European Pig Industry

Debate between Richard Bacon and David Heath

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I agree, and I was coming to that point.

The UK relies heavily on imports, being only 40% self-sufficient in pigmeat and 20% self-sufficient in bacon. Denmark and the Netherlands are the largest suppliers of pigmeat to the UK; both countries are more than 90% compliant and are already taking tough action against non-compliant producers. I have spoken to the Danes and the Dutch and I believe that they are serious about reaching full compliance, so the major importers to the UK will come into compliance.

[Mr Bacon]

I was disappointed but not surprised by what the Minister said about competent authorities. I take his point about the Danes, but of course the reason the pig herd here is now so much smaller than it was is precisely that other countries were not enforcing the rules because they did not have to. Does he not understand the broader point, which is that if the competent authorities on whom he says we must rely were competent, we would not be in this mess?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—I do not disagree with him at all on that point. That is why we must make sure that if those authorities are not prepared to be competent, somebody must make them competent—in effect, the Commission by taking infraction proceedings. I think that is the right approach.

To answer the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), an essential part of our enforcement approach is to ensure that retailers, processors, food manufacturers and the food service industry have stringent traceability in place to ensure that they source pigmeat only from compliant production systems in other member states. In October last year, I met representatives of the whole pig supply chain and they assured me that they will use their best endeavours to source from compliant systems. There is clearly a significant reputational issue here for individual companies and trade associations. I followed that up by writing to the major pork product manufacturers to seek their individual assurances on traceability, and I will have a further meeting with the supply chain to take stock on 6 February. Let me make it absolutely clear: the major retailers in the UK have promised me that they will not sell illegally produced pork products. In some cases, that will be difficult to implement—I know that—but I will hold them to that promise.

We agree with the broad thrust of the request to ensure that the Government buy pork and pork products that comply with the new directive which came into force this year, and I have been taking action, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk says. I hope he accepts that, although it is complicated, we are making progress. I will of course report back to him on progress in due course. The Government buying standards are mandatory for central Government Departments and voluntary for the wider public sector—hospitals, for example. If we can get this built in, we will have made a significant contribution to ensuring that we do not buy from non-compliant sources.

This is a timely debate and an important one for pig producers around the country. I want to make it clear on behalf of the Government that we are doing everything we can to ensure that member states that are not compliant are made to be compliant. The weapon that we have at our disposal is the pressure we are able to apply on the Commission, but to be fair to the Commission, it is equally adamant that it wants full compliance from member states and it is prepared to back that up. We need to deal with the use of non-compliant meat products in this country, and we have assurances from retailers and others that they will not use such products. We also need to make the general public aware that this is an issue. If they value the welfare standards that we have in this country, they should follow that action with their purchasing.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. I hope what I have said demonstrates how seriously Ministers and the Department view the issue. We need to protect UK pig producers. That is paramount and we will continue to do all we can to ensure swift compliance across Europe.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee on Members’ Allowances

Debate between Richard Bacon and David Heath

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

Indeed, it can make any recommendations based on the considerations into which it has entered. It would be a very odd restriction on a Committee if it were to be told that it cannot make recommendations when it has considered a matter. Of course, such recommendations would be the end result if the Committee so chooses.

Motion 9 also brings the Committee’s terms of reference up to date. The Committee has a number of specific functions, set out in Standing Order No. 152G(1)(a) to (d), in relation to the old allowances regime that was administered by the House until the election last year. They include, for example, approving practice notes for the now-defunct fees office. Clearly, those specific powers are no longer relevant—they are, in effect, spent—and the motion provides the House with an opportunity to replace them with a more general power to consider any matter related to Members’ expenses that the House might choose to refer to it.

I sense from the interventions from the hon. Members for Windsor and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) that they have received some reassurance from what I have said.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured as well, but I will allow him to say.

[Mr Bacon]

I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House can reassure me. He said that the motion brings the Standing Order up to date because the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is operating an expenses-based scheme, not an allowances scheme. I have looked at the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. It mentions the word “allowance” or “allowances” 37 times. Therefore, the authority under which IPSA operates—the Act—provides for allowances. It does not provide any authority to operate an expenses scheme. Can he clarify that for me?

[Mr Heath]

I can simply make it clear that IPSA does what it believes to be in line with the Act. The Committee will be free to consider those matters and to bring forward recommendations as it sees fit. I do not think that I can be more open than simply saying that no restriction is applied by the terms of the motions.

[Mr Bacon]

I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for being as open as he thinks he can be, but I am still not quite clear. The 2009 Act could not be clearer. The words “expense” or “expenses” are not mentioned anywhere—I just searched a PDF copy of the Act and found that those words are mentioned nowhere in it—but the words “allowance” or “allowances” are mentioned 37 times. How can it be that IPSA operates a scheme that it thinks is in line with the Act if it ignores the terms of the Act? That is what I simply do not understand.

[Mr Heath]

It is probably not helpful for me to rehearse the subject matter of considerations that will clearly take place in the Committee. I do not speak for IPSA, but it has made it very clear that the current system is one of expenses, whereby Members are reimbursed for costs that they can prove they have incurred. The previous, discredited scheme was one of allowances, whereby Members were allowed to claim, in many cases, with no proof of actual expenditure. I repeat that changing the title of the Committee would not prevent it from proposing that IPSA should introduce a new system that includes an element of allowances, but it would be better if the Committee’s title actually reflected the scheme that is in operation rather than one that is not in operation.

Bill of Rights

Debate between Richard Bacon and David Heath

Thursday 17th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Heath]

My hon. Friend brings me on to a very important point about the attitude of the House to date. He is eager to change that attitude, but the House has not yet shown a predilection, to use his own word, to do so, because in the past the House itself has not regarded attempts to interfere with or to frustrate a constituent’s communication with their MP as a breach of privilege. “Erskine May” records cases where threats have been made against a constituent by his employer in respect of communications with the constituent’s MP and either the House has declined to refer the matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee or the Committee has found that the actions alleged did not amount to a breach of privilege.

My hon. Friend addressed the situation in Australia, where the position in the state of Victoria is slightly different from that here. There was a 2006 case in the Parliament of Victoria, in which the Parliament upheld a privilege complaint from Michael Leighton, the Member for the electoral district of Preston. In that case, the complaint was that a constituent who provided information to Mr Leighton relating to an issue that he had previously raised in the Parliament later received a solicitor’s letter threatening legal action if Mr Leighton repeated certain allegations in the Parliament. That illustrates that there might be particular circumstances in which interference with communication between an MP here and a constituent might be regarded as a contempt of the House, although it does not demonstrate that communications between MPs and constituents should generally be regarded as being protected by parliamentary privilege.

However, there are two points that we must remember about the Victoria case. First, the threat to take legal action against the constituent was specifically in respect of any allegations that might be repeated by the Member in the Parliament of Victoria and it was therefore an indirect attempt to constrain the Member’s freedom of speech in the Parliament. I have to say that that bears some level of similarity with my hon. Friend’s case against Withers, where the House acted quite properly in his defence, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it acted in defence of his constituent.

The second point, or rather the second difference between the situation here and the situation in Australia, is quite important in the context of this debate. It is that parliamentary privilege in Australia is defined in the Parliamentary Privilege Act 1987, so Australians do not rely on the Bill of Rights as we do. In addition, there is a definition of “proceedings” in that Act, which is

“all words spoken or acts done in the course of, or for the purposes of or incidental to, the transacting of the business of a House or of a committee.”

I think that my hon. Friend is arguing that we ought to have some similar provision here and we will need to look at that issue when we consider the matter of parliamentary privilege more widely.

[Mr Bacon]

I am listening with great interest to the Deputy Leader of the House. There is an article 13 point here, which is that the Bill of Rights says that Parliament should “frequently” meet

“for redress of all grievances”.

Is it not an axiom of that, in effect, that Parliament can only do its job of redressing “all grievances” if MPs know about “all grievances”, and therefore that communications that are intended to ensure that MPs do know about “all grievances” are inherently bound up with the Bill of Rights?

[Mr Heath]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and I have some sympathy with what he says. However, I have some difficulty with the interpretation of article 13 of the Bill of Rights. I say that not as a constitutional lawyer, but as someone who is making the simple observation that article 13 of the Bill of Rights is headed, “Frequent Parliaments”, and therefore it seems to me to that article 13 is inherently about the frequency of Parliament rather than the reason for holding Parliaments frequently, which is

“for redress of all grievances”.

It is the emphasis within article 13 of the Bill of Rights that I am addressing. Having said that, we are talking about a 1688 Act and it would be very surprising indeed if it was construed in 1688 in exactly the same way that modern eyes construe it. Therefore, I do not want to replace centuries of jurisprudence on the subject with my lay observations today. However, I hear what the hon. Gentleman says.

I want to move on to Parliament and the courts, because a lot of what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley had to say was about the relationship between Parliament and the courts. Yet again, I enter the caveat that as a member of the Executive I need to be careful about what I say about that relationship and I hope that hon. Members will understand that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley referred to circumstances in which parties to court proceedings are forbidden to talk about them, either because of a specific injunction to that effect or, as in the case of certain family court proceedings, because proceedings are conducted in private, for example in the family court or the Court of Protection. That would not prevent a Member from raising in the House matters that it would be a contempt of court to raise elsewhere. We saw that in the recent Trafigura case, in which I had an interest. I was clear about what Parliament’s position should be, and I am happy that that was supported by others. If proceedings had been concluded, the House’s sub judice resolution would not necessarily prevent such matters being referred to.

The crux of the issue is the degree of legal protection offered, not to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley were he to raise the matter in the House—as he has done this afternoon—but to an individual who discloses information to their Member of Parliament. The extent of that protection is less clear, as in many cases it depends, as we have heard, on qualified privilege. In family proceedings, the Family Proceedings (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules 2009 include certain exemptions about the disclosure of information, including in rule 11.4(1)(d), which provides that a

“party or the legal representative of a party, on behalf of and upon the instructions of that party, may communicate information relating to the proceedings to any person where necessary to enable that party…to make and pursue a complaint regarding the law, policy or procedure relating to a category of proceedings to which this Part applies.”

However—that is a significant “however”—I emphasise that that is a general rule, which is subject to any direction of the court, and the court may direct that such disclosure, though generally allowed, should not be allowed in certain cases. That, I think, is the circumstance to which my hon. Friend refers.

I agree with the many Members who have said that an individual’s right to approach his or her MP should be regarded as an essential part of the democratic process. However, we need to consider how to deal with cases in which one person’s right of access to their MP could interfere with the rights of others, including the right to a fair trial and the right to privacy. There is no point in Parliament making laws conferring decision-making powers on the courts, if an individual Member can vitiate those decisions by disclosing on the Floor of the House information that might fatally undermine their purpose. For example, if a court orders that the identity of a party to legal proceedings should not be disclosed—usually because it would render the proceedings nugatory—Members should think very carefully before using the auspices of parliamentary privilege to subvert such a judgment.

The guiding principle must be one of comity: the House and its Members will respect the jurisdiction of the courts, and the courts will not trespass on to territory that is properly occupied by Parliament. If Parliament collectively believes that some injustice arises from how the courts apply the law, it is open to Parliament to change the law. There is no need to use the blunt instrument of parliamentary privilege as a battering ram with which to beat the courts.

If there are deficiencies in family court proceedings, my hon. Friend ought to seek to amend those rules, in the first instance, or the statute under which they operate, if he feels that they are ineffective in allowing him properly to represent the interests of his constituents.

[Mr Heath]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. He talks about the European Court of Justice. I thought that he was going to talk about the European convention on human rights, because it could be argued that the way these matters operate is outwith ECHR provisions, other than the fact that we are using the licence within the relevant article in the convention, which allows for specific items—the interests of minors are mentioned—to be excluded from the general rule of open proceedings in court. We must bear that in mind. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I have no doubt that we will discuss the matter on many other occasions.

Coming back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley was saying, I think that he is particularly exercised about the office of the Official Solicitor. He seems to have an interesting relationship with the Official Solicitor, in the pursuance of his various interests in the cases in which he has been involved. He essentially asks where the Official Solicitor’s supervision and accountability are, in the exercise of his duties. My hon. Friend knows that the antecedents of the office go back a long way, to its origins in the Six Clerks Office, which was mentioned by Pepys. This officer of the court has a long pedigree, and he acts on behalf of those who were originally defined as paupers, including lunatics and infants, and needed protection under the law. The office is an ancient one, but it has always been an office of the court.

Under the most recent legislation, the office is a statutory office of the Supreme Court, and we have been very clear in the House, by statute and otherwise, that we respect the independence of the Supreme Court, and that we will not seek to interfere with the activities of the Supreme Court, as a legislature. We have to be very careful in expecting something of an officer of the Supreme Court, who I suppose is answerable in extremis to the Lord Chancellor in the exercise of their duties. It is not a matter for normal, democratic control, any more than a judge sitting in the High Court is a matter that should be under the control of the House.

[Mr Bacon]

I have listened to the Deputy Leader of the House with great interest. He said that we should not seek to interfere with the operation of the Supreme Court as a legislature. Did he mean that we should not, as a legislature, seek to interfere with the operation of the Supreme Court? There is a fundamental difference.

[Mr Heath]

I meant that we, as a legislature, should not seek to interfere with the activities of the Supreme Court. There was a comma, which the hon. Gentleman did not, I think, hear. It was there; I assure him.

[Mr Bacon]

I regret that I did not hear the comma, but does the Deputy Leader of the House not agree that this goes to the heart of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was talking about? Although the late and much-lamented Lord Chief Justice, Tom Bingham, made it extremely clear in his recent book, “The Rule of Law”, that he thought that the Court should ultimately defer to the democratic will of the elected legislature, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone says that there is abroad—“abroad” is the wrong word, although it is also true—around the place, including here and also abroad, a kind of judge who does not take that view. That is a source of great concern.

[Mr Heath]

I understand the concern about what is normally described as judicial activism, and about the judiciary perhaps wishing to extend its role beyond what has been the traditional separation between its role and that of the House. We have to be extremely wary about that. Nevertheless, I maintain that it is not and never has been the role of Members of Parliament to decide whether officers of the court are behaving properly in the exercise of their duties. Our role is to create the statutory environment in which they work, and that is a very different matter.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Lady puts it very well. There is a distinction, and we are right to make it.

I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley about the growth of the super-injunction, and what he described as the hyper-injunction. I was concerned when the issue arose during the Trafigura case. I am also concerned that we have allowed a whole new jurisprudence to develop without any real consideration of where it will end, or the consequences for our judicial process.

Happily, the Master of the Rolls, who has a proper role in the matter, has recognised the public concern. He established a committee in April last year to examine the use of injunctions that bind the press, including super-injunctions. He brought together a committee of the judiciary, the legal profession and the press. I anticipate that it will report soon, and we in the House should have particular concern about what it says.

Such injunctions have an impact, potentially, on what we do in the House, and certainly on the interests of our constituents. Personally, I look forward to seeing whether the Master of the Rolls wishes to bring into effect any significant changes to how the courts interpret the whole role of super-injunctions, and what he has to say about the position that has been established whereby my hon. Friend, as a Member of Parliament, cannot know that his constituent is even involved in a case, let alone get involved in it, because his constituent is injuncted by a super-injunction to prevent him passing on that information. My hon. Friend’s concern is perfectly legitimate and I am glad he has had the opportunity to express it today.

[Mr Bacon]

Many people, including the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), who raised the Trafigura case, have had concerns about super-injunctions. Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that such people should also be concerned about what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has identified as another category, hyper-injunctions, whereby a court makes an order not to refer to the existence of proceedings? Is that not simply a step far too far?

[Mr Heath]

I am not sure that I understand the distinction that my hon. Friend was making between a super-injunction and a hyper-injunction, because what is called a super-injunction is an injunction that requires a particular course of action to be taken, including not reporting that the injunction in place is proceeding. It is an injunction squared, or a self-referring injunction. I am concerned about it, as are a lot of hon. Members, but we must wait and see what the Master of Rolls has to say on the subject when he—or, rather, his committee—reports.

I want to conclude by talking about the draft parliamentary privilege Bill.