Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and Anne McGuire(9 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, and for a long time one great injustice has been that mental health services have been treated like a sort of Cinderella service in the NHS. We are finally starting to right that wrong by putting mental health on the same legal footing as physical health in the NHS, and next year we will introduce new access and waiting standards for mental health, as have existed for physical health for a long time. I hope that my hon. Friend knows that a few weeks ago I announced a complete overhaul of the way in which eating disorders—particularly those suffered by youngsters—are dealt with, so that that is done more properly than in the past.
Dame Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
T11. Given that the Deputy Prime Minister and his Lib Dem Ministers are rowing back from coalition policies at Olympic speeds, why are they still carrying red ministerial boxes and taking ministerial salaries in a Government whom they are so antagonistic towards?
The Deputy Prime Minister
First, I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her honour—I am sure I do so on behalf of the whole House. I hope she will understand a rather simple distinction between our pride in the things that we have done in this coalition Government—taking people out of tax, expanding apprenticeships on a scale never done before, giving healthy meals at lunchtime to children, providing two, three and four-year-olds with more child care and pre-school support than ever before, and revolutionising our pension system so that the state pension is provided at a decent rate—and the disagreements about the future that of course political parties have, whether in coalition or not. I disagree with the Labour party’s mañana, mañana approach to never really dealing with the deficit, and with the Conservative party’s approach of carrying on with cuts even after the deficit has been dealt with. That is a perfectly reasonable disagreement about the future that we will all argue about over the next four or five months.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Nick Clegg and Anne McGuire(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not agree that this is an innovation made on the hoof, as it has been discussed for decades. I am disappointed that my hon. Friend does not recognise that taking a power away from the Executive after years in which they have been too dominant in relation to the legislature is a step in the right direction, providing more powers to Parliament that do not exist at present. It is also fully in keeping with democratic practice in many other democracies.
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
I am astonished by the Deputy Prime Minister’s comment that he would build flexibility into the legislation so that if something such as foot and mouth occurs, changes can be made. Is that not giving back to the Prime Minister the prerogative to call an election, although the right hon. Gentleman is attempting to take that prerogative away from him? Surely it was a political decision not to hold the election in May 2001, not a constitutional one.
The Deputy Prime Minister
With respect, the right hon. Lady is reading too much into something that is a perfectly practical, common-sense solution to what happens if, in exceptional circumstances, as we saw in 2001, the election simply cannot be held on a proposed date.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Well, the right hon. Lady shakes her head, but she would not have liked elections to be held in the middle of the foot and mouth crisis. We need to respond to such things. The decision would be made by affirmative order, so the House of Lords, too, would have a say, preventing the politicisation of that decision.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I would like to make some progress.
In the event of an early Dissolution, under whatever circumstances, the decision will be confirmed by the issuing of a Speaker’s certificate, meaning that there will be no ambiguity about whether the House had voted for a Dissolution with the requisite majority or whether a vote of no confidence in the Government should trigger a Dissolution. It will also mean that procedures of the House will determine whether the triggers are satisfied, rather than that being in the hands of either the Executive or the courts.
As I said earlier, I know that the Clerk of the House of Commons has expressed concerns about these arrangements in a memorandum to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. The memorandum suggests that the courts may be able to intervene in parliamentary business. The suggestion is that we would therefore be better off implementing the changes through Standing Orders rather than primary legislation. I would like to reassure the House that the Government have looked into the issue in considerable detail. We are satisfied that the provisions in the Bill will not allow the courts to question the House’s internal affairs.
The Minister for political and constitutional reform, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), has placed in the Libraries of the House a paper setting out our views. Briefly, we are satisfied that the courts will continue to regard matters certified by the Speaker as relating to proceedings in Parliament and therefore falling under the protection of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. The memorandum refers to the legal challenge in 2005 to the Hunting Act 2004 as authority that courts will interfere in parliamentary proceedings. However, that case was concerned with the validity of the Parliament Act, not the internal proceedings of Parliament.