Business of the House

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

That would make an excellent Backbench Business debate and I am sure the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee may be sympathetic to a debate on such a topic. I pay tribute to all the volunteers across the hon. Lady’s constituency and others who do all that work. As we continue to debate Geordie culture, I can feel a question or two coming from Sunderland at some point in the future.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Can we have a debate on the positive impact that angling has on participants’ mental health and wellbeing and, during that debate, can we celebrate those enlightened wildlife trusts that promote angling and can we call out those such as the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, which states on its website that it has a long-standing policy of not allowing angling on any land for which it holds the angling rights? That recently brought it into conflict with the Nottinghamshire Anglers Association, which last week was banned from the Attenborough nature reserve. Anglers like me love our rivers and streams as much as football fans love their clubs. It is a visceral relationship and wildlife trusts should not get in between it.

[Mark Spencer]

I am disappointed to hear that Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust is taking that approach towards the angling community. Angling is one of the largest participation sports in the country and anglers have a self-interest in making sure our rivers and fish are healthy and plentiful. I hope that the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust will reflect on that. On my hon. Friend’s behalf, I will certainly pursue the matter directly with my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) and for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), whose constituencies border Attenborough nature reserve.

Business of the House

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Sir Charles Walker.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

It is very kind of you to call me first, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. If the country wants better politicians, it has to treat them better. The Administration Committee is about to start its inquiry on planning for the general election, and it will be looking at not only how we welcome people here but how we assist them as they leave this place. Too many people are put off coming into politics because they see it as career death or reputational death. Most colleagues have huge talents and, if we can prove to people thinking of coming here that we look after those who leave, we will improve the overall quality of this place.

[Mark Spencer]

My hon. Friend will have heard the House’s response to his question. He is addressing something that needs to be resolved, and it is clearly something we need to do across parties. I encourage him to continue. If I can support him in any way, I would be delighted to do so.

Business of the House

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I will not comment on the card reader. Occasionally things break, and the House authorities responded rapidly to ensure that the Division could continue. I know it was a little frustrating for colleagues having to queue up, but we should give credit to those individuals who stepped in to help us. I am not sure that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asked any other questions at all, to be honest. He made his point about the debate this afternoon, and he has only another 40 minutes to wait until the Paymaster General gets to the Dispatch Box. I am sure he will be interested to hear what the Paymaster General says, and he will be able to make his party political points at that time.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will recall from his time as Chief Whip that I greatly struggled with the lockdowns, and the legacy of covid has pumped so much poison into this country and into the veins of this place. Can we please try to find a way today not to have a fractious debate and a Division? I believe genuinely that the Prime Minister is a good and decent man, and he can make the case to the Privileges Committee directly without having to divide this House and have yet more poison pumped into public life. Please can the Chief Whip find a way of making that happen?

[Mark Spencer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right to highlight the fact that language matters in this place. It has an impact on people in the outside world and on how they perceive politicians, and getting the tone of this debate right will be absolutely crucial. I know that the Chief Whip will have heard his comments and I am sure he will reflect on them.

Business of the House

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the sanctions regime we have introduced and our ability to sanction those individuals associated with the Putin regime, but we should not confuse Russian people or people of Russian descent living in the United Kingdom with those who are supportive of the Putin regime. It is quite important to draw that distinction. He is able to raise that question in the House today because when anybody makes a donation it is logged and registered, and it is transparent for the electorate to view. That is a healthy place to be in a modern democracy.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

The shadow Leader of the House raised the important issue of energy resilience and security. On that theme, we need to look at water resilience and security. The east and south-east of England is running out of water, which is a serious and urgent issue that needs to be addressed. We need to build more reservoirs and build our resilience. Can we have an urgent debate in this place to talk about getting more water into the east and south-east?

[Mark Spencer]

My hon. Friend is a long-standing campaigner on these issues and I know he will continue to hold the Government to account about them. He is right to draw attention to the fact that resilience within our infrastructure and utilities is vital to our future. For a long time, we have taken our access to good, clean water for granted, but that happens only with investment in our infrastructure. He is right to continue to draw attention to that.

Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Charles Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I agree absolutely and utterly. There is no place in any democratic system for people who are put there by a Prime Minister just because they happened to give his party £3 million. We would never accept that in an independent Scotland.

That brings me to my next point—I am grateful to my hon. Friend—because the people of Scotland are observing this and they do not like what they are seeing. It is just making them more determined that we get away from this sleazy, corrupt, rotten cesspit of a place and start to be self-governing in our nation of Scotland. They are embarrassed by this place and, unfortunately, Scotland has not been left unscathed by the behaviour of Members of Parliament.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

If the hon. Gentleman really believes that this place is a cesspit, he should just leave. Leave with your Members—[Interruption.] No, seriously, leave—give up your jobs and go. To call this place that does so much good—Members on both sides of the House, including on the SNP Benches—a cesspit is an appalling thing to do.

[Pete Wishart]

I am really pleased that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman, because he could assist us in doing that. I know that we are an irritant to him and that he cannot stand us—we in the Scottish National party who speak up for our nation—but there is an easy, elegant, neat solution: you govern yourselves and we will govern ourselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I wish I could say that it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, but I do not think that it will be a pleasure for any colleague. It has been a very bruising two weeks, but I am reflecting on the few things that I have learned in my 17 years in this place. With the House’s indulgence, I will put them on the record in a non-partisan way.

In my capacity as a Select Committee Chair for 10 years, I have had the pleasure of working with hon. Members from all Benches. Before we get carried away with calling ourselves all sorts of names, it is important that we remember where this can end up. The first lesson that I have learned in this place is that we are never happier than when burning each other to a crisp. We love to skewer each other, place ourselves on the barbecue, roast ourselves pink and then serve ourselves up with a large side order of hubris. We are all guilty of it, on both sides of the House, and we need to remember that. No one in this place is perfect.

I am also amazed to have heard people say over the past couple of weeks that we are entitled to a fair hearing. The one thing that I have learned is that we are not entitled to a fair hearing in this place. We are guilty until proven guilty: it is one of Newton’s laws. If you are a Member of Parliament, you do not get a fair hearing—sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker; you are a Member of Parliament and I am sure that you would get a fair hearing, but collectively we are not entitled to one and it is naive of us to expect that we are. That plays directly into standards in public life, because we are all in public life.

Before we start talking about outside interests, let me say that I serve on the Members’ Fund, which looks after former MPs in financial trouble. I say to all colleagues: please try not to lose your seat, because it is a very cold world out there. There is not a raging bull market for ex-Members of Parliament who have come to this place, served for two, three, five or 10 years and lost their seat. Many Members who lose their seat struggle to find another job; I have dealt with some heartbreaking stories from both sides of the House.

As we talk about standards, let me say that poor judgment and flawed decision making are just that: poor judgment and flawed decision making. They are rarely the mark of corruption and sleaze. Of course poor judgment and poor decision making should be punished and we should be accountable, but to say that this place is a cesspit and full of sleaze is just not right. Those who write about this and report these cases know full well that this Parliament is not full of corruption and sleaze.

Since we are talking about pay, I must also say that whatever we were paid, many people would think it too much. Whether we were paid £10,000, £82,000, £90,000 or £50,000, there would always be a constituency of people who thought we were paid too much and would want to tell us we were paid too much. We can never, ever appease them.

Again, these are the sort of people who populate our constituencies. The world is full of some unpleasant people. We all know that, on both sides of the House—we deal with it daily. In the old days, they were armed with pens; now they are armed with keyboards, which makes it much easier for them to bring such unpleasantness and misery into our lives. The people who do this are best ignored. They do it to all Members in this place, and it is very sad.

[Christine Jardine]

I am slightly confused by what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Is he insinuating that Members of Parliament should not be open to scrutiny, that we should not be answerable to the public, and that the press do not have a right to question our motives when there may be a potential conflict of interests?

[Sir Charles Walker]

As I have said, I have been a Select Committee Chair for 10 years. This speech is a cry of pain. I know full well that there are many good people who can question what we do, but many others use debates of this kind—when we refer to this place as a cesspit, full of crooks and rogues—to legitimise some of their unpleasantness. We have all suffered from that, and will continue to do so. I do not get too many unpleasant emails, but I get enough to know what an unpleasant email looks like.

Let me finally say this. Today will be worse than yesterday, but it will not be as bad as tomorrow. Politics in this country is a really, really nasty business, and it is just going to get nastier. A few weeks ago, once again, people said, “We have to change: we will do things differently.” Within a matter of days, we were back where we started from. So whatever happens today, I have news for all colleagues in all parts of the House: it will not make a jot of difference. It will not improve our standing. In fact, if anything our standing will even worse—although not as bad as it will be tomorrow or in a week’s time, because that is just the way it is, I am afraid, and occasionally I think we quite like it that way.

I am not voting for any motion. A plague is deserved on all our houses.

Committee on Standards

Charles Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

If the House does introduce an appeals process, it is very important that the appeal is heard in good time. If the appeal panel upholds the original ruling, what will happen?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

If the original ruling is upheld, it will come back to this House for a vote on the proposal in the normal way. I agree with my hon. Friend that it should be timely.

Amendments to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme

Charles Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Then who will decide whether a complaint is in or out of scope according to the rules as drafted two years ago, which are being changed today?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The interpretation of the rules will be for the people who are the decision makers. As I set out earlier in my comments, ultimately it is for the IEP on appeal. In relation to Members’ staff, it would be the Member themselves. For somebody working for the House, it would be the House authorities, and for a Member of Parliament, it would be for the commissioner to determine what the rules at the time meant but not to jump to a change in the rules. That, I hope, is clear. I wish I could give the interpretation of what the rules mean, which is what my right hon. and hon. Friends are asking for, but that is not my territory. I would then be trespassing on the independence of this process, which is its whole virtue. I am simply making it clear that any decision maker should base it on the language of the policy at the time.

[Sir Charles Walker]

On that basis, it is possible for a variety of decision makers looking at the rules as they were before they were changed to come up with different decisions. Is that not a problem? One decision maker may interpret the rules in a different way from another decision maker, and that in itself creates a problem.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a point that is sorted out by the fact that there is an appeals system and a senior body that can, on appeal, determine this, which I imagine other decision makers would then want to follow. It is not the same as a court, but it is not entirely dissimilar. Lower courts can make a decision, but ultimately there is an appeal body that will make a decision that we would then expect the lower-down decision makers to follow. I do not think that the problem he outlines would last, because there is a proper appeals system to the independent expert panel, which, very much at the request of Members across the House, contains very serious legal expertise, so that we can ensure that in all these cases, natural justice is done and it is fair to both complainants and respondents.

Hybrid Proceedings (Extension of Temporary Orders)

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

As Chair of the Administration Committee, I have the great pleasure of working closely with you, Mr Speaker, and the wonderful members of the House staff who made this hybrid Parliament a reality. They are to be congratulated and celebrated for their efforts. This is a technically brilliant fix. However, when it comes to holding the Government to account—and the Opposition—it is absolutely hopeless. We need to be in this place, eyeballing Government Ministers, the Leader of the Opposition and shadow Ministers and holding them to account. When we are not in this Chamber, we need to be discussing and transacting our constituents’ business in the Division Lobby, the corridors and around the Estate. This is where Parliament should be.

I am afraid that we are in danger of bringing ourselves into disrepute. I sat through part of the last debate and saw a co-ordinated and, yes, legitimate attack from our colleagues north of the border on the Prime Minister because he had asked people to return to work. I point out to those colleagues north of the border that, whether they like the Prime Minister or not, and whether they respect him or not, he is not asking anyone to do something he is not doing himself. Whether or not they approve of what he is doing or what he says, day in and day out he is going into work to lead the country. He did that day in and day out except when he was ill.

It does show a lack of self-awareness to sit in your front room and attack the leader of this country for having the temerity to ask that people go back to work. We all have absolute heroes in our constituencies, working at the Co-Op, at Sainsbury’s, at Tesco, in our hospitals, driving our trains, policing our streets and clearing our rubbish. What right do we have to ask them—and teachers—to go back to work if we are sitting in the comfort of our own home, not leading from the front but directing operations from behind? At the end of the day, our constituents—not all of them, but most of them—will expect us to be here, promoting not ourselves or our own agenda but their agenda. There is an economic tsunami heading towards this country and the rest of western Europe. We need to be here day in, day out, in person—physically—protecting and promoting the interests of the people we represent.

Business of the House

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to praise those running Select Committees. Before we rose for Easter it was thought extremely difficult to allow Select Committees to meet regularly, and now by the time we have got back we can have a regular range of Select Committees meeting. It has been a hugely impressive effort by the parliamentary staff. As for Adjournment debates, as I mentioned earlier, it depends slightly on how long this procedure lasts. We will seek to extend it to cover more and more business the longer it lasts, but my hope is that we will be back to normal before that level of extension has been reached, in which case matters of Adjournment debates will be in Mr Speaker’s hands—and I have a feeling he will be sympathetic to requests to reinstate Adjournment debates where Members have been generous enough to allow them to not be taken.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for bringing us back here today; you have put a huge amount of effort into that, and I really do thank you for it.

May I also thank those hundreds, if not thousands, of my constituents who go to work every day to make my life and the lives of my neighbours and those I represent a little easier? These people are doing a truly terrific thing and they deserve all of our congratulations wherever they are doing it.

May I ask the Leader of the House, as he is a Cabinet Minister, whether we can look at the retail, hospitality and leisure sector grant and its scope? A number of businesses are excluded from it. I am thinking particularly of those in the exhibition industry who have seen their entire business evaporate; they will be the first into this recession and, I suspect, the last out.

May we also look at the small business grant? A number of businesses are excluded from this grant because their rates are bundled up with their rent and paid to their landlord. Many of these are concessions or very small cafes or businesses and they are missing out on the £10,000. I hope the Leader of the House can convey that to the Chancellor.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

All of us who are constituency MPs as well as Ministers are aware of these issues being raised by our constituents. My hon. Friend’s point about rates rolled up in rents is an obvious and important one. Treasury questions are not taking place until 18 May, but of course there is the Prime Minister, and Prime Minister’s questions are to the First Lord of the Treasury. I am sure that the First Secretary of State will be able to answer my hon. Friend’s questions on these matters. In the meantime I will take them up with the Chancellor on his behalf.

Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I absolutely agree with my deputy Chair. He is completely right. It has been very clear during all the Committee’s meetings, which have all been conducted virtually over the last few weeks, that all Members feel strongly that these measures must be strictly time limited. They reflect the situation the country finds itself in today.

We have developed our procedures and ways of doing business over 700 years, since we were last unable to meet, because of the black death, as the Leader of the House mentioned. The situation is evolving. He is right to say that this procedure is the means to the end, not the end in itself, but those means will enable the way we do business to be efficient and effective and ensure that we can speak up for our constituents and make sure their voices are heard in this place

I want to thank and give credit to everybody who has been involved in getting us to this point. It was no mean feat. At the Committee’s first meeting—the Committee was constituted on 2 March—we said we needed to look at the procedures that might be required to deal with the coronavirus, and when it was first suggested that we may have to block out seats in the Chamber, Members were outraged. “How”, people asked, “could we possibly function if we weren’t able to come into the Chamber, contribute and be part of this?” It is incredible to see the work that has been done in just a few short few weeks, and I agree with the Leader of the House that our teams—the Clerks, our parliamentary staff—expect during recess to have a little free time, to reflect how hard they will have worked during sitting periods. That has not been the case up till now.

I also want to thank you, Mr Speaker, for the pragmatic approach you have taken. As Speaker, you are the custodian of this House and how we operate. To endorse a change to our procedures as radical as that in the motion we will be voting on—I hope it will pass on the voices—took great leadership from you, so thank you.

This will not be perfect; there will be glitches and problems. We have all had our internet go down. I have particular problems whenever a PlayStation is cranked up in the next-door room, which makes hearing what is going on in meetings I am conducting not quite as easy as one would hope. The inability to ask supplementary questions or to come back in—that lack of spontaneity; the ability to come in on a question only if we have been drawn out of a shuffle applied for possibly days before—means we will not be able to represent our constituents in the way we would ideally want. But this is better than nothing and as the Leader of the House rightly said, we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We must understand that there will be glitches and that this will evolve. Over time, we will develop a way of working that gives us the best ability to represent our constituents. However, I repeat that it will never be a substitute for the ability to be here fully, and for being fully part of the democratic process.

I want to make the point to the Leader of the House that scrutiny of the emergency measures is vital. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made the point that we have not had the chance to scrutinise the measures that the Government introduced. There is a sunset clause, but they need to be scrutinised. I urge the Leader of the House to ensure that they have appropriate scrutiny at the earliest opportunity.

The Procedure Committee in its report that was issued this morning endorses the changes that have been put forward, particularly equality of treatment. It is vital that all Members can represent their constituents equally, whether they can get to the Chamber and choose to be here or not. We want to emphasise the temporary nature of the changes. They must be temporary and time limited.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

rose—

[Karen Bradley]

I will give way to my predecessor.

[Sir Charles Walker]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all her work. I also thank her Committee and its most excellent Clerk—one of the most talented Clerks in the House of Commons.

My right hon. Friend is right in what she said earlier. The best way that I—and, I am sure, she—can represent constituents to the Chancellor, the Financial Secretary and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is in person. The quicker we are back here in person, being able to talk to the Chancellor and other Cabinet Ministers, the better it will be.

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know the depth of his knowledge of this subject from his extensive time leading the Procedure Committee. Although I want to give credit to Ministers for their accessibility to us as Members of Parliament through WhatsApp groups, telephone calls or other messages—the amount of contact that Members have been able to have remotely is unprecedented—that is no substitute for being here and able to ask a question in public that constituents can see us asking and hear the answer to, so that they know what the Government intend to do with their questions and concerns.

I am grateful for your comments on points of order, Mr Speaker. My Committee was concerned about whether there would be a way of ensuring that our proceedings were orderly. I am grateful that you are looking at that.

I want to deal with concerns about voting. Yesterday, my Committee approved a report that was issued this morning on the basis that we were not looking at reforms to the way in which this place conducts votes. I well understand that there will need to be changes to the voting procedures for next week to ensure that business is not lost. We must ensure that, in the event of some sort of misunderstanding or something not quite working, the Government do not lose the important business that they wish to bring forward next week. However, I say to the Leader of the House that tabling motions tomorrow on further changes to voting will give rise to concern for my Committee. My Committee has not looked thoroughly at what is proposed for remote voting. Some of us have taken part in the trial run, and we cannot say it was absolutely brilliant. A lot more work needs to be done. I know how hard the teams are working on that—this is no criticism of anybody—but I ask the Leader of the House to consider whether there can be a staged process of tabling motions on remote voting, because he needs to take the House with him. The House is here today to support him, because we want all our colleagues to be part of the debate and to be able to contribute, but he needs to take the House with him on this.

On that basis, the Procedure Committee endorses the motions and urges the House to approve them without the need for a Division.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I echo the point that the Chair of the Procedure Committee made that the measures are not desirable, but are absolutely necessary. They are sub-optimal. We often use phrases that we all understand, but we should put them in a way the public would understand. We talk about holding the Government to account and about scrutiny. Basically, that means asking questions. It means asking the questions that occur to us from our knowledge and experience and that of our constituents. We have been getting a considerable number of questions during the crisis—I will come on to a few of them later. Those questions need answering, and they need answering in this Chamber, which, as the Leader of the House said, has to be the epicentre of the democratic system in this country. Otherwise, what is the point of Parliament?

In answering those questions, I do not expect Departments or Ministers to get everything right. I absolutely expect mistakes to be made. In fact, if mistakes were not being made, I would be really alarmed, because if things did not sometimes go wrong, that would mean that decisions were not being taken. Some decisions will go wrong. The test of a Government, of a Minister or even of a business is how quickly those problems are identified and how quickly they are remedied.

Many of those questions should be being asked inside the Government and, looking at how things are panning out, I am concerned that they are sometimes not being asked, either within Departments or between Departments. There seems to be a degree of dysfunctionality. I do not think press conferences are really getting to the heart of the issues, either. I fully understand the constraints that you and the House are operating under, Mr Speaker, but supplementary questions should be part of the evolution of this. Quite frankly, sometimes Ministers—as we see in press conferences—are talking in repetitive clichés. We need answers. Even if a Minister says, “I don’t know”, or “We are looking at that again, because we are not sure it worked out properly,” that is how we will make progress and be able to assess where there are failings and put the pressure on.

Last month, for example, we had both the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister here. I am pleased to say that I was able to ask both of them, on successive days, about the serious situation of very large numbers of our people stranded in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I am still concerned about the long delay in getting them back, compared with the work of many other countries, particularly Germany, which has managed to bring back tens of thousands of people. We were able to put some pressure on the system and get some reaction through that direct confrontation. It is not the same as writing a letter or asking questions in a slightly sterile Chamber, although this is an improvement.

Many Members of Parliament are receiving complaints from hospitals and care homes, and from manufacturers and distributors, about personal protective equipment. It is not matching up in the system. How the two sides can be pulled together does not seem to be getting through. Some pressure here would add energy to that system.

Those of us who have been Ministers know that when a Minister has a hard time here in the Chamber—I see nods from those who have been Ministers—when they get to the Department, they say, “Why did you leave me out there in open country? I want some answers and I want them by this afternoon.”

[Sir Charles Walker]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps the usual order of departmental questions should be changed, so that we could get more chances to ask questions of the Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care—the two Departments absolutely in the frontline of this crisis?

[John Spellar]

I hope that suggestion may have been taken on board by those who are dealing with these issues. Perhaps for certain Departments there could be an extended period of questions, rather than greater frequency, or there could be a more open system in which written questions could be answered in real time, in order to get a response. We have to be flexible on that, but we have to be able to put our points and get a response.