Standing Orders (Public Business)

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hon. Members]

Sit down!

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Nobody tells anyone to sit down except the Chair. The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) should know when to resume his seat; nor should he challenge the House from a sedentary position.

[Kevin Brennan]

Well tell them to shut up then.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. If the hon. Member for Cardiff West had whispered that remark, I would not have heard it. As he made it very loudly, I could not help but hear it, and I must ask him to apologise to the House for using that language.

[Kevin Brennan]

Of course I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope we are not going to be second-class MPs in this House with that sort of attitude. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. We will have a calm and sensible debate this afternoon, and I hope that tempers will now be kept under control.

[Chris Grayling]

I did say that I would give way in a moment but just wanted to set out some remarks first; that was all.

This has been one of the frustrations of the debate on this issue. Anyone who reads these proposals will know full well that they do not exclude any Member of Parliament from any vote in this Chamber in which they can currently take part. It is simply not the case. Yet I keep hearing about MPs being excluded. That will simply not happen. I hope we will not hear that error repeated in today’s debate.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call the shadow Leader of the House, I should say that it will be obvious to Members that a great many people—more than 50 Members—have indicated that they wish to take part in this debate for which there is now really a very short time remaining. I will not impose a time limit on Back-Bench speeches quite yet, but I implore Members of the House, even very senior and terribly important ones, to seek to prove the power and quality of oratory by speaking for less than five minutes. Of course I am not making such a request of the shadow Leader of the House. I call Mr Chris Bryant.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. With 50 Members waiting to speak, we just cannot have long interventions. It is simply discourteous to those who are waiting to speak. We must have interventions to keep the debate flowing lest it becomes unlively.

[Chris Bryant]

I will try to keep it lively, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I might fail.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds)makes a good point. I agree with him and with some of the points that the Leader of the House has made. I believe that England needs a distinctive voice in this Parliament and I personally have no objection whatsoever to an England-only Committee to do the line-by-line consideration of legislation that applies only to England. However, like the McKay commission, I believe that there is a real danger when a veto is given to English MPs only, as that creates two tiers of MPs.

There is a further problem. As McKay points out, if the Government or the whole House feel at some point that they have to override English MPs, which is perfectly legitimate, it should be absolutely clear that that is what they have done. The whole House or the Government would then take the political risk, just as the Government would take it on the head if they appointed a Welsh MP to a post that involved largely devolved responsibilities.

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[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have said this before, but I did not break the hon. Gentleman’s leg. He might be fleet of foot in this Chamber, but he certainly is not on the rugby pitch.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am very glad to say that as far as points of order as concerned, that is about the same as your breaking a leg on the rugby pitch.

[Chris Bryant]

It was a hospital pass, though.

Let me return to the issue of the Speaker. I know that the Leader of the House thinks that deciding whether a Bill is exclusively England-only will be simple, but none of the evidence thus far provided by the devolved Administrations, any of the legal experts or any of the Members of the House of Lords who have legal qualifications suggests that that is so. I urge hon. Members to consider any one of the Bills before the House to see whether it is straightforward.

There is a major difference between the money Bill certificates issued under the Parliament Acts and these new certificates. Money Bill certificates affect only the Lords and prevent them from considering our legislation. The new certificates will affect elected Members of the House who are bound to try to tie the Speaker up in knots. Since certification has to happen before Second Reading, the Speaker will in effect be able to delay when Second Reading can take place. The Leader of the House tells me that the Government will provide clear instructions to the Speaker on how he should certificate, but surely that turns the Speaker into the creature of the Crown, not the servant of this House. What price Speaker Lenthall?

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[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you inform the House of your view of Members who intervene and wish to be one of the 50 who are waiting to contribute to this debate? Good knockabout stuff though it is, some Members have already intervened two or three times. Will you take that into account?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Just for a change, I can directly answer the hon. Gentleman’s point of order. The view of the Chair is that if a Member has requested to speak but makes several long interventions, that Member’s place in the speaking order will go further down the list every time they intervene. I can make that absolutely clear. I hope the House is listening and will allow the hon. Gentleman to finish his speech.

[Chris Bryant]

Right. I am not giving way—

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[Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way to the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We must have a calm and measured debate.

[Chris Bryant]

That analysis leaves us with a single vote in 14 years, which added the statutory pubs code and independent adjudicator to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill to address the imbalance between large pub owning companies and tied tenants. I think even the Leader of the House would drink to that, and, anyway, the Bill also had Scotland and Northern Ireland measures.

The true effect of these measures will be to make the Government split their Bills up into lots of little Bills. There will be more Wales-only and Scotland-only Bills clogging up the system, and the Report stage of any England-only Bill will be absorbed not with debates about the substance, but with wrangles about procedure. So all this constitutional jiggery-pokery will be for nothing. I ask the Government: what’s the hurry? The Government have a majority of UK seats, of English seats and of English and Welsh seats. It will make not a jot of difference in this Parliament.

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[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The shadow Leader of the House has been on his feet for half an hour. The House will not hear from a Scottish Member of Parliament until the sixth speaker. This is being done to us, because it is we who will become second-class Members. Is there anything you can do to speed up proceedings so that we can hear from Scottish Members of Parliament?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very reasonable point. Many Members are waiting to speak, and they have legitimate points of view that the House must hear, which is why I have appealed for brevity and for short interventions. The shadow Leader of the House has another minute until he reaches half an hour, at which point I will raise my eyebrows at him.

[Chris Bryant]

I am terrified of your eyebrows, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was on my perorating sentence, so I would have finished my speech by now had the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) not intervened. I think that Conservative and Unionist Members will ultimately rue the day if they vote for these measures, because this is a charter for breaking up the Union, not keeping it together.