to that change. Our inquiry is exploring that matter.

There are further questions to which we still need answers. Whom did Adam Smith really believe he was serving in his role as go-between? Was it his Secretary of State, who is nominally responsible for the conduct of special advisers under the ministerial code? Or was it “the government as a whole”? That is a phrase I use advisedly, because the code was changed under the new Government, and all special advisers now serve “the government as a whole”. Has that phrase subtly changed the accountability of SpAds so that they are now no longer clear about to whom they are ultimately accountable?

What is the role of the permanent secretary in the supervision of the conduct of a special adviser, who is, after all, still a civil servant? I would even go so far as to ask—perhaps controversially—whether the top of the civil service has lost some of the self-confidence and authority that in yesteryear might have seen a permanent secretary act more decisively in such a situation. I hope that we will never again see a special adviser fired from his job for doing what he believed to be the right thing, simply because he had been left in ignorance of the boundaries of conduct that he should have observed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

We have had an important debate about ministerial conduct and how we protect the rights of this House in holding Ministers to account. We heard powerful speeches from my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). On the Government Benches, we heard from the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) and from the hon. Members for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), all of whom said that there are questions to answer, particularly to do with who should be allowed to initiate investigations into ministerial conduct.

This is a debate that Labour Members should not have had to initiate. In that regard, I have sympathy with the point made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex. There is already a perfectly good system to make sure that Ministers abide by the rules in their conduct of Government business and in ensuring that Parliament is told the truth, and it is called the ministerial code, an updated version of which is produced at the beginning of every new Parliament. An independent adviser on the code is available to offer advice to Ministers on their interests and to investigate any alleged breaches. It is for the Prime Minister to be the guardian of the code and to refer any alleged breaches to the independent adviser for investigation.

It is a clear and simple process, but what has happened in this case? I have read the ministerial code carefully, and I cannot find a clause that says, “This code applies to all members of the Government but the Prime Minister’s chums.” Will the Government be bringing out a new version to reflect this reality? Writing in the foreword of the most recent edition of the code, the Prime Minister said:

“Our new government has a particular and historic responsibility: to rebuild confidence in our political system…People have lost faith in politics and politicians. It is our duty to restore their trust. It is not enough simply to make a difference. We must be different.”

The Prime Minister talks the talk but he does not walk the walk.

[Mr Jenkin]

Following the comments of the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), my Liberal Democrat colleague on the Public Administration Committee, will the hon. Lady commit her party to supporting our recommendation that the independent adviser should be able to instigate his own investigations?

[Ms Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman’s Committee has done this House a great service in publishing the report that is tagged with this debate. I think that situations have evolved since decisions were taken in the past. I certainly think that the suggestion that the independent adviser should be allowed to initiate investigations needs a fresh look in the light of the circumstances that have arisen. I, for one, have an open mind on that. He raises a very important subject that the House should debate. The Committee’s work on this is invaluable in the changing circumstances, and I look forward to its continuing.

The Prime Minister’s decision not to ask the independent adviser on ministerial interests to investigate the Culture Secretary totally contradicts the commitment that he gave in his own foreword to his own code. It also totally disregards clear, prima facie evidence that the code has been breached and that there are good grounds for an investigation. That prima facie case was set out very powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and hinted at in slightly shyer terms by the right hon. Member for Bath.

It took the Prime Minister 20 minutes from the conclusion of the Culture Secretary’s oral evidence to the Leveson inquiry to announce that there was no case to answer, but the Prime Minister was not considering the evidence, he was not interested in protecting the integrity of his Government, and he disregarded the need for Ministers to be straight with Parliament. That is a very important matter for the House. All he wanted to do was to protect his chum.

To their credit, the Liberal Democrats have decided that they cannot go along with the Prime Minister’s cynical charade. Good for them, but I struggle to see why they should not join us in the Lobby for the vote. They should be in the Lobby with us, upholding the integrity of the ministerial code and supporting our call for the Culture Secretary to be referred to the independent adviser. It is not too late. The right hon. Member for Bath said there were still questions for the Minister to answer, but he did not go into detail on what they were. Liberal Democrat Members have said that they believe a referral to the independent adviser is in order, and I hope that even at this late hour they will reconsider their position and decide to join us in the Division Lobby to send a powerful message to the Prime Minister that the House will not stand by and tolerate being lied to and the ministerial code being an optional extra.

The integrity of the Government’s relations with Parliament is at stake. We have an independent adviser on the ministerial code who was appointed on a not inconsiderable retainer of £20,000 per annum. He has been in place since November 2011 but the Prime Minister seems extraordinarily reluctant to call on his services. The Prime Minister blocked Sir Alex’s predecessor from investigating the former Defence Secretary. He now blocks Sir Alex from investigating the Culture Secretary.

Ministers have recently taken to telling the country that we all need to be working harder, but we have a ministerial adviser champing at the bit to launch an investigation, and the Prime Minister keeping him locked in a cupboard. What are we paying the independent adviser for? This something-for-nothing culture needs to end. Let the independent adviser do his job. What does the Prime Minister have to fear?

We heard today from right hon. and hon. Members how even a perfunctory look at the facts demonstrates that the Culture Secretary has a case to answer. Paragraph 1.2c of the ministerial code requires Ministers to

“give accurate and truthful information to Parliament”.

The Secretary of State told the House on 25 April:

“I made absolutely no interventions seeking to influence a quasi-judicial decision that was at that time the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Business”—[Official Report, 25 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 973.]

Yet it turns out that the Culture Secretary was firing off memos to the Prime Minister backing the bid, and wanted a meeting with the Business Secretary to lobby him. I do not know what the Culture Secretary’s definition of “intervention” is, but it is not one that would be found in any English dictionary.

In his parliamentary statement in April the Secretary of State told the House that

“the contact that I had with Fred Michel was only at official meetings that were minuted with other people present”.—[Official Report, 25 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 961]—

and that he had—I quote exactly—“zero” conversations with Michel. Yet it has now been revealed that he texted Michel directly when he had responsibility for overseeing the bid. In the Culture Secretary's “dictionary of convenient definitions” it appears that neither “contact” nor “conversations” mean text messages.

The Secretary of State assured Parliament on 3 March 2011 that he had published

“all the documents relating to all the meetings—all the consultation documents, all the submissions we received, all the exchanges between my Department and News Corporation.”—[Official Report, 3 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 526.]

He had published all the documents, all the meetings, all the contacts except the 191 phone calls with News Corporation, the 158 e-mails with News Corporation, and the 799 text messages with News Corporation. What on earth does the Culture Secretary think “all” means?

We know that the Secretary of State is a keen dancer. Indeed, we have one of his Cabinet colleagues to thank for telling us that he has installed a sprung floor in his home, so that he can practise his “Strictly Come Dancing” routines. However, it is dancing on the head of a pin to claim that he did not intervene, that he was not in contact and that he had published all the evidence.

Parliament deserves better than this. It is crystal clear that the Secretary of State’s former special adviser effectively opened an improper back channel of direct communication with News Corporation. If the special adviser had gone rogue, one would have thought that on uncovering his activities the Culture Secretary would have fired him immediately. But no, the Culture Secretary first told his special adviser that he had done nothing wrong. The next day—I suspect after looking at the front pages—he told his special adviser,

“Everyone here thinks you need to go”,

before apparently adding that “everyone” did not necessarily include him.

Why has Adam Smith resigned when the Secretary of State feels that he himself has no case to answer? Is he expecting us to believe that he had no idea what his special adviser was up to in such a key area of policy, in which he had shown such prior interest? Paragraph 3.3 of the code makes it clear that Ministers must take responsibility for the actions of their special advisers. The Secretary of State must accept his responsibility.

We have a Cabinet Minister who told Parliament that he had not intervened when he had. We have a Cabinet Minister who told Parliament that he had had no contact with News Corporation lobbyists when he had. We have a Cabinet Minister who told Parliament that he had published all the documents when he had not. The Prime Minister knows all that, but he says that there is nothing for the adviser on the ministerial code to investigate. Who is he kidding? He cannot even persuade the Deputy Prime Minister of that fact.

Today, the House has an opportunity to make it clear that the ministerial code matters, that Ministers are accountable to this House and that the public can expect the highest standards from Ministers. The motion calls merely for Sir Alex Allan to investigate and for the existing system of ministerial accountability to this House to be used, rather than abused. I commend it to the House.

Privilege

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

I am not quite sure how the hon. Lady disagrees with me, to be perfectly honest. As I pointed out earlier, there is an Act of Parliament in place, the Parliamentary Witnesses Oaths Act 1871, which means that oaths can be taken before Select Committees, and any false evidence given under those oaths would be subject to prosecution under the Perjury Act 1911. If she would prefer to substitute a criminal offence of contempt of Parliament for that, I would be perfectly happy, but my point is that I feel uneasy that the only option available to us, because in the case before us an oath was not taken, is referral to the Committee on Standards and Privileges and the possibility of Parliament having to consider using that rarely used power of imprisonment.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me?

[Kevin Brennan]

I will, because the hon. Gentleman is the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, but I will not take any further interventions.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I regret the fact that I have been in the Chamber for only part of the debate, but I heard the opening remarks. I feel it is appropriate for me to inform the House that the Liaison Committee has charged me with working with colleagues to investigate the whole question—it is very germane to this debate—of how Select Committee powers should be exercised.

Listening to these exchanges, I hear many matters that we have discussed and considered carefully, and I hope that the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee will have regard to the findings that I hope we will produce in short order, which should provide not only some guidance on how the Committee should conduct its investigation into the matter, but some guidance to the House on what the consequences of contempt should be and, in future, on whether we will need to avail ourselves of the courts or of our own procedures. I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for emphasising that we are a House with a penal jurisdiction. That was a very important thing to put on the record.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee for that intervention. He knows that I was a member of the Committee for many years, briefly under his chairmanship and in previous years under the chairmanship of Tony Wright, when we also considered a number of these issues.

I have appeared, as the hon. Gentleman may and others will, both as a member of a Committee and as a witness, giving evidence to a Committee, and I have never understood why an oath, although it is implicit for a Member of Parliament, is not administered while giving evidence to a parliamentary Committee. I shall say nothing further, other than that I support the motion before the House.

Backbench Business Committee

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chair of the Public Administration Committee.

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

No doubt my hon. Friend has seen the evidence submitted by Dr Meg Russell to the Procedure Committee, in which she expressed her view that to go down the route he has chosen

“would be very much contrary to the spirit of what the Wright Committee intended.”

Is not the answer that the Backbench Business Committee is a special committee, not like an ordinary Select Committee, and that its Chair should be selected in the same manner as the Speaker and represent the whole House, as indeed should its members? That is what Wright intended. Why is he departing from Wright?

[Mr Heath]

As I said when responding to the debate on the original motion to set up the Backbench Business Committee, Wright is not holy writ and should not be treated as such, not least because there are internal contradictions in the Wright report, just as there are sometimes in holy writ. Therefore, the House has to take a view on what is in the best interests of its procedures. That will be for the House to decide. I simply contend that it is a strange situation where the biggest party represented in the House can override the interests and decisions of other parties in deciding who its representatives on the Committee will be. I would have thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex had confidence in the ability of his own party’s procedures —I am afraid I have no specialist knowledge of them—to make a proper determination of who should serve on the Committee on its behalf.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex that different considerations apply to the Chair of the Committee, as he set out, which is why we propose that the Chair should continue to be elected by the whole House, with one proviso: we think that the Government should not provide the Chair, for perfectly obvious reasons. The situation is exactly analogous to that of two other Committees—the Standards and Privileges Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. There is a strong argument in favour of the Committee’s decisions not being seen as the result of some sort of internal collusion between the Government and the legislature, and I think that the clearest way of indicating that they are not is to ensure that the Chair comes from a party that is not represented in Government.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a good thing that Chief Whips are not required to speak in these debates. We have heard some full tributes to the work of the Backbench Business Committee from the Deputy Leader of the House and his shadow, and I would be very surprised if the Government Chief Whip would be able to utter the same words of praise and thanksgiving for the work of the Backbench Business Committee, because the Committee has been an utter pain for the Government Whips Office. It is no good the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) nodding her head, because the Committee has been bringing to the Floor of the House issues that very often neither Front-Bench team wanted brought here—they wanted to suppress them. That has been the great strength of this Committee.

If the coalition Government have a problem with who was elected to the Backbench Business Committee or how it was elected, they have nobody to blame but themselves, because some posts went uncontested. That shows a remarkable lack of assiduousness, given how the Whips Offices usually try to influence such elections. We should have no doubt that this operation today is an exercise designed to reduce the accountability and responsiveness of the Committee.

Let us briefly consider the detail of the motion. Most important is the proposal that the regularity of elections will reduced: they will be held once per Parliament. If this motion goes through, the election in the new Session will be the last this Parliament—

[Mr Heath]

No.

[Mr Jenkin]

I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon if I misunderstood things, and I stand corrected.

The motion is also determined to reduce the way in which the membership of the Committee reflects the views of the whole House, on the basis of the spurious idea that parties voting for Members of other parties have a malign intent. The Chair is to be chosen from the Opposition, but that will reduce the Chair’s authority. The great authority that the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has is that she was elected as much by the votes of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as by the votes of the Labour party. She was not a choice predetermined by the Standing Orders of this House and it was not a predetermined choice that she was chosen from her party.

For all those reasons, we should want to defend the existing system, not least because the Wright Committee intended the election of the Backbench Business Committee and its Chair to be carried out on a different basis from the elections to the other Select Committees. The Deputy Leader of the House keeps saying that he has given a reason for needing to pre-empt the findings of the Procedure Committee. He may have given a “reason”, but it is an excuse and a motive; it is not a justification for pre-empting the findings of the Procedure Committee.

I wish to conclude by making a brief point. Those of us from the previous Parliament who went through—how shall I describe it?—the purifying fire of the expenses debacle came out of it determined that things should change in this House, that politics should change and that at least some of what happens in this House should be taken out of the ghetto of the Westminster political parties talking to themselves. Are we now seeing this House reverting to type? Are we seeing the vested interests beginning to reassert themselves? I urge this House to be ever more vigilant to make sure that that does not occur and ever more vigilant because we are seeing today how determined the forces of darkness in politics can be.

Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I understand that the hon. Lady raised a comparable issue a few moments ago in Women and Equalities questions. I hope that she will have an opportunity to raise this matter at the next Work and Pensions questions. It is our intention to help the Jacqueline Smiths of this world. For example, we have made changes to eligibility for child care for working women and introduced a number of other measures to help people in that position. However, I will make some inquiries about that specific case and ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to write to the hon. Lady.

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

May I point out to my right hon. Friend that the debate requested by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on the non-EU treaty is urgent for next week, because the final text of the treaty will be agreed at an EU summit at the end of next week? Unless we have the debate next week, its purpose will be rather less.

[Sir George Young]

I am sorry to give my hon. Friend a disappointing response, but it is the same one I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash). The Government are not planning to have a debate on the matter next week, and I would be misleading him if I said that I will plan the timetable in order to facilitate it.

Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for bringing to the House’s attention this important report and what it says about the abuses and atrocities she mentioned. As she says, there will be a debate on Monday, and I will ensure that the Foreign Office Minister who handles the debate comes fully briefed to deal with the specific point that the right hon. Lady has raised.

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

Do the Government think that the European Union summit at the end of next week is of so little consequence that it does not require any discussion before it takes place? Does my right hon. Friend recall that there used to be a regular debate before each European summit? Why has that practice been abandoned? Do the Government think that nothing of consequence will be discussed at the summit?

[Sir George Young]

The practice has been abandoned because of paragraph 145 of the Wright Committee report, which specifically mentioned the two pre-European Council debates that formerly took place in Government time. The Wright Committee recommended that that debate and the other set piece debates should be transferred to the Backbench Business Committee along with the time in which those debates took place. That has now happened. My hon. Friend should go to the Backbench Business Committee with his request for a debate on this particular matter. I have to say to him that it is not as though we have not debated Europe in this Chamber: we had a debate on the petition on the referendum; we had a motion to approve the budget on 8 November; we had a motion on Croatia on Tuesday; and we had a general debate on the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe. It is not the case that these important issues have gone by default in the Chamber.

Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

There was an exchange on housing on Monday when we had Communities and Local Government questions. We have taken a number of initiatives to promote housing. There is the new homes bonus to encourage local authorities, there is our streamlining of the planning system to remove unnecessary delays and, crucially, as we heard in the previous statement, there are low interest rates, which are crucial to enable first-time buyers to get on to the housing ladder. I hope that a combination of those measures will lead to a revival in house building, and it is worth reminding the hon. Gentleman that we had the lowest output in peacetime since the 1920s under the previous Government.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend for his sympathetic tone about the lack of defence debates that we have had so far in this Parliament. We are still waiting for debates on procurement and defence policy, for example, and we are also still waiting for the annual debate on the civil service. Is not the right answer that we should move swiftly towards having a fully fledged business Committee so that we can end the division of responsibility that has led to these problems?

[Sir George Young]

The proposal in the coalition agreement envisages, certainly in the short term, two Committees: a BackBench Business Committee dealing with Back-Bench time, and a House business Committee dealing with Government time. In the longer term, we may move to a single, integrated Committee, but the initial proposal was that there should be two, side by side. Whether that would resolve the dilemma on which my hon. Friend touched, I am not sure because there would still be tension between, on the one hand, providing more time for Back-Bench business and, on the other, providing adequate time to scrutinise Government legislation. [Interruption.] We are sitting longer in the first two years of this Parliament than in the first two years of the previous Parliament. In the remaining days of this Session, I will see whether there is headroom to provide for more debates on defence, which is what prompted my hon. Friend’s initial question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

From that hon. Member we can now hear; I call Mr Bernard Jenkin.

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

May I thank my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House for that answer?

[Mr Heath]

Yes, he may.

Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I welcome what the hon. Lady says about the Foreign Secretary’s participation in the debate, as I think it is important, as I said, that he takes part. Although a fixed day for Back-Bench business would give certainty, it would not necessarily overcome the particular problem of Ministers being unavailable on a fixed day for debates that are settled at short notice.

On the hon. Lady’s question, we have said that we will give proportionately more time to the Backbench Business Committee to reflect the longer Session. She will know from the business I have announced that the Committee is getting roughly one day a week. I said in response to her a few weeks ago that once we are through the main Report stages of the Government’s Bills, there should be more headroom in the remaining months of the Session to be more generous to the Committee with time.

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

May I welcome the words of the Leader of the House on the importance of e-petitions leading to debates such as the one on Hillsborough? Does he agree that that also applies to the debate on the referendum, which he has brought forward to Monday? I welcome the fact that the Government have elevated the importance of that debate and recognise how important it is that the Foreign Secretary attends. Does the Leader of the House not also agree that these issues overlap with the core purpose of the coalition, which is deficit reduction and the need to obtain growth, and that growth can be revived in this country only if we are able to deregulate our economy and therefore renegotiate our relationship with the EU?

[Sir George Young]

We are committed to an agenda of deregulation. For example, there is the one-in, one-out rule; there is a deregulation unit working at the moment to see what further deregulation can be introduced; and we are working on the agenda of the report by Lord Young, introduced a year ago. I see no reason why we should not continue with that agenda and still remain full members of the European Union.

Draft Financial Services Bill (Joint Committee)

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Mann]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman, from a sedentary position, says that that is inconsistent, but there is no requirement for those proposing an amendment to agree on every remedy that would emanate from it.

My purpose is not to make any comment on individual Members but to ensure that because there is a balance between the other place and this place the Government take the issue back and rethink the entire make-up of the Committee in order properly to reflect the Parliament that we have, the elections we have had and the modern world we live in. I seek no more than that, but of course my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, who has added his name to the amendment, may have other, additional and different reasons. That does not negate the argument; indeed, one could argue that in a democracy it strengthens the case because there are different arguments from different perspectives with different options provided. The principle remains the same, however: it is invidious to have a balance of 4:2, four from the Government side and two from all the combined Opposition parties. However one looks at it, that in no way reflects the result of the last election.

It seems to me rather demeaning for this Parliament to go into such a long summer recess with this Committee apparently sitting through it with such imbalance and such bias. This question of priority and of why the Committee is sitting through the summer is another reason why the amendment has been tabled. If the amendment was passed, one would hope that the Government would be forced to rethink at this late stage. They chose not to table the debate earlier, although they had the opportunity to do so, but one would hope that the time for reflection they would have over the recess would also mean that the proposal for this biased and unrepresentative group, in relation to the general election, to Parliament as a whole, to the nations of the United Kingdom, to the gender balance in the House, to democracy and to the world in which we live, could not happen. It seems to me a wrong priority in the month of August, when there are many important things that we could be deliberating and engaging on, for this Joint Committee to be establishing its work. A slight delay allowing the Government to rethink, reformulate and re-democratise the proposal would be wholly in order. I am sure that in their heart of hearts that is exactly what hon. Members are thinking tonight, having heard the arguments that have been put forward. No hon. Member would want to go into this long recess having taken a decision so unrepresentative of our country, our Parliament and the world in which we live.

There is another fundamental issue at stake that has not yet been addressed, which the amendment would also allow reconsideration of—the giving away of financial control and powers to the other place. Important debates and deliberations on the future of the other place are currently going on, such as whether it should be partially elected—80% elected—how many should sit in it, where they should come from and what the time scale for reform should be. Those are all important issues, not least to parliamentarians in this House. Pre-empting that by giving financial powers to the other place—as the proposal is, in essence, a move towards doing—by having it scrutinise the draft Financial Services Bill jointly with this House is a start on a slippery slope in relation to the historical division on financial matters that has existed ever since democracy in this place was established. The proposal begins to unravel that and one might think that there are some within the coalition whose very agenda that is—those who want a proportionally elected second Chamber that has those financial powers. It seems to me that they have managed to sneak in, through this proposal at this late hour and this late stage—indeed, it would have been without this debate had we not tabled this amendment—potentially a constitutional issue of profound ramifications. It would mean handing over, albeit the very first semblance of doing so, financial powers, decision-making powers and authority to a second Chamber that some want to become an elected Chamber in the very near future.

There will be different views about that and I do not intend to go into what those views are—that is for another day—but it is relevant to the amendment to point out the consequences. Hon. Members who vote through this unwise, undemocratic, unegalitarian, anti-regions, anti-nations, badly thought-out, badly timetabled, rushed and last-minute proposal will be opening this House to potential ridicule from future generations who come here. They will ask when was the moment when we handed over to the other place that first little bit of power in relation to financial matters. When did we allow the second Chamber—

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I put it to you that the question of the allocation of powers to the other place is completely outside the scope of the motion?

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I was listening intently and I was about to say, which I shall now do, that we are concerning ourselves in this debate with the establishment, composition and remit of the draft Financial Services Bill Joint Committee, upon which subject the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is tabling and, I think, speaking to an amendment relating to a narrow part of the matter—namely, a particular member of the Committee. A wider dilation about possible future transfers of power, which might haunt the hon. Gentleman, are not subject matter for this evening’s debate, to which I know he will now return.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I agree. To be honest, my answer to the question of the second Chamber is ultimately to vote to abolish it. I have always been a unicameralist and think that if we did the job here better we would get legislation that was not only better, but more timely and well drafted, and we would not have the theatricals that we have to go through with the other place.

The draft legislation is being put forward and I welcome that process. I sat on one of the very first Joint Committees in 2003—the Joint Committee on the draft Civil Contingencies Bill. For a new Member, that was a very good process and learning curve, because it included young and inexperienced Members of this House, such as the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and myself, and Members of the House of Lords, such as Lord Archer, a former Solicitor-General, and Lord Condon, who is a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner. They brought a wealth of experience to that process, which was a good one in that it could not be replicated by the usual way in which we conduct legislative scrutiny in this place. The most important thing was that out of the 130 amendments that were tabled, well over 100 were accepted. The important thing about this Committee will be whether it genuinely conducts pre-legislative scrutiny and whether the Government will really consider changing their proposals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw talked about the House of Lords. I feel uncomfortable not about joint legislative scrutiny with the House of Lords, which is a good process, but about having it for financial matters. That makes me a bit nervous. Not only the membership of the Committee from this House, but the selection process in the other place, which is nothing to do with us, as I well know, have not been thought through. Getting the balance right is a difficult job. The supremacy of this place in dealing with financial issues has to be maintained. I would not like, as my hon. Friend said, for this to be a chink in the armour that breaks the convention that this House, not the other place, deals with finance. Unfortunately, that point seems to have been glossed over in the way that the Government and the usual channels have put the process together. The Procedure Committee or others might want to look in detail at how such Joint Committees come into being. I would not want it to become a regular occurrence for Joint Committees, including those considering financial issues, to have Members of the other place sitting on them and determining what is taken forward.

It will be difficult to get the Bill right. It will be like finding the ark of the covenant to find a regulatory system that everyone agrees with and that protects the public from the scenes that we saw a few years ago. It is interesting that we hear the Conservatives say these days that they are now for more regulation, even though in the 1980s they deregulated the financial markets and then called for less regulation when the previous Labour Government of whom I was a member were bringing in legislation.

I am concerned about the short time scale that is being allowed for the Bill. The motion says that

“the Committee should report on the draft Bill by 1 December 2011.”

We are about to go into a long recess and the Committee will have to work through that to keep to that timetable. I wonder why that date was inserted. Getting this right is more important than any headlines the Government wish to create so that they can say they have solved the problem of the regulation of the banks. The date needs to be reconsidered and the timetable extended.

[Mr Jenkin]

If the date is so important, why did not the hon. Gentleman table his own amendment? Why does he think that the Committee that this House is about to appoint is incapable of reporting to the House if it feels that it has not completed its deliberations? Its members have a mind of their own—they do not need the supervision that he is attempting to give them.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is being a bit petulant—[Interruption.] Pedantic, even. I do not understand why. In my conversations with him, we have never agreed about anything, but we usually get on quite well.