Constitution and Home Affairs

Caroline Flint Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on his maiden speech. It is always daunting for Members in all parts of the House to make their first contribution to Parliament, but I wish him well in his time on the Conservative Benches. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) on their maiden speeches. In all maiden speeches and the coverage of their constituencies, it is important for hon. Members to remember that, whatever happens in the House, they are first and foremost constituency MPs. If anything weakens that link, it would be a sad day for British democracy.

I shall touch on three topics in the debate. First, in relation to the constitution and political reform, I understand that the coalition programme for government contains an agreement which states:

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

We have already heard today that there are plans to reduce the size of the House of Commons and redraw constituency boundaries to equalise constituency sizes.

To achieve the first objective would require the creation of more than 172 new peers. That would be an increase in Tory peers from 186 to 263 and in Liberal Democrat peers from 72 to 167. I question the size of the second Chamber. The House of Lords is already one of the largest parliamentary Chambers in the world. At present, it has 734 Members, and 56 new peers were created in the dissolution honours, taking the total to 790. It is extremely unusual to have a second Chamber larger than the first. Indeed, now that Burkina Faso has abolished its upper house, there is no other country in the world with a second chamber larger than the first.

[Mr Tyrie]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady. She may be interested to know—I have checked—that the other place is the largest democratic Chamber in the world, except for the national people’s congress in China. We can all make up our own minds about the level of democracy available there. Does she agree that the only way we can deal with the issue is to dispense with a House of patronage and appointment, and get to a point where we can have a democratically elected second Chamber?

[Caroline Flint]

I absolutely agree. In previous votes, I voted to abolish the second Chamber. I do not think that is going to happen, but in the discussion about changes in the House of Commons, we must also discuss changes in the House of Lords, as well as the purpose of the two Houses, the purpose of constituency MPs and whom the other place represents.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Does my right hon. Friend think it possible that those appointed to the House of Lords by the Government in such a generous spirit would find once they got there that they were not so keen on democratic elections as they might have been previously? Perhaps we should insist that any appointment of extra peers comes after we have changed the democratic basis of the House of Lords, not before.

[Caroline Flint]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I have heard rumours of grandfather clauses, which is rather frightening. It suggests that whatever system we end up with, and whatever voting might take place in future for a second Chamber, those who are currently there could continue until they die. I have many friends in the other place, but this is not the right way to talk about what we are here to do in both Houses of Parliament.

The second chamber that comes nearest to the House of Lords in size is the French Senate. This year it will have 346 members, half the size of the House of Lords. We know that the United States Senate has 104 members, and internationally the average size of a second chamber is 82. It is a matter not just of size, but of cost. We have heard that one of the reasons for reducing the number of seats in this place is cost. In 2007-08, the House of Lords cost £121.5 million, which works out at £168,000 per Member. If the House of Lords were reduced in size to, say, 100, it would save more than £115 million a year—much more than the savings projected by reductions in the size of the House of Commons by 10%, yet the coalition is planning on creating nearly 200 additional peers, at a cost of more than £20 million a year, while at the same time cutting the number of MPs.

I object to the idea of reducing the Commons arbitrarily by 10% when, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said from the Front Bench, the workload of MPs is growing, not decreasing. In addition, we have the proposal for a new super-majority of 55% of the Commons. What we see in the coalition’s reform package is a manipulation of our democracy, not an extension of it. It is not new politics to pack the Lords and rig the Commons.

The second topic that I shall touch on is the DNA database. The coalition proposal is to remove people not convicted of a crime from the DNA database. The database exists to provide justice for victims and their families. Having one’s DNA profile held on the database is not a punishment. It is intended to assist in the prevention and detection of future crimes, to help eliminate the innocent from inquiries, and to deal with past crimes. Many cold cases have been solved because of the DNA database. Without the database, thousands of crimes would go unsolved and many serious and dangerous criminals would be walking our streets.

Between March 1998 and March 2009, DNA evidence helped to solve over 304,000 crimes. In 2008-09, there were 252 homicides and 580 rapes with a DNA scene-subject match. In 2008-09, 79 rape, murder or manslaughter charges in England and Wales were matched to the DNA database from DNA profiles that belonged to individuals who had been arrested but not convicted of any crime. The only civil liberties being extended by the proposal from the coalition Government are those of rapists, murderers and other serious criminals to walk the streets for longer to commit crimes because a DNA record has been deleted.

The evidence shows that there is a justification for retaining the DNA of people who have been arrested but not convicted, because their risk of offending, as measured by the risk of re-arrest, is higher than that of the general population. Analysis suggests that this risk is higher than that of the general population for six years following the arrest.

We should also not forget the potential deterrent effect of DNA. People are less likely to commit crime if they know there is a good chance that they could get caught. So if people know that DNA could play a significant role in securing convictions, they will be less likely to commit the crime in the first place. I shall save my contribution on the proposal to give anonymity to defendants in rape trials for my Adjournment debate at the end of the evening.

My final point is on police accountability. We all agree that there should be police accountability, and perhaps we need to look at police authorities and how they could be made more accountable. I am worried about the proposal to introduce elected police commissioners. We must recognise that some of the policing at force level and between forces concerns serious crimes involving organised criminals and organised networks. It is about counter-terrorism. Those are always the issues raised by my constituents on the doorstep. We need to make sure that in relation to accountability, we do not allow the work of the police to be distorted by what is most popular in our communities. I understand that there are other sorts of crime that have to be dealt with.

We have Safer Neighbourhoods teams in Doncaster and elsewhere around the country because the Labour Government decided that local policing is important. The Conservatives opposed them when we introduced them. We now have local police teams dedicated to one particular area who will not be moved to another part of town and who spend their time out on patrol working with police community support officers and setting their priorities with local people. At the regular monthly meetings with the public, residents can demand action on gangs hanging around near an off-licence, on speeding cars or on motorbike nuisance. The mixture of local intelligence and public pressure provides real and practical accountability. What worries me about the hype surrounding elected police commissioners is that we will lose not only the plot on local accountability, but the commitment and funds to ensure that it continues to grow, not decline and wither on the vine. At the same time, we need effective policing to ensure that the public are protected from increasingly complicated crime.

On all those issues, there are many questions that the coalition Government have to answer in the days, the weeks and, it would seem, the years ahead.