Mark Harper
Main Page: Mark Harper (Conservative - Forest of Dean)Department Debates - View all Mark Harper's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) seemed to spend rather more time talking about my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister than the Bill during her rather lengthy winding-up speech, and Members—certainly colleagues on the Government Benches—will have noticed that she had trouble keeping a straight face while making her speech. From that, we can detect just how much she really believed what she was saying while going through the motions of delivering her remarks.
We have had a good debate on this important Bill. There were 19 Back-Bench speakers and I will try to refer to their contributions as I go through the arguments. I should just say at the outset that today I sent a copy of the Government’s response to the memorandum from the Clerk of the House of Commons to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and placed another copy in the Library of the House, and I should also have sent a copy to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) on behalf of the Opposition. I have apologised to him privately, and I would like to do so on the Floor of the House too. It was an inadvertent omission, not a deliberate discourtesy.
The issue of the time available for debating the Bill arose in a number of speeches from both sides of the House. As is clear from the programme motion, we have allowed two days of debate in Committee of the whole House, so every Member will get the opportunity to debate these important constitutional measures, and a further day on Report and Third Reading for a Bill that contains five clauses and one schedule, albeit they address very important principles.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is present. In answering an urgent question earlier today, he made the point that in the first Session of a new Parliament it is simply not possible to do as much pre-legislative scrutiny as one would hope to be able to do later in a Parliament. However, we are not racing off at pace, and I encourage the Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), to continue its deliberations as I feel that there will be time for the Government and the House to learn from its deliberations before we move into Committee.
Mr George Howarth
The Minister should be aware that the Leader of the House said exactly that at business questions last week, but that he then added that it was for political reasons.
Mr Harper
Yes, the Leader of the House made the point and I do not think it is different from what I have just said. These are important measures and the Government want to get on with political and constitutional reform. That is why we are moving ahead with these measures, but they will be debated on the Floor of the House and all colleagues will have the opportunity to debate them.
Mr Allen
Is not one of the advantages of having a five-year or four-year fixed-term Parliament the ability to plan the legislative timetable, and will the Minister therefore reassure Members of all parties that in future all Bills will be subject to a 12-week pre-legislative scrutiny process? [Interruption.]
Mr Harper
And I know my right hon. Friend always means what he says.
The Bill’s key principle is that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is giving up the power to seek the Dissolution of the House. Previous Prime Ministers have exercised that power for their own party advantage. That principle of having fixed-term Parliaments was welcomed by the Chairman of the Select Committee and by the right hon. Member for Blackburn, who speaks for the Opposition; indeed it was in his party’s manifesto.
At this point, I should just add to the comments of the Deputy Prime Minister last week and the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood today. I will miss the contributions from the Front Bench of the right hon. Member for Blackburn. He and I have sparred in this Chamber a number of times, and I have always listened carefully to the guidance he has given me on how to deal with the House. I hope Members feel I have learned something from him. I leave it up to others to decide whether what I have learned is, as the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) said, low cunning or whether I have some way to go in that regard. I should say that I thought the right hon. Gentleman dealt very well with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) about what happened in 1950 and how that could perfectly well have been dealt with by our Bill. The expert way in which the right hon. Gentleman did that showed that he is secretly quite supportive of the Bill.
Mr Tom Harris
Does the Minister understand that it is rather difficult for the House to accept that from the Conservative party’s point of view this Bill represents a point of principle, given that every single Conservative Member of Parliament was elected on the promise that in this Parliament the replacement of the Prime Minister would result in a general election within six months? That surely says more about the Prime Minister’s confidence in the support of his Back Benchers than it does about his confidence in the principle of constitutional reform.
Mr Harper
As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said, in the last Parliament, when Conservative Members had the opportunity to discuss this matter, we did not vote against it. It is a very clear principle in the coalition agreement to have a fixed-term Parliament. All Members on the Opposition Benches—or at least in the main Opposition party—were elected on that principle. I am sure that they will support the Bill if there is a Division this evening.
The proposals this morning from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on the way we want to change the Sessions of this place to fit in with this Bill can, I am confident, be debated in Committee. We debated them a little earlier today and I think that the fact that the Chair allowed that debate to take place shows that they are in order and that we will be able to debate them in Committee.
Mr Harper
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to make some progress.
On the subject of the date and combination of the elections, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made it clear that the Government draw a distinction between the coincidence of the referendum next year and parliamentary or Assembly elections—a combination that we think is perfectly justifiable when there is a simple yes-no decision—and the coincidence of elections to different Parliaments or Assemblies. He accepted that such elections were more complex and made it very clear that the Government will engage and continue to engage with devolved Administrations.
Mr Harper
Let me just make the point about Scotland and then I will give way. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, for example, has written to the leaders of each of the groups in the Scottish Parliament, the Presiding Officer, Opposition spokesmen in this House and the Chairman of the Select Committee and intends to continue that dialogue. Indeed, I will meet him to discuss this matter further. We take these issues seriously and are not just paying lip service to them.
Pete Wishart
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. He will have heard the strong representations in today’s debate about the combination of both elections. We must hear a little more from the Minister about the specific proposals to ensure that there is no clash in the election dates. What is in his mind about how we can untie and unlock the two elections?
Mr Harper
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can have it both ways. If I were to come out with specific proposals before we have discussed them in detail with representatives from the devolved Administrations and from those Assemblies and Parliaments, he would rightly criticise me for being high-handed. The Deputy Prime Minister has made it very clear that we want to solve this problem.
On the issue of not having consulted people in advance, however, I think it is right that, unlike what happened under the previous Government, proposals brought forward by the Government should be announced to this House first before they are discussed with others. That explains why we did not hold those discussions with others first.
On the issue of confidence and the mechanism for motions of confidence, a number of colleagues on both sides of the House seem to be a little confused about the present position. This Bill does not change the position in any way. The right hon. Member for Knowsley and my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) all appeared to confuse to some extent our proposals on confidence and on Dissolution. It is very clear that, on confidence, we are not changing the position at all. The Government must have a simple majority in this House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) worried about a change of Government without an election. That can happen now, so that is not a change. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) said that there was an automatic right for an election following the loss of a confidence vote. There is no such automatic right—that is a matter of judgment for Her Majesty the Queen.
Mr Cash
In the memorandum that my hon. Friend issued this afternoon, he effectively attacks the Clerk of the House when he says:
“Turning to the specific points raised by the memorandum: it contains a fundamental misunderstanding about the effect of the Bill on the rules and principles”,
and so on. Will he clarify something for me? On the jurisdiction of the courts, will he be good enough to spell out, as do the Parliament Acts, that none of the documents or procedures under the Bill should or could be questioned in any court of law? Will he bring forward an amendment to make sure that we get absolute symmetry between this Bill and article 9 of the Bill of Rights?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes some very good points, but I do not think I will be able to do them justice in the four and a bit minutes remaining to me. I have placed in the Library a memorandum responding to the Clerk’s points, which Members can look at. We will deal with these issues—I am confident that my hon. Friend will raise them—in Committee.
Mr George Howarth
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I think he will find, if he checks the record, that it was the Deputy Prime Minister and not I who got confused about Dissolution arrangements and votes of no confidence.
Mr Harper
That was not my recollection at all. I have dealt with the issue of privilege that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) raised.
There are a few speeches that I particularly want to mention. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) made an excellent, almost noteless, maiden speech in which he brought the House welcome news about the former Deputy Speaker, Sir Michael Lord, and his improving health. I am sure that all Members will join me in welcoming that excellent news. My hon. Friend gave us a tour of his constituency and focused on the national health service, his professional experience and his campaigning work. He raised an issue that is close to my heart, which I have to deal with—improving broadband in rural constituencies.
I shall pick up only one of the points raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox)—that of a euro treaty and a Prime Minister who might wish to dissolve Parliament to put it before the people. We had such a circumstance in the last Parliament, but that Government not only did not consult the people through a referendum, but rammed the measure through the House. That is not an example that this Government plan to follow.
We have had a very good debate with excellent speakers. The central principle is that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has become the first Prime Minister in British history to relinquish his power to seek an election at a time of his own choice. A quote about this issue that I particularly liked compared the advantage that an incumbent Government have in calling the election when they choose with that of an athlete arriving at the track in their running shoes and being allowed to fire the starting pistol. The Prime Minister is taking off his running shoes and putting away his starting pistol, and I have detected a general sense of welcome in the House for that principle—from the Select Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Blackburn and many other Members.
I recognise that many important issues have been raised—some of detail and some of more significance—and I look forward to further scrutiny from the Select Committee. Indeed, I have an appointment this Thursday to be grilled by its members on both of our constitutional Bills. I look forward to that, as I am sure do they, and I also look forward to the Bill’s Committee stage in the House when we can deal in more detail with the concerns that have been raised today. Any Member will then be able to raise their concerns on the Floor of the House so that we can have an excellent debate and deal with them so that the House can gain powers being given away by the Executive. That example was not set by the previous Government and I am proud to be introducing it. On that basis, I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.