Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point about the Leveson inquiry is that it is a judge-led inquiry. He is able to ask for any papers or material that he wants and this Government will provide it.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the principles of fair play and natural justice dictate that accusations made about the Secretary of State at Leveson should be determined only after the Secretary of State has had the opportunity to give his side of the story at Leveson? Does he also agree that the motivation for this urgent question today has more to do with the failure of the Opposition to engage on the issues before the people of London and the people of Britain at the ballot box on Thursday?

[The Prime Minister]

The motivation is probably that the Opposition would rather do anything than get out and campaign for Ken Livingstone. I am willing to keep them here as long as they like. They must answer for their own motivation, but that is my guess.

Party Funding

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am not aware of any such representations having been made.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the great sadnesses of the last 24 hours is that our politics is in the news again for all the wrong reasons? Does he further agree that any settlement on the funding of political parties must include the trade union movement? Lastly, does he agree that as well as a cap on donations, we should be looking at a national cap on spending that will bring to an end silly spending for pointless reasons?

[Mr Maude]

Of course there is already a cap on spending at election time, but that is undoubtedly one thing that could be looked at. Indeed, it was looked at in the previous discussions, and no doubt it will be on the table again.

European Council

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can confirm that I am not part of any secret pact. I basically take a pretty straightforward approach, which is that it is not normal practice to see candidates in the middle of an election. I have made exceptions on occasion, but I am not going to make an exception in this case.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on pursuing a growth and deregulation agenda at the EU Council. Did he have an opportunity over the weekend to see the reports in the newspapers here about proposed changes to the working time directive that would allow employees to add sick leave and paternity and maternity leave to their end-of-year holiday entitlement? Does he agree that such proposals run entirely counter to his agenda? Will he confirm that the Business Secretary would have his full support if he were to oppose them here in the United Kingdom?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have a blocking minority on extending the working time directive and we need to ensure that we keep that together. In my view, however, this is the sort of area that the European Union should not have got into in the first place.

EU Council

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On the issue of financial services, this is not about just one square mile of the United Kingdom. I think of people working in the financial services industry in Cardiff, and I think of banks, building societies and insurance businesses right across Wales. They need to know that there is fair regulation within the EU and they want those safeguards too. It is not just about those industries on their own; it is about the support they give to the other industries as well.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

May I add my words of support for the Prime Minister, who at the weekend kept faith with this House and, more importantly, with the country? Can he confirm that, as the Foreign Secretary said yesterday, the existing treaties of the European Union belong to all 27 member states and that there can be no question of the eurozone countries having recourse to the institutions, mechanisms and procedures of those treaties?

Public Disorder

Conor Burns Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me give the right hon. Gentleman just one area where we have already made progress but I want to see further progress: discipline in schools. We have got to make sure that schools are able to confiscate things from children and to exclude children without being overruled by appeals panels. All those steps add to responsibility. We must also make sure that every single tax and benefit is pro-family, pro-commitment and pro-fathers who stick around. Part of the problem is that fathers have left too many of these communities, and that is why young people look towards the gang.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has referred twice in the past 24 hours to phoney concerns about human rights. He will be aware of the many letters we all receive from people who are dismayed by decisions taken that seem to laugh at our values and beliefs in this country. If he is serious about wanting to build the responsible society, may I suggest that that will be much more easily achieved if we remove the invidious Human Rights Act from legislation?

[The Prime Minister]

The specific point that I was making was about the concern that is often expressed, and was expressed to me over the past couple of days, as to whether under the Human Rights Act “Wanted” pictures, as it were, could be published. I wanted specifically to send a message to police forces and local authorities that they should go ahead and do that. On the Human Rights Act more generally, my hon. Friend knows that we have plans to reform it at source under the European convention on human rights.

Phone Hacking

Conor Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

With the number of individuals and organisations with questions to answer growing by the day, will the Prime Minister assure me that, should there be further dramatic developments in the coming weeks he would not hesitate to add his voice to the call for a recall of this place from our summer recess so that they could be debated on the Floor of the House?

[The Prime Minister]

There is never normally any shortage of people calling for Parliament to be recalled—indeed, I remember that a recent recess had not even started when someone called for Parliament to be recalled. I may not be the first out of the traps, if I may put it that way.

Open Public Services White Paper

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady has to deal with a question between herself and her own Front Bench. She will have noticed that the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) made it clear that she thought that our proposals lagged behind what the Labour Government had already tried to do. I do not think that the Labour Government would ever have accused themselves of trying to privatise everything in sight. If the Opposition are saying that the White Paper continues measures that the Labour Government were doing, they cannot possibly accuse us of trying to privatise everything in sight. Nor would it be sensible to privatise everything in that way. The White Paper makes it absolutely clear throughout that we are neutral as between public sector providers, voluntary sector providers, community groups, mutuals, co-operatives and the private sector. I hope that we will eventually get over this absurd ideological divide, because we want something very simple—namely, the best service for the person who is using it. We do not care who provides the best service; we just want to ensure that the best service is always available and that people have a choice between providers so that they can get it. I would have thought that that would join the two sides of the House.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

Between 1997 and 2010, there was a 57% real-terms increase in public spending, but there was no such corresponding increase in productivity in the public sector. How does my right hon. Friend envisage his plans increasing productivity and delivering greater value for money, including for our taxpayers in Dorset?

[Mr Letwin]

I am delighted to help out my hon. Friend and Dorset colleague on this. What he says is absolutely true: there was a vast increase in spending on public services during the last Government. Alas, the improvements in the outcomes were not as great as the inputs. That is precisely what we are trying to tackle, and we are doing it in an age-old way, by introducing innovation and diversity of supply, as well as choice and power for the people using the services, so that there is real pressure on all providers to improve. We need continuous pressure for improvement and continuous transparency on whether the services are improving, as well as a continuous ability for people who find a service being provided better elsewhere to choose the best service. Those are the methods that always improve quality.

House of Lords Reform

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

With the greatest of respect to Lord Lipsey, I think that his figure was a guesstimate rather than an analysis. There are all sorts of unknown quantities involved, such as what the final size of the House of Lords will be, how many Members will be elected, the time scale and the transitional arrangements for those elected and for those who depart. Until those things have been decided, which I hope will happen in the coming months, it is impossible to come up with an accurate figure.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister give way?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Let me make a little progress, if I may.

If we are to continue in the spirit of co-operation, it is essential that we are pragmatic. House of Lords reform has constantly been blighted by an inability to compromise, because of either pessimism on the one hand or purism on the other. Both must now give way. When we differ on the detail, we must not lose sight of our overarching aim, which is a more democratic and legitimate upper Chamber.

Members know my preferences for reform: I support a fully, rather than mostly, elected House and believe that Members should be elected by the single transferable vote to give the other place greater independence from party control. I shall continue to argue strongly for both, but I will not make the best the enemy of the good. I shall remain open-minded and realistic, and I hope that Members on all sides of the debate will do the same. On that note, I give way to the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

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[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

An Opposition Member referred in an intervention a few moments ago to something called the poll tax. Known, as I am, as a doughty defender of Baroness Thatcher, may I point out that she is recorded as saying that she was a great fan of the Polish people and would never have tried to tax them?

May I begin by saying to the Deputy Prime Minister, who concluded his remarks by saying that no one is in favour of the status quo, that I am in favour of the status quo, as I know many Conservative Members are? In that context, it is vital that as we have this debate we remember the words of Lord Denning, who said that two reasonable men may hold opposing views without surrendering their right to be considered reasonable. The tone in which the debate is conducted is incredibly important, and having known the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), for more than 20 years, I know that he will handle it with great tact and dignity.

I welcome the establishment of a Joint Committee. Many of us on the Conservative Benches, and on the Opposition Benches, are open to reform of the other place but opposed to its abolition. To say that it has become too big, or that it is becoming increasingly political, is true, but that has happened not because of the other place but because of people down here sending too many people there. It is wrong to look to total abolition because of failures at this end of the building.

I am totally in favour of examining ways to improve the effectiveness of the other place. I hope to develop that argument over the coming months and feed it into the Joint Committee. We should consider retirement mechanisms, a cap on numbers and enshrinement of the proportion of Cross Benchers. We should also consider attendance criteria, because far too many Members do not come into the other place.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is not aware that his noble Friend Lord Heseltine has not even made his maiden speech in the House of Lords. “Part-time” would not be a good adjective to describe him. Can the hon. Gentleman think of one?

[Conor Burns]

I can think of many, and it is not often that I am accused of being on the same side as Lord Heseltine. I remember telling Lady Thatcher a couple of years ago that he had not made his maiden speech, having been in the Lords for nine years at the time. Her reply was, “Well, look on the bright side, at least we haven’t had to listen to it.” Lord Heseltine is a very good example of my point—he says that he took his membership of the other place because he wanted the honour, but he did not want to participate. He has participated in fewer than 20 Divisions in the 10 years that he has been a Member of the other place. That was why I found it absolutely disgraceful that he came in the other night to vote against the referendum lock in the European Union Bill, which is going through the other place. Such examples show that the other place needs some reform.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there would be no more accountability under the current proposals than there is at present, because someone who underperformed in the other place would have been elected democratically for just one term of 14 years and could not be voted out again?

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[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend, as always, puts his finger on it. I will come to that precise point in a moment.

I remember some years ago knocking on a door when I was standing for Southampton city council for the first time, and somebody said to me that they thought there should be one major constitutional innovation in this country, which they deemed would improve our politics dramatically. They said that anyone who actually wanted to stand for Parliament should be barred from so doing. I have to say, sometimes when I look around and listen, I have some sympathy with that. The point of the other place is that it brings into Parliament people who would not dream of putting their name forward.

My noble Friend, and my predecessor’s predecessor, Lord Eden of Winton, asked some fundamental questions in a speech in the other place last week. On what basis would candidates put themselves forward for election to a revised second Chamber? Would they bear a party ticket, and would they be answerable to any form of mandate? By what form would they be chosen by the political parties? Would there be a risk that we would be putting more and more power into the hands of the party apparatchiks? Government and Opposition Members have seen what that manipulation can mean.

I do not know whether the Deputy Prime Minister has seen the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the noble Lord Eden that the Deputy Prime Minister should be based permanently in the other place and subjected to regular parliamentary oral questions. I suspect that if he thinks the response he is getting here is fierce, it would be considerably fiercer at the other end of the building.

I wish to deal briefly with the argument that reform was in every party’s manifesto. It was, to some degree, and the Liberal Democrats, who had the most pro-reform manifesto commitment, got 23% of the vote in the general election. Labour, which was slightly more lukewarm, got 29%, and the Conservatives, who were the most lukewarm, got 36%. There is almost an argument that if we want to do things on the basis of what was in the manifestos, we should remember that the most people voted for the party that was most lukewarm on the issue.

We have to ask ourselves, as at the time of Maastricht, when all three Front-Bench teams are united on something, how do those who dissent make their view known? I say to Opposition Members that they could do no better than listen to the words of the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who was very clear in saying that

“the key question on election is whether we want a revising Chamber or a rival Chamber”,

which was why it was a question

“not for one Parliament, but for the long term.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 877-878.]

Despite manifesto commitments, he twice committed himself to a free vote in the House of Commons so that every hon. Member could put their points across.

My biggest worry is that we will create a rival to the House of Commons and to the supremacy of this place, which we will come to regret. We will have the problem of mandate creep. It may start innocuously, but I point out the words of the noble Baroness Williams when the matter was last debated in the Lords, in 2003. She said that

“I want to say simply that, having listened to many speeches on the issue of the right of a non-elected House to challenge the other place, Members on these and many other Benches in this House declare that it is not our wish to be a non-elected House.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 November 2003; Vol. 655, c. 18.]

In other words, when that place gets more democratic power under an electoral system, which the Deputy Prime Minister is on record as saying he believes to be more constitutionally robust and right, its Members will not sit there and happily accept that they have no power at all.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I say to my hon. Friend that the Australian Senate is elected on a different, more proportionate electoral system, and it does not have that problem.

[Conor Burns]

And I say in response to my hon. Friend that it is at the core of Conservative beliefs that if something is working, one does not mess around with it. The other place is working, as is shown by the fact that we in this place accept more than 80% of the amendments that it sends back to us. It is playing its proper role as a revising Chamber.

There is one point of consensus on all sides. We want to see an effective second Chamber that works. I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister saying that he is open to ideas for reform and improvement, and as the Joint Committee embarks on its important work, I hope that it will consider ideas for improving the second Chamber from those of us who want to improve the status quo. We all want it to work in the interests of our constituents, but I am not convinced that the proposals that the Government have on the table at this point will achieve that objective.

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[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) that over the years power has gone from this place—to the EU, to the Government and to the devolved assemblies. It is important to bear that in mind, and the balance between Parliament, the Executive and those other bodies is something that we should debate in some detail on another day.

A respectable case can be made that the House of Lords works well. In recent years, we have had the issues of 90 days’ detention, attacks on jury trials and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, which would have given Ministers the chance to overturn laws just by signing an order. On those occasions, the Lords came to the rescue of the country and did the right thing. It is an excellent revising Chamber and it does not try to rival what we do here. One has only to think of the contributions that people make there—we can point to Lord Heseltine, but I can think of other people who have gone from this place to the Lords, such as Lord Boswell, who is a member of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, and others who do a very good job. The mix in the Lords is something that would never be invented, with all those landed aristocrats mixing with the bishops, a dose of Labour trade union leaders—[Interruption.] Yes, that includes Tommy McAvoy and other former MPs. It does work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns)more or less said, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” But he suggested what I would call maintenance work—just servicing the vehicle so that it does not break down. Some changes could usefully be made, such as to the retirement age, and I personally believe that there is a case for a minimalist approach to voting. That is probably where I would fall out of step with my hon. Friend.

The last time we debated this issue fiercely—between 1995 and 1997—the background was the scandal of loans for peerages, as it became known. There was much concern that the method of appointment to the Lords was part of the problem. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) had a working party—of which I was a member—and we looked at all the issues. There was a feeling that we wanted to keep the 20% made up of the great surgeons and lawyers and others who make such an important contribution, so we needed an appointed element, but for the political Members there was a case for election. That could be as minimalist as simply saying that at the general election people would get another vote for a party—Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem—and the seats would be filled from the parties’ lists in that proportion. In many ways, it would be very similar to what we do now, but it would give an added respectability to the method of appointment.

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend is eloquently making the argument that we should consider a range of options, as we have done in the past. This House and the other place should consider a number of options, rather than just one, so I hope that the Minister will assure those of us with ideas for improving the system that we can look at a broad range of ideas, rather than just the one. There might be an argument for a small element of election, but I am not convinced.

[Oliver Heald]

I welcome that intervention, and I agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, when we came to the votes in 1997, an unclear picture emerged.

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[Andrew Griffiths]

I cannot agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, I have received quite a lot of letters about fixed-term Parliaments. Most of them came from Liberal Democrat activists who wanted me to vote in favour, so that point is not quite right. The reality is that our constituents want us to spend our time in this Chamber producing legislation that will have an impact on the things that matter to them. They want us to talk about jobs, the economy, schools and the health service. Above all, they want the legislation that comes out of this place to be the best possible legislation with the best chance of making the kind of difference that they want.

[Conor Burns]

When my hon. Friend and I were candidates knocking on people’s doors during the previous Parliament, does he recall the number of people who raised with us subjects on which the House of Lords was expressing their opinion and who urged this place to think again?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I concur with my hon. Friend. We heard earlier about a number of issues that the other place has led on, saving the nation in many respects. I commend wholeheartedly not only the work of the other place, but my hon. Friend’s earlier speech. My speech will be considerably shorter, because he covered many of the things that I want to say, and he did so more passionately and more eruditely.

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[Sir Stuart Bell]

It is not our policy, and my hon. Friend would do well to realise it. He replied to the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) about debates in the other place. I will write to my hon. Friend, so he can read last week’s debate and the statement made by Baroness Royall, which said that the Labour party is divided on this issue. Whatever forum made an agreement, it does not bind the party until we come out with a new set of policy commitments, which will not take place before the end of this year. I can tell my hon. Friend now that if he wants the Labour party to go down the road of having a 100% elected Senate, he will not have my support.

[Conor Burns]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that the Labour party is divided on this issue, but so is every party. That is why this issue has always been subject to a free vote in previous Parliaments. Does he agree that the coalition should be encouraged to do the same this time?

[Sir Stuart Bell]

We have to be careful about free votes, because one does not know where they will end up. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda has made a series of remarks from a sedentary position, which I heard and which I will not forget.

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[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Before the Minister leaps up and tells me how I have voted on various debates on the House of Lords over the years, let me say that, like my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), I eventually voted for a 100% elected House, but for very different reasons. According to a rather bizarre tactic—I must confess that I did not quite see the logic of it—if I voted for that, the establishment of a directly elected House of Lords would somehow be prevented. [Laughter.] There it is; we were told that at the time.

Nevertheless, I want to put on record that I do not believe in a directly elected House of Lords. I am not attracted to the idea because I believe that we would elect a rival to this House of Commons, and I do not think that we would have a revising Chamber anywhere near as good as the one that we have now, although I do believe that there is a strong case for reforms of the House of Lords as it stands.

A Member mentioned Australia earlier. The lower House is elected by alternative vote—that is another story—and the upper House by single transferable vote, but over the years there have been serious differences of opinion and almost gridlock between the two Houses on various issues such as climate change. That could well occur were the upper House in this Parliament to be elected. The Prime Minister’s tutor Vernon Bogdanor, who recently wrote a book on the coalition and constitutional change, has said that in the event of disputes between the two Houses,

“a directly elected second Chamber would decrease, not increase, the power of the voter, by insulating Parliament even further from the voter than it is already.”

I am not persuaded in that regard.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and others have observed that the House of Lords does not contain the sort of expertise that it might have years ago, and that today it is packed with place-people from various parties. I am not sure that I agree with that. In last week’s debate in the other place, Lord Howe of Aberavon cited contributions to a debate on the national health service by

“two former deans of university medical schools, a practising dentist, a consultant obstetrician, a consultant paediatrician, a former GP, a former professor of nursing, a former director of Age Concern and the president of Mencap.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2011; Vol. 728, c. 1195.]

I do not believe that a House of Lords whose Members were elected in the way suggested could provide such expertise.

[Conor Burns]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that even if the number of experts diminished over time with the increased number of appointees, that would be an argument not for the abolition of the House of Lords but for returning to having more people of expertise appointed to the House of Lords?

[Paul Murphy]

It is an argument for reform, not abolition. The bishops are another case in point. I am a Roman Catholic, not an Anglican, but I believe that the bishops of the Church of England offer a tremendous amount of expertise and experience to Parliament, and that they should still be Members of the House of Lords.

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[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) perhaps agreeing with his last observation—that what we will see is a coalition of reaction against reform and change from the traditional right and the traditional left. Essentially, when we talk about House of Lords reform, we have a situation in which so many people consistently aspire to a democratic Chamber but then consistently conspire to sustain the undemocratic status quo. That is happening on both sides of the House. I agree with other hon. Members that this has been a good debate up to a point. I do not know how many Lords-in-waiting we have heard from in the debate, but we have definitely heard from some, and—surprise, surprise—it is clear where they stand. They see themselves moving into a slightly adjusted, slightly reformed Chamber, but certainly not a democratic one.

To my mind, the Joint Committee is going to be a mixture of hypocrisy meeting up with futility on the way back from apparent amnesia about people’s positions, and it will be detained by self-interest in various forms. We have a situation in which people who said they were committed to democratic reform of the House of Lords in the past now say that they did not mean to vote for it because it was just a tactic and they cannot even remember why the tactic was needed. That is not a very believable case against reform. As I said on the day that the Deputy Prime Minister made his statement about the draft Bill, I fear that this is going to be another situation where we have a penalty shoot-out in which no one scores, with everyone putting their case for reform.

Some say there cannot be reform without consensus, but the same people also say, “And by the way, because we don’t trust consensus, we want to make sure that there are free votes on any proposals.” We also had the nonsense of the scratchcard idea. Everybody could vote for different proportions of electability to the second Chamber, safe in the knowledge that there would never be a sufficient cluster around any one for there to be a clear outcome. So I am not impressed with some of the arguments that I have heard.

I have some sympathy with some of the arguments against some of the proposals. We run up against the tensions that have been created by the constituencies part of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. House of Commons constituencies will change every five years, possibly significantly. If Northern Ireland loses a seat, all our constituencies will change relatively significantly, and MPs may feel that it is more difficult for them to deal with changing constituencies if there are elected Members of the other House who sit there for 15 years without having to worry about boundary changes or anything else. I accept that point only in relation to how it affects the position of MPs, but I do not accept that this Chamber would be at all undermined by an elected second Chamber if that second Chamber had a clear, limited role in relation to qualitative revision of legislation. That is one reason why I do not agree with the proposal in the draft Bill for supernumerary Members to accommodate the appointment of temporary Government Ministers.

[Conor Burns]

As the Bill stands, I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but is there not the potential for a creep in that over time? In the event of a conflict, if both Houses were elected and one had a fresher mandate, it could claim that it had an equal voice in the debate.

[Mark Durkan]

I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s worry that the danger lies there. I believe that the danger lies in this Chamber. Many hon. Members, including my hon. Friends, have asserted the primacy of this Chamber, but they are the same people who slavishly accept the bizarre convention that operates in this House that the Government will not accept amendments in this Chamber, even when they accept that they are right and logical and make sense, but will instead concoct their own version. The unelected Chamber then gets this great score rate of all the significant amendments, precisely because that is the way this Chamber accepts it. This Chamber accepts being bound and trussed with programme motions that everyone complains about but then votes for, just as everyone says they want House of Lords reform, but manage then always to conspire against it, and somehow there is a sufficient coincidence of objection to one proposed reform or another. I would worry whether this Chamber is up to the challenge. Perhaps the challenge of an elected Chamber next door is what this Chamber needs for it to assert itself a bit more against the Executive. Moreover, if the Executive seek to have Government Ministers only in this Chamber, that too would be an improvement.

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[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me begin by doing something that Members on the Opposition Benches do not do very often: congratulating the Deputy Prime Minister on the approach he has taken so far in the formation of legislation. He said that it was impossible to defend the status quo. I disagree that it is impossible, but it is very difficult. The principle that legislators should be elected and hold popular legitimacy is one that we would want to see across the world and in our Parliament.

Let me be specific about what I welcome in the proposals. First, I welcome having an elected upper Chamber. Secondly, I welcome the Chamber being elected by proportional representation. I proudly voted no to the alternative vote and was glad to see that the people spoke resoundingly against that system, which I think would have been awful. One of the reasons people voted against it is that it would not correct what many consider to be the inherent unfairness in our system, even if I might want to defend first past the post, which is that AV is inherently disproportional. I think that there is scope for us to look at the arrangements between the House of Commons and the other place to address that by maintaining a strong system of first past the post in this Chamber and one of proportional representation in the other. I will go on to explain why PR would be a good option for the upper Chamber.

[Conor Burns]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that there is a danger in that, because many people believe proportional representation to be more legitimate than first past the post? If we were to elect a proportion of the Members at the other end of this building by a system that many people regard as more legitimate, the other place could claim more legitimacy.

[Gavin Shuker]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the point that I was just about to make. Some people in this country view proportional representation as a more legitimate system of representation, although I and many Members of this House would disagree, so there must be safeguards to prevent the second Chamber taking on the mantle of that legitimacy. In my view, a wholly elected upper House would be the best way to manage that change. Specifically, what would be of most benefit would be to ensure that there was no constituency link between Members of that Chamber and the places they sought to represent.

European Council

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right that we should support Frontex in its work and that we should support the action that Schengen members are taking to secure Europe’s external borders. That is vital because, as he says, many of those people do not stay in Greece but come to Paris or London. I do not think it is any contradiction to say that we should support that action while at the same time maintaining our own border controls and arrangements, particularly with the French, that have done us proud in recent years.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The Prime Minister will have spoken for the overwhelming majority in this country when he expressed his anger at the proposed £280 million new European headquarters. Was any progress made at this Council meeting in implementing the coalition agreement’s aspiration to end the obscenity of the European Parliament moving between Brussels and Strasbourg, wasting a huge amount of money? Does he agree that anybody who does not agree with those points is, to use a phrase coined at that Dispatch Box, living in cloud-cuckoo land?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that I cannot give my hon. Friend much satisfaction because the fact that the European Parliament moves between those two cities was not discussed at the European Council. Indeed, the problem that I have referred to in relation to the new building rather shows that there are too many people in Brussels who do not understand the need to cut their cloth according to what is available—by passing around a very expensive brochure to a very expensive new building.

House of Lords Reform (Draft Bill)

Conor Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The Catholic Church prohibits its bishops from sitting in Parliaments and political bodies. Leaders of other faiths—I was in discussion with the Chief Rabbi just yesterday—also recognise that they do not possess the hierarchies that would allow them to provide that kind of representation. Those leaders of other faiths have long accepted, acknowledged and supported the idea of continued representation of the established Church in this country, even in a reformed House of Lords.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

May I say to the Deputy Prime Minister that it is the view of many on the Government Benches that we did not come to this place to vote for measures that will undermine the democratic supremacy and legitimacy of this House? It is widely known that, as he said in his remarks, he has passionate and long-held views on what should happen to the other place. Others of us have equally strong and passionate opposing views. Why does he seem to be indicating to the House today that he is not going to follow the example of what happened in March 2007 and February 2003, when this House last voted on these measures, and offer everyone in this House a free vote, so that they can vote with their conscience?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course I acknowledge that people will have different views, will feel strongly about the matter and will come at it from different directions. The fact is that last year all of us, notwithstanding some relatively minor differences between our manifestos, stood before the British people on manifesto commitments to see reform to the other place finally be delivered. We will of course have further debates, deliberation and argument, not least in the Joint Committee, but this is Government business, this is in the coalition agreement and it is a manifesto commitment from Members in all parts of the House, and it should be proceeded with on that basis.