Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am sure that when the hon. Gentleman was in residence in No. 10 Downing street in the last Government—when the degree of transparency was virtually nil—it would never have been disclosed, as it will be, that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) was at Chequers helping the then Prime Minister to plant a tree.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

T4. This time last year, Ministers announced a radical overhaul of facility time. With Royal Mail, teacher and fire brigade strikes inflicting disruption on the public and with the appalling behaviour of Len McCluskey in Grangemouth, FOI data I have received show that the overall public subsidy from Whitehall to the unions has gone up, not down. What further action is my right hon. Friend taking?

[Mr Maude]

The events at Grangemouth illustrate the problems that can arise when full-time union officials are paid for by the employer. I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that the number of full-time union officials on the civil service payroll has halved and that the cost has more than halved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course I accept that for some households the change from one system to another creates real dilemmas that need to be addressed through the money that we are making available to local authorities. The right hon. and learned Lady cites a figure. To be honest, lots of wildly different figures have been cited about the policy’s impact. That is why we are commissioning independent research to understand its impact. I suspect that it varies enormously between one part of the country and another, and one local authority and another. That is why we are trebling the resources that we making available to local authorities.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

T2. The Deputy Prime Minister has specific responsibility for implementing the programme for government and likes to take special ownership of the chapter on tax, a key aim of which is to help lower and middle-income earners. I have a Lib Dem briefing that states:“£50,000” is “a very large salary: these are not middle income earners.”It also says:“We are looking at how” they “could make a further contribution.”Why does he want to clobber the middle classes?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not, and as we made clear at the time the £50,000 figure does not represent any policy of my party. However, I will not be shy about parading the fact that it is because of Liberal Democrats in government that we are giving a huge tax cut to over 20 million basic rate taxpayers, a policy that I was warned by the hon. Gentleman’s party leader at the time of the last general election was not deliverable. It has been delivered because of Liberal Democrats in government.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Unlike many who have spoken today, I met Lady Thatcher only once, but I was nevertheless touched by her unique blend of resolve and kindness. She wrote to me after the last election, as she wrote to many of my new colleagues, urging us to

“carry the fight to our opponents whenever the time comes”.

Her twilight years never dimmed that most tenacious of spirits.

Of course she had her critics and her enemies—did anyone ever get anything done without them?—but this was a woman who won three elections by appealing across tribal political divides and across society. For me, what stands out about her legacy is the fact that she was an underdog fighting for the underdog. Yes, she was renowned for her economic leadership; yes, she reminds us today that we have a choice, and that if we rise to the challenge, our better days lie ahead and not behind us; but she would never have held office for so long had she not carried people with her.

She may have caused division within the Westminster village, but in the country, because of her, 6 million took a stake in British businesses, and 1 million bought their council homes. For many more—including refugees like my father, who came here with nothing—she nurtured the flicker of aspiration, inspiring people, regardless of their background, to believe that as a result of hard work, their dreams of prosperity and a better quality of life lay within their grasp. That message resonated not just in Britain, but around the world. As cold war historian John Lewis Gaddis has observed,

“It was a blow for Marxism, for if capitalism really did exploit the masses, why did so many among them cheer the ‘iron lady’?”

She was fired by a moral clarity that drove decisive action against perilous odds. We think of the Iranian embassy siege, and of the Falklands. Her most basic insight on Europe, shortly after she took office, remains prescient. She said:

“We believe in a free Europe, not a standardised Europe. Diminish that variety within the member states, and you impoverish the whole community.”

That neatly sums up the malaise that afflicts the European Union today.

As others have said, Margaret Thatcher made the political weather. She forged a new consensus. That is why, after the 1997 election, the cover of Time magazine pronounced her legacy the real winner. That is why Tony Blair wrote in his memoirs:

“Mrs Thatcher was absolutely on the side of history…in recognising that as people became more prosperous, they wanted the freedom to spend their money as they chose; and they didn’t want a big state getting in the way of that liberation by suffocating people in uniformity, in the drabness and dullness of the state monopoly… Anything else was to ignore human nature.”

When Caesar learnt of Mark Antony’s death, he lamented:

“The breaking of so great a thing should make

A greater crack”.

Today, we ensure that the passing of so great a statesman echoes from this Chamber. Margaret Thatcher was the ultimate conviction politician: our greatest peacetime leader.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

Yes, they can be confident that the reports will be looked at. Indeed, there are other routes by which reports might come to the SFO, including through the City police and Action Fraud. There is clearly a requirement for prioritisation, but the SFO will examine and consider any reports it receives.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to strengthen conviction rates.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

The Crown Prosecution Service secures convictions in over 17 out of every 20 cases. The Director of Public Prosecutions has concentrated particularly on improving rape and domestic violence outcomes for victims, and conviction rates for both have improved substantially over the past two years. As for the statistical performance of the Serious Fraud Office, my hon. Friend will have heard the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan).

[Mr Raab]

I thank the Attorney-General for that answer. For all the controversy over terrorism legislation, LIBOR rate rigging and tax-dodging, terrorism convictions plummeted by 77% over the past five years, convictions for false accounting fell by 73%, and convictions for tax evasion slumped to 107 under Labour. What action is he taking to plug the gaping prosecutorial deficit left by the previous Government?

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I can reassure my hon. Friend. The final scoping for the inspection is not yet complete but it will include examination of a significant number of sexual offences cases to ascertain whether the disclosure of medical records, including, where applicable, counselling notes, complies with the prosecution’s duty of disclosure and policy and the potential impact of any non-compliance. As I hope she will appreciate, although the other part of the disclosure inquiry is particularly about the problems that came out of the south Wales case of Lynette White, those two things are not mutually incompatible.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to increase the rate of successful prosecutions in counter-terrorism cases.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

The Crown Prosecution Service, police and security services work closely together to build a strong evidential case to enable those suspected of involvement in terrorism to be charged wherever possible with appropriate criminal offences. A post-case review is held after every prosecution and, where appropriate, lessons learned and good practice are used to improve future prospects of successful prosecution and conviction.

[Mr Raab]

I thank the Attorney-General for that answer. According to Home Office data, convictions under terrorism legislation have fallen by 100% since 2006 while convictions for false accounting have fallen by 82% since 2004. Is it not time that we better armed our prosecutors with tools such as intercept evidence and greater use of plea bargaining so that we can take a more robust approach to disrupting and deterring joint criminal enterprises, whether they are terrorism or fraud in the banking sector?

[The Attorney-General]

I have had the opportunity to discuss this with the CPS and it is not thought that the processes we have require widespread reform. The CPS and the Security Service already work closely together from the earliest stages of an investigation, exploring options to strengthen the evidence and follow lines of investigation that lead to sufficient evidence on which to charge. Early formation of the prosecution team and collaborative working with international partners are regarded as essential in securing convictions. I have not seen the statistics to which my hon. Friend referred, but mercifully the number of prosecutions for terrorism-related offences is small and I would be just a little wary of trying to extrapolate a trend in view of the numbers of cases involved. For example, I know that in the early part of this year there were a number of notably successful prosecutions in that field.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

Two key objectives for the coalition are to tackle irresponsible Government spending and to deliver reform of the public sector. The Bill will help to achieve both those aims.

It is worth saying at the outset that some public bodies do important work and are a necessary response to the complexity of modern government. However, they have become massively overused. When the Government came to office, there were 901 quangos. In 2009, executive quangos alone—those that take decisions and do not just advise—employed 111,000 people at a cost to the taxpayer of £38 billion. Governments of all political persuasions share the blame for adding to this problem, but the previous Government certainly added to it in abundance. Funding for executive quangos leapt by 59% between 1997 and 2008.

It is right that the Government are cracking down on the inflation of the quango state. They are doing so first and foremost through greater transparency in the exercise of public functions and powers. In the current economic climate, in which value for money is even more imperative than usual, transparency and ministerial accountability are especially vital. Government policy is also welcome because abolishing and merging quangos and cutting their programmes will save £30 billion over the spending review period, as Ministers have reiterated yet again today. Given the difficult spending decisions that have inevitably been made elsewhere, it is essential to streamline Government as much as possible. Nowhere is that more important than in the sphere of quangos.

It makes sense to merge bodies with comparable functions, as set out in clause 2. For example, the proposed merger of the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission is designed to deliver more effective regulation. It will also realise annual cost savings of between £3.5 million and £6.8 million. It is right, as Members across the House have done, to look at and question the practical impact of these changes. On that particular merger, will the Minister say any more in his winding-up speech about the institutional separation of powers between the initial investigation and the final enforcement decision? I have spoken to a number of competition lawyers and experts about that, and it is a key feature of the current competition regime. How will it be retained in the combined competition and markets authority?

Most of the savings will come not from mergers, but from cutting waste. Some quangos have been guilty of the most appalling waste of taxpayers’ resources. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) made a spirited defence of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. However, auditors have refused to sign off its accounts for three years running. Last year, it breached Government pay guidelines and spent more than £1 million without due authorisation. It presided over a botched website launch, which eventually saw almost £1 million written off. Members do not need to take my word for that. The National Audit Office damningly concluded that

“there is little general financial understanding or competence in the organisation, and that many managers have limited experience of the effective management of public money.”

I discovered that for myself last week when I was informed through a parliamentary answer that a single agency worker at the commission was paid an astonishing salary of £200,000 last year. How can that possibly be justified? In the light of that, it is right that the commission is listed in schedule 5 to the Bill, allowing its functions to be modified or transferred by the Government, subject of course to the consultation on its future.

Other quangos that are to be scrapped in the Bill should probably never have been created in the first place, and I make no apology for listing as chief among them the eight regional development agencies, a pet project of the last Government that proved an expensive failure. The RDAs were established in 1999 but did little to stimulate growth. Job creation in the five years before their creation was higher than in the five years that followed despite the continued boom economic conditions. They also failed to reduce regional imbalances, which was one of their main aims, as figures from the Office for National Statistics amply demonstrate.

The RDAs made a range of poor spending decisions. Between 2007 and 2009, for example, 62% of all grants went to predominantly public sector organisations, while the trade unions were awarded more than £3 million. That is not a spending pattern that inspires confidence, nor is it one to drive a private sector-driven economic recovery. The RDAs will not be missed by those trying to drive jobs and growth in the private sector, especially as scrapping them will save three quarters of a billion pounds in administration costs alone between now and 2015. It is high time to shed light on quangos’ activities and cut down on waste.

Looking ahead, I also welcome the commitment made by the Minister for the Cabinet Office in his statement in October to triennial reviews of the purpose of the remaining quangos. They will be an important part of ensuring that the number of quangos does not balloon again in future, but that provision for them does not appear in the Bill. I ask the Minister to explain why it will not be made a statutory requirement. Equally, Ministers have previously talked about a role for the Public Administration Committee in vetting any new quangos. It would be interesting to know what the status of that proposal is.

Ultimately and overall, the Bill is a big step in the right direction towards strengthening transparency and accountability while delivering savings for the taxpayer, and it has my full support.

Prisoners (Voting Rights)

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing this debate. It is important because it asks a fundamental question: who is in charge of our criminal justice system and our democracy?

In the time available, I will focus on the latter. The right to vote, hon. Members will recall, is not included in the European convention itself but in a protocol to that convention, for good reason. The French proposed including the right to vote in the convention, using language referring to universal suffrage. The British objected; the travaux préparatoires to the convention, which are publicly available, say explicitly that we did so because we wanted to retain restrictions on the franchise, including for prisoners. The proposal for the protocol returned two years later with the offending language removed. By the way, that was under Churchill.

I make that point because it is absolutely clear that Britain did not sign up to that idea. It is important as a matter of interpretation of international law under the Vienna convention. The Strasbourg judges should have heeded it; it is a basic canon of the interpretation of treaty law, and it is obviously critical as a matter of basic democratic accountability. We did not sign up to the idea.

It is one example among many of the rampant judicial legislation that has come from Strasbourg since the 1970s. The law of negligence as it affects the police was rewritten in the Osman judgment. Not just right-wingers or tabloids got upset about that; Lord Hoffmann, until recently the second most senior Law Lord, has complained bitterly about it judicially and extra-judicially. Deportation has been increasingly fettered, and Strasbourg has intruded into parents’ right to determine how to discipline their children, overruling not only the prerogatives of elected lawmakers in this country but a jury. Now we face a demand to give prisoners the vote.

Strasbourg does not deny such judicial legislation. It embraces it, referring to the doctrine of the living instrument, according to which the convention is a living instrument which it is the courts’ duty to update from time to time. Where did the mandate to engage in judicial legislation come from? Not from the convention or the protocol. It is not expressly or implicitly given anywhere. It was conjured up from thin air. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made the point that Strasbourg is not only checking Governments but rewriting laws written by elected lawmakers. Why is that happening? Clearly, it is because Strasbourg is not really a judicial institution at all. I reviewed the CVs of all the judges in 2007. More than half had no prior judicial experience before going to the Strasbourg bench.

In the time available, I will make one point. The question is what to do now. There is one silver lining—the backstop written into the Strasbourg enforcement machinery. Strasbourg cannot enforce its own judgments, so if the UK refuses to adhere to this judgment, as I think it must, it cannot be enforced. Of course, we could face other awards against us in Strasbourg, including compensatory awards, or be referred to the Committee of Ministers, but the judgment is not enforceable in UK law. No sanctions will apply, and there is no serious prospect of our being kicked out of the Council of Europe. We can say no, given the political will.

My question to the Minister is this. If the Government are not willing to rebuff Strasbourg in this case, arbitrary as it is, at what point, if any, will they refuse to accept a ruling? How bad must things be before Ministers stand up for the prerogatives of elected UK lawmakers? If we do not draw a line in the sand now and send back a clear message, we are inviting even more perverse judgments in future. It is time to draw that line.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would be for a system that provided a fair settlement for students. As I said before, unlike the system that we inherited from the hon. Gentleman’s party, ours will remove all up-front fees paid by students and will only ask graduates—[Interruption.] I know that Opposition Members do not want to hear this because they do not want to talk about policy as they have a blank sheet for policy. We have a plan and they have a blank sheet—that speaks volumes.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

T4. I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s consultation on the freedom Bill. Is he aware that terrorism convictions have plummeted by 91% in the past four years, and will he continue to support the repeal of control orders and the ban on intercept evidence so that we can prosecute more terrorists and defend our freedoms?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with the assumption and the assertion that the previous Government got the balance wrong between liberty and security. Indeed, I think that is now acknowledged even by that great liberal, the current Labour spokesperson on Home Affairs. That is why we are conducting a review of how the anti-terrorism powers introduced by the previous Government are operating so that we can tilt the balance definitively in favour of liberty.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

You would rule me out of order, Mr Amess, if I debated whether there should be confirmation hearings for all Ministers and related matters. I understand why some might say that my amendment could be improved upon by including a third category of no confidence motion—one relating to the tabling of an amendment to the Loyal Address at the beginning of a new Parliament. To those who think that way, I say that it would be better to carry the amendment today so that we improve the legislation and then move further forward to suggest amendments to amplify that provision on Report.

With that, I conclude. I shall want to press amendment 25. If you took the view that we could divide on that amendment later, Mr Amess, I would be grateful.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

This is my first opportunity to speak on the Bill. Before I deal with the specific clause and amendments, I want to say that I generally support the idea of having fixed-term Parliaments because it will promote the basic concept of electoral fairness, end some of the deal-making and lack of scrutiny we have seen inherent in the wash-up procedures, improve electoral planning for the Electoral Commission and avoid some of the return to hype and confusion that we saw dominate the last three years of the previous Parliament.

In one area, however, I have to reserve my unequivocal support. That concerns the consequences of a successful vote of no confidence in a Government. It must be right for such votes to continue to be decided by a simple majority. If a Government cannot command the support of a simple majority of elected representatives, they should fall. I welcome the Government’s withdrawal of the qualified majority provision that was previously under consideration. However, clause 2(2)(b) sets out a novel and rather anomalous parliamentary procedure.

Reference has been made to this country’s practice, which is that a successful mid-term vote of no confidence leads to an immediate election. In the last century, there were just two examples of that, both of which led to the announcement of Dissolution the following day. The exception—I stand to be corrected if I am wrong—was after the election of December 1923, which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned. A minority Conservative Government led by Stanley Baldwin switched to a minority Labour Government led by Ramsay MacDonald. However, that took place immediately after an election, so it arguably reflected rather than ignored the shifting will of the electorate.

Practice therefore shows that this convention is reasonably clear, yet clause 2(2)(b) undoes it. It provides a window of up to 14 days after a no confidence vote before a general election must be called. I stand to be corrected again and ask the Minister for some clarification, but the aim appears to be to allow the formation of an alternative Government without an election. The mechanism appears almost explicitly designed to facilitate a third party leaving a coalition in order to form an entirely new Government of an entirely different character—mid-term and without seeking a democratic mandate for such a profound change. I see no sound reason or any good justification for such an inherently undemocratic device—even one formulated in permissive terms. I see only the risk of this clause being used for political expediency, sidestepping the democratic process.

It might be said that the existing arrangements already allow for this to happen, but they do not encourage it and they do not institutionalise it. At best, this provision is unnecessary; at worst, it is undemocratic. I would therefore be grateful for some further explanation and clarification from Ministers of the explicit purpose of this window— and, indeed, of why it is necessary at all.

[Mrs Laing]

Amendments 36 and 37 were also submitted by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. I am pleased to say that, unlike the last group of amendments, these are amendments with which I agree. I apologise again on behalf of the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who would have liked to be here to speak on the Committee’s behalf. I am pleased that other Select Committee members are present, along with other hon. Members who have supported the amendments.

The purpose of amendments 36 and 37 is to improve the Bill and help the Government to clarify a very important issue. There cannot be anything more important than knowing when the House is facing a motion of confidence in the Government and when it is not. This is not a matter that ought to be left open to speculation. When we face a confidence motion we need to know that it is a confidence motion, and—as has been said by Members on both sides of the Committee—it should not be used by the Whips as a tool to coerce people to vote for a particular issue lest their Government fall if the vote be lost. A motion of confidence is not a tool of the Whips; it is a very important convention of our constitution.

Amendment 36 is designed to address the Select Committee’s finding in our pre-legislative scrutiny report that, under the Bill,

“the requirement that the House would need to show that it had confidence in any alternative government within fourteen days to avoid an early general election could be made impossible if the Government ensured that the House was adjourned or prorogued for any substantial length of time.”

The amendment would prevent the incumbent Government from using the prerogative power of prorogation to frustrate the formation of an alternative Government, which they could do under the Bill as it is currently drafted. At present, the Government could get around the provisions in clause 2 by simply proroguing Parliament.

Public Bodies Reform

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

This is cross-Government activity, and the review has taken place across the Government. The hon. Gentleman will find that my right hon. Friends in charge of other Departments will make statements publicly today, and then he can pursue the matter. Of course the two organisations have different focuses, but they none the less cover a lot of the same ground. Having two separate lots of unproductive overheads when one set could do the job just as well does not seem a good way to spend taxpayers’ money.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I commend the Minister for his statement. Does he agree that the problem with quangos is not just their cost but their effectiveness? Competition law is vital for a free market, but having three regulatory bodies—the Office of Fair Trading, the Competition Commission and the European Commission—has made business more bureaucratic and regulation less effective. When Lloyds bought HBOS, the OFT’s competition concerns were brushed aside with a wink and a nudge from the last Prime Minister at a cocktail party. Does the Minister agree that that is a good example of how less overlapping bureaucracy can mean more independent and robust regulation?

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend is completely right. The way in which the competition scrutiny process, which is really important for an effective economy, currently works can be very complex, confused and slow. If we can simplify it by merging competition functions into one place, as we propose, there will be a benefit for the economy and for business and it will assist in creating jobs, which will be really important.