Nomination of Members to Committees

Debate between Nigel Evans and Mark Harper

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

Rather than repeating arguments, let me go through the arguments that have been raised so far and comment on them as I think fit, which I hope will be of assistance to the House.

The Leader of the House made an admirably short speech—I do not know what the shadow Leader of the House was moaning about. Normally everyone moans in this House that people go on for too long, but the Leader of the House crisply enunciated the purpose of the motion and set it out very clearly. That was an admirable thing for her to do.

I listened to the shadow Leader of the House very carefully. She moaned about references to the Selection Committee rather than the Committee of Selection. I am afraid that reminded me—we have already mentioned Monty Python once in the debate today—of the argument about the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. I do not think that what the Committee is called is significant. [Interruption.] It is just not important—arguing about what the Committee is called is not important. In addition, the Chair of the existing Committee of Selection is already paid, so the current proposal is not a change, and there is no sinister aspersion the shadow Leader of the House can cast on that. So I did not think that those arguments really had any great weight.

The substance of the hon. Lady’s argument was driven through precisely by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who put his finger on the issue: if we pass this motion this evening, it will demonstrate again—as have all the votes we have had since this Government were formed—that we actually command a majority in this House. The hon. Lady’s only possible motivation for not wanting to agree to the motion is that she wants to gum up the works.

The hon. Lady invited us to look at the Opposition Members being put forward for the Committee and to assess their reasonableness, and I do not necessarily quarrel with that—they are very reasonable people. I would argue that the Government Members who have been put forward to serve on the Committee, including the Chair, are very reasonable people. However, if we want to look at the Opposition’s approach to reasonableness and the progress of business, we do not have to go back very far; we only have to go back as far as yesterday, when the Opposition were faced with the decision of the British people to leave the European Union. They knew it was necessary to have the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and to pass that legislation, but they chose to oppose it. If they had got their way, they would have frustrated the will of the British people. Rather than abstain and try to improve the Bill in Committee, as a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends chose to do in saying that they support the principle of the Bill but it needs improvement and they have tabled amendments—the Lord Chancellor has indicated that he is going to discuss those amendments in a constructive and appropriate way—they chose to vote against the Bill to try to vote it down. A number of Opposition Members spotted the inconsistency between that approach and the referendum result and called them out on it. That betrays the hon. Lady’s real motive.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

Does my right hon. Friend find it somewhat bizarre that representatives of the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats are saying that Conservative Members are trying to circumvent democracy, and yet although on 23 June 2016 the British people decided to vote, by a margin of more than 1.3 million, to leave the European Union, on every piece of legislation we have brought before this House, those Members have voted against the democratic wishes of the British people?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point very well, but I think my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset put his finger on it.

I listened very carefully to the arguments made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). I should just counsel him that he wants to be a bit careful quoting Margaret Thatcher. While she is held in high regard by Conservative Members, I note that the leader of his party, the First Minister of Scotland, says that her entire political mission to get independence for Scotland was driven by Margaret Thatcher, so if he starts quoting her in this House with approbation, he may be putting his own future in his own party at great risk—and Conservative Members would not want to see that.

The hon. Gentleman’s arguments did not hold much water. Again echoing my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, if we win the vote on this motion, we will have demonstrated that we command a majority. As I said in an intervention, he is entirely right to point out that the Conservative party on its own does not have a majority in this House, but the Government do. The Opposition cannot command a majority either.