Parliament (Amendment)
Debate between Chris Ruane and Christopher Chope(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision to limit the size of the legislature by ensuring that the number of peers entitled to vote in the House of Lords does not exceed the number of parliamentary constituencies; to introduce a statutory limit on the number of Ministers, Whips and Parliamentary Private Secretaries in each House of Parliament; and to set a maximum proportion of Ministers, Whips and Parliamentary Private Secretaries in the total membership of each House of Parliament.
The Bill follows on from our debate in the House yesterday evening on the new clause that was so ably proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) during our deliberations on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I do not know whether you were able to follow it, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it was a vintage debate, in which my hon. Friend was supported by the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), as well as my hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and many others.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne made the case for constraining the size of the Executive as a proportion of the membership of the House. For example, he said that if the number of MPs was reduced to 600, the maximum number of Ministers should be reduced from the present maximum of 95 to 87. He also said that that was hardly the most radical proposal. He and I both expected a lot more support from our own side in the Lobby, and I am sure that there would have been, had there been a free vote, or indeed anything other than a strong three-line Whip. I know that one of my hon. Friends who supported the new clause was seen being dragged away to the Whips Office to be dealt with. That is part of the background to this Bill.
In what is generally agreed to have been one of the lamest responses from the Front Bench in years, the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), was reduced to expressing sympathy to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, while arguing a case for prematurity. Those of us who have been Members of this House for some time know that when all other arguments have failed, the argument of prematurity is the last desperate throw.
In yesterday’s debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park quoted what the Prime Minister had said in February this year when he was the Leader of the Opposition:
“We’d want to reduce the power of the executive and increase the power of Parliament even if politics hadn’t fallen into disrepute.”
My hon. Friend argued that the Government should do what the present Prime Minister promised to do in advance of the general election. He also quoted the Deputy Prime Minister and other leading figures in the Government.
Why, then, is it premature to reduce the power of the Executive? The only reason it is premature is that the Executive say that it is premature. I think that reducing the power of the Executive is long overdue and that the arguments that applied before the general election apply even more strongly now. When presented with their own self-proclaimed path of virtue, however, the coalition Government have not merely said “Not yet”, but made things worse by increasing the size of the Executive.
When I was first elected in 1983, 81 Members of Parliament were Ministers, of whom 13 were Whips. Today, 95 MPs are Ministers, of whom 17 are Whips. Even under the last Labour Government, only 90 MPs were Ministers, of whom 15 were Whips. What has happened in this Parliament is that the new Government have increased the number of Ministers and the number of Whips.
