Foreign Affairs Committee

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called in this debate. It is worth saying that I have no personal objection to the hon. Members for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) joining a Committee; I remember the rather courageous stand that the hon. Member for St Helens North took a few years back in supporting the Government’s taking military action against Daesh when his party leader was not doing so. The comments I am about to make are no reflection on those two Members, but I do feel rather conflicted.

There has been a lot of talk about whipping and potential arrangements. I do not think it is right to discuss on the Floor of the House Members’ conversations with Whips, but I must say that while it is always lovely to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), my Whip, it was nice not to hear from her today about this motion and the amendment. She has the joy of texting me to ask if I am here, which usually gets the response, “I’m sitting on the other end of the Bench from you.”

There is a bit of a conflict in my mind today, and I will explain why. Previous motions from the Committee of Selection that we have considered on the membership of Committees, including Select Committees, have usually been brought forward when a Member has said that they no longer wish to be on a Committee, and the relevant party is looking to replace them. That is why when, a couple of years back, there was a motion relating to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) being on the Justice Committee, I took the view that it was a Labour vacancy, and the Labour party had nominated someone. While the motion was controversial to those on the Government Benches, I took the view that it was not really for Government Members to pick who represented the Opposition on a Select Committee; I felt that voting against the motion would set a bit of a precedent, so on that occasion, I was prepared to vote in favour of it. It was not that I had any great thoughts about the merits of the individual concerned; I felt that it was a Labour vacancy, as a Labour Member was standing down from the Committee. The Labour party was therefore entitled to nominate someone. I did not feel it was for a Government MP, particularly one who was quite involved in things, to say, “No. Come back with someone else.”

I accept that today the situation is very different. Neither the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) nor the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) wishes to be removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee, and neither has done something that makes it necessary for the House to remove them. They have both given exceptional service. We saw in the superb speech of the hon. Member for Dudley North exactly why he is on that Committee. It is because of the incisive nature that he brings to debates and his passion for the subjects concerned. In the case of the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), I can say that I may not share some of his views, I may not share his thoughts on a second referendum, and every time he speaks, I may not innately think, “Yeah, great point. That is one I would have made myself.” That is not what it is about; it is about making sure that there is independence on these Committees.

Where I feel uncomfortable is whether it should really be the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who goes through the Lobby to decide who represents the Opposition on Select Committees. That is why I feel uncomfortable with suggestions that we should vote against this motion. It will set a precedent. I am conscious that there will be a number of Members on the Government Benches who will wish to vote against this motion. In particular, the respected members of the Committee may feel that they have a stronger need to express their views. None the less, as PPS to the de facto Deputy Prime Minister, I feel reticent about going through the Lobby to choose the Opposition representatives on that Committee.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I appreciate the point that he is making about choosing who should serve on Committees—which party they come from and how they should be selected—but surely the question before us today is a fundamental one about whether those who are elected to serve on a Select Committee are delegates of the whole House or representatives of their party. That is a fundamental question that we should be considering. The truth is that the Select Committee system was established so that the whole House could look into matters at greater depth than is possible for the Chamber as a whole. That is the question that we should be asking ourselves today. Therefore, once the House has made a decision as to who should represent it, should it be up to the Whips Office from one party or another to make a difference?

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In relation to Committee Chairs, he is absolutely right that we select as the whole House. They are appointed by the whole House, and I would be reluctant to set a precedent, if Chairs of the Committees were to change their political affiliation—there has been one such change—that they were delegates of one party or another. At the start of the Parliament, we makes the allocations. If there comes a vacancy, that would potentially make a difference.

For me, there is a challenge in this. This matter is being debated on the Floor of the House. Members are appointed by the whole House to be Chairs and members of Committees, but we are talking about the Opposition’s spaces, and I do have a view on that. Although I suspect that, in this Parliament, things will be handled quite maturely—in fact I suspect that, under a number of Labour Governments, things would be handled well—we could be setting quite a precedent if Government Members, particularly Government payroll Members, started choosing the Opposition members on a Committee, regardless of what I might think on this particular occasion. It is different for those who are not on the Government payroll.

Windrush: 70th Anniversary

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I apologise that I was not here for the opening of my hon. Friend’s remarks due to Parliamentary Private Secretary duties. Does he agree that there is also the entrepreneurial spirit that many brought from the Indian subcontinent? For example, I opened the National Federation of Retail Newsagents conference in Torquay on Monday, and we see the impact in that industry, in particular, of the many entrepreneurial people who came to this country from the Commonwealth.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will not know this, but I was a beneficiary of that entrepreneurial spirit. When I was learning to be a journalist, one of the papers that I worked for was Eastern Eye, a newspaper that was started by a couple of brothers in their bedroom, as it were, and is now an important voice for a major community in our country.

We are focusing on the Windrush gift to the United Kingdom, but there is a much wider gift here—a gift to the world of those people. Just as our own people, whether they come from these islands 1,000 years ago or come from these islands 10 years ago, have demonstrated the drive and energy to transform this part of the world, the connections around the world have also been transformed. This is where I think we have to focus now as a people, because too many countries today are looking inwards. Too many are seeing the borders, whether they be land or sea. They are seeing those borders as boundaries, and of course, they are not. Those borders are merely the front door to the rest; the front door to the other; the front door to our friends.

That is what we must start thinking about today as we change our relationship with our European friends, and as we change the way in which we interact around the world. We should be looking at the Windrush generation, and, of course, at all the generations, whether they are, like mine, emerging from a broken central Europe, or, like others, emerging from the heat, the sun and the light of the tropical climates from which so many came. Wherever they came from, we need to remember that the links that now tie this House of Commons, this people and these islands to the rest of the world are in no way a drag, but are, in a very fundamental sense, an enrichment.

This must be our new strategy. This must be our new approach: not just looking at the past, but looking at the future. If we can use these links of history, blood and understanding, reinvigorate them, and transform them again into the links that we all want to see—links of enterprise, energy, trade and culture—we shall have an extraordinary future for ourselves, built on a legacy that we all share, built on an enterprise that we all share, and built, fundamentally, on the memory that we are one people, one United Kingdom, and together we have a glorious future.