Peter Bone
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(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Listening to the Minister’s opening remarks, I entirely agreed with him that there was no need for a sunset clause, but shortly afterwards he spoke of a review allowing the opportunity for such a clause. If there is no need for it—I agree with him on that—why bother to table the amendment? Moreover, I do not think that it will be possible for the Prime Minister to organise a review in 2020, because by then there will be a House business committee, and it will be for it to make the decision.
Mr Harper
The amendment in lieu does not concern a sunset provision. If the committee that was set up, having examined the operation of the Act and of fixed terms, concluded that the Act should be amended or, indeed, repealed, it could make such recommendations, but Parliament would then have to go through the full normal legislative process, with its checks and balances. There would not be a simple on-off provision that could be triggered in some constitutionally innovative way.
As for my hon. Friend’s point about the House business committee, it would of course deal with the business of the House. The committee set up by the Prime Minister would have to consist of a certain number of Members of Parliament—although it would not be composed entirely of Members of Parliament—to make recommendations. It would not deal with the timetabling of parliamentary business. My hon. Friend is, of course, a big supporter of both the Backbench Business Committee and the establishment of a House business committee.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for my argument.
The other process point that I wish to make is that the lords debated their amendments in July and the Government tabled their amendment last Friday, but the amendment was not available in the Vote Office until this morning—that was despite my having asked for it on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I had no access to the amendment tabled by the Government until today. I understand it to be normal practice, just as a matter of courtesy, for ministerial offices to write to shadow spokespeople when the Government table amendments to Bills in which the spokespeople have been involved, in order to give them notification. I say gently to the Minister that it would have been nice if he had been able to notify us of amendments.
It would also have been good if the Whips Office had, instead of stating categorically all this week, until about 3 pm yesterday, that we were not going to be dealing with this Bill this afternoon, owned up to the truth, which was that the intention was always to deal with this Bill this afternoon. Indeed, the Whips Office had told the Minister so, and the fact that this Bill was going to be discussed this afternoon had been set out in his diary for several weeks.
Chris Bryant
I am happy to abolish the Government Whips Office, but I am very fond of my Whips Office. It is always best to remain in as good an odour as possible with one’s Whips.
The simple point of process is that when the Leader of the House announces in the future business—as has been said, we hope that the Backbench Business Committee will do this in future—that consideration of Lords amendments may take place, he never specifies the Bill to which that relates. That is an unfortunate way of doing business, and it might make much more sense if, in future, the Government were to announce the Bills in question. If every Member of the House had known at the beginning of the week that we were going to be dealing with this Bill today, the Chamber might have been packed to the rafters—I note that it is not. That is despite the fact that we are sure to hear a wonderful speech from the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), and many would have crowded in just to see her jacket this afternoon.
The amendment, in essence, confesses that the Government have not achieved consensus on a major constitutional change. Again, I say gently to the Minister that when any constitutional change is being made, especially when pre-legislative scrutiny has not been undertaken, when no draft legislation has been produced, when the change was not adumbrated in one of the governing parties’ manifestos and when it is a significant change from what was in the manifesto of either of the two governing parties, it is all the more important that Ministers and the Government in general proceed on the basis of consensus. Although I am often a fierce critic of the House of Lords, of its hereditary principle and of its appointment principle—I call it the “patronage principle”—I believe that the Lords plays an important stop-gap role in constitutional affairs. That is why I believe that this amendment owns up to the fact that, as Lord Butler of Brockwell put it, this legislation has been introduced
“without proper consultation, preparation or consideration.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1080.]
For many years, we relished listening in this Chamber to Lord Cormack, the greatest par-li-a-ment-ar-i-an of his age—he used about seven syllables when saying that word. As he said, this is an
“ill thought-out, unnecessary and bad Bill.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1087.]
There are specific problems with this amendment, most notably because it does not add anything. If their lordships think that it is a concession, they are completely mistaken, because already the Government will have to undertake post-legislative scrutiny on this legislation in the next Parliament. All the amendment does is provide for another version of post-legislative scrutiny, but such scrutiny will already have taken place four years before the date in 2020 when the amendment suggests it should occur.
I am somewhat of a suspicious mind; I think that the reason why the Deputy Prime Minister has insisted on this date in 2020 is his ambition to put up joint Liberal Democrat-Conservative candidates at the next general election and to be able to continue the coalition for two parliamentary Sessions. I say that because it was not an immaculate conception that led to this constitutional Bill; it was conceived behind the bike sheds as a result of the coalition partners—the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats—trying to fix the length of this parliamentary Session so that nobody could abscond should any difficulties arise. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is just waving to me or whether he would like to intervene. It appears that he wishes to intervene.
Chris Bryant
I believe that earlier this week the Prime Minister described himself as a “Pragmatic liberal conservative Eurosceptic”—he used different arrangements of those words in different arenas, as is his wont.
In addition, the amendment presumes that not only this Parliament, but a second one will run for a full five years. If that was not the case, choosing to specify dates in June and November 2020 would be particularly bizarre, as they might fall two years into another Session. This is where the following statement by Lord Armstrong of Ilminster is correct, although I confess that I do not quite understand the first bit:
“It is all Lombard Street to a China orange that the time will come when a premature Dissolution would be to the manifest benefit of the country”.——[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1088.]
I think that that is true. If we consider the recent history of the United Kingdom, we see that even on occasions when the Government had a decent majority, such as in 1964 and 1974—although the latter situation was more complicated—they decided to hold a new election because they felt that they needed a mandate to deal with a specific set of issues that had not arisen at the previous general election. I believe that that will happen again and that it will be in the interests of Parliament to have the greatest degree of flexibility to allow it to happen, if not to encourage it to happen. That is why this amendment, in trying to entrench not just one fixed term, but two—in the interests of the coalition rather than the country—is misguided. As I said, the amendment adds nothing because post-legislative scrutiny, a fixed part of the way in which we carry out our business, will apply to this legislation.
The Minister, charming as he is, tried to assert that fixed-term Parliaments are used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as in relation to local government elections and so on. However, these do not seem to have been very fixed in the past few years. Indeed, in the short time that he has been in power he has already changed the term for the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the local government elections in Northern Ireland. Now the Government have just decided that there will not be a fixed term for the police commissioners, because the first term will be slightly shorter than the second one, as the Government are not going to be able to get their legislation through in time to have elections next May and so the first elections will take place next November. So I am profoundly sceptical even about the ability of the hard-line fixed-termers, such as him, to deliver a fixed-term Parliament, because of the way in which politics works.
I wish to make a few comments about the specifics of the amendment. It states:
“A majority of the members of the committee are to be members of the House of Commons.”
I do not believe that the Government consulted anyone in the Opposition on this amendment. I am sure that had the Minister done so, he would now be leaping to his feet to defend himself—it appears, therefore, that he has not sought a consensus on this constitutional change. If consultation had taken place, we might have made some suggestions about how to constitute such a committee. It might have been better to state from the outset that it should involve Members of the House of Commons. I think that we should return to the practice of the 15th and 16th centuries—I am sure I have one hon. Member on my side here—which was that Joint Committees of both Houses should have two Members of the House of Commons for every Member of the House of Lords. I admit that that was at a time when there were perhaps 60 or 70 Members of the House of Lords and 480 or so of the House of Commons, whereas they are getting towards having double the number we have in this House. None the less, while this is a democratically elected House and that is not, it would make more sense for the majority from this House to be 2:1.
I note en passant that one Member of the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform—not from the Opposition side of the House—pointed out that having such a large number of members of a Joint Committee makes it very difficult to do serious business. It is quite difficult with large Select Committees, but with 24 or 26 members of a Joint Committee of both Houses, it is phenomenally difficult to make progress.
Chris Bryant
Of course I will give way to the hon. and gentlemanly Gentleman.
Chris Bryant
Yes, I was noting the acceleration. The coalition has a commitment in its agreement that it will keep appointing more Member of the House of Lords until the numbers mirror the representation in the House of Commons. That means that they have another 269 to appoint. We are pretty much getting on for having up to double the number of Members at that end as there are here. In addition, the Government want to elect some Members so that if the Government get their way, without sensible amendments from the Opposition, we will have twice as many Members of the House of Lords as of the House of Commons.
The Minister said that the danger of a sunset clause would be that it would be like switching a light bulb on and off. What he fails to understand is something that some of us have been arguing for through several Bills—that is, many of the measures contained in the Bill would be far better dealt with through the Standing Orders of this House, particularly anything to do with a no confidence motion. There is a danger that otherwise they will be justiciable in the courts. He refuses to accept that. If it had been a question of Standing Orders, then as with any other Standing Order this would be a matter for the House to change. It would not need three readings, nor would it have to go to two Houses; it would just be a matter of a simple vote.
The Minister sets his mind against sunset clauses, but I remember when he used to sit over on the Opposition Benches—what halcyon days—and used to campaign for sunset clauses galore on Government legislation. With virtually every change we introduced through legislation on security and policing, for instance, the then Opposition demanded a sunset clause. On civil liberties, control orders and all these different elements of legislation there was a campaign from Opposition Members saying that there must be a sunset clause. Quite often, we succumbed to that campaign and we put them in. In a large amount of our civil liberties legislation, there were sunset clauses and provisions had to be renewed every year.
One of the most significant sunset clauses in our constitution refers to the inability of the Crown to have a standing Army unless there is a vote in the House of Commons every five years. That is a sunset clause on the single most important part of our constitution: namely, the Crown’s ability to defend the country. The Minister is completely wrong to invent this new concept that we cannot have a sunset clause in a constitutional Bill—and only in such a Bill.
The Minister also said that there are no sunset clauses in relation to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but the single difference between this case and those instances is that there was absolutely no consultation with the wider public on this legislation. As for setting up devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there was lengthy and protracted cross-party consensus on precisely how everything should be set up. I think he is whispering something about the Conservatives not agreeing to devolution in Scotland, but we rejoice that the sinner repenteth. They had the opportunity to take part in that lengthy process of consultation and that is surely the proper process for changing the constitution.
Let me come to my penultimate point. The Minister says that those in the Lords who have presented amendments have good intentions, but he reminds me of something that happened when I went to a theatre a few years ago. There was a couple who had had a terrible row sitting in front of me and just before the play started, the woman turned to the man and said, “And the worst of it is that you’re so blasted pate-ronising.” He kissed her on the forehead and said, “It’s pat-ronising, dear.”
To be honest, I thought the Minister’s approach to their lordships—who are senior constitutional experts and have seen many of the corridors of power far more extensively than he or I—was downright patronising. I think they have come up with a good solution. The coalition Government can have their five years and there will be a general election in 2015 unless one of the Members for Bedfordshire manages to split the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister from one another, but thereafter it should be for the House of Commons and the House of Lords to decide whether to continue with this legislation.
I am sure that the Government Whips, through their nefarious processes, will have engineered that there are plenty of people to see off their lordships’ amendment this afternoon, but I tell their lordships that the Government are attempting to get them to sell their soul for a mess of pottage. The Government amendment is not an amendment that is worth supporting—