General Election Television Debates
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Clark
I can only speak for my party, but a platform for the Leader of the Opposition is something devoutly to be wished for by those of us on the Government Benches. I do not know whether that breaks rule 101, but I very much hope that the Leader of the Opposition will accept the invitation.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
On that point, the Leader of the Opposition has agreed to the broadcasters’ proposal for a head-to-head debate with the Prime Minister. Why is the Prime Minister refusing to have that debate?
Greg Clark
The Prime Minister has made an offer. The Leader of the Opposition said that he would debate “any time, any place, anywhere”. The Prime Minister said that he would appear in the debate the week after next, and I look forward to the Leader of the Opposition appearing there.
The proposal for an independent body is not a new one. The House will be aware that the Select Committee on Communications in the House of Lords examined these questions and published its findings on 13 May 2014, in good time before the general election. Though recommendations were explicitly not made to the Government, reflecting the point that I made earlier, the Committee’s key conclusion questioned whether an independent body was required. It said that it had considered carefully the potential case for a body to be established independently of the broadcasters to oversee and produce broadcast election debates, but it has not been persuaded. It found no good arguments for the introduction of such a body.
Given the events of the past year, others, no doubt including the right hon. Member for Belfast North, will insist that the status quo is not working, and would perhaps invite that Committee to reflect on its proposals. In the immediate term, this is the purpose of the Prime Minister’s offer of a televised debate before the campaign proper, but time is running out. If the Leader of the Opposition does not make up his mind soon, it will be too late. Inevitably, he wants to distract us by insisting that the debate be restricted to the Prime Minister and himself alone. He does not want the scrutiny of the other party leaders—
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman will have his chance.
The Leader of the Opposition does not want the scrutiny of other party leaders, including the leaders of other parties who are entitled to their say—the point that the right hon. Member for Belfast North made.
The Leader of the Opposition has already had his chance. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was debating with him again today. I have calculated that they have spent nearly 40 hours facing each other across this very Dispatch Box over the past four and a bit years. The latest instalment of this long-running televised head-to-head debate took place just a few minutes ago, and it will continue up to the moment that Parliament is dissolved. I can understand that the Leader of the Opposition might like one more chance to get it right—he tends not to come off the better in these head-to-head debates—but if it has not happened yet, I suspect it never will.
I read in the papers that the latest wheeze from the official Opposition is a law to make the TV debates mandatory. It is hard to know where to begin, or where the legal action from excluded parties would end. If participation in the debates is to be made compulsory, then, goodness me, are we to make watching them compulsory too, as part of the edification of voters? Indeed, it sometimes seems that the Opposition’s way of thinking is: why achieve anything through voluntary action when we can use the power of the state to enforce our will? It is very revealing of the instincts of the Labour party that, faced with a difficulty, it reaches for legislation and compulsion rather than agreeing a consensual way forward. In making this ludicrous proposal, the Labour leader has done more to reveal the likely chaos that would ensue from the election of a Labour Government than any number of debates could achieve.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I join the Minister in congratulating the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) on securing this timely debate on this important subject. As has been said, the general election is just eight weeks away. In the 21st century, it is surely right that the public have an opportunity, in the weeks before polling day, to see the party leaders and potential Prime Ministers debate the issues.
Voter turnout has fallen significantly in recent years. Trust in politics and politicians is at a low ebb. We must do more to confront these challenges, and television debates are an opportunity for the party leaders to reach out, to inspire, to answer concerns and to attempt to engage with people. In 2010, nearly 10 million people watched the first TV debate between the leaders, eclipsing even “Coronation street” and “EastEnders”. It is an extraordinary opportunity to reach out to people, many of whom have not remotely started thinking about the election yet, and to give them the opportunity to hear from the leaders of the political parties. To reject that opportunity would be to show a disregard for the British public, who have made it clear that they want these debates to happen.
On this side of the House, we want these debates to happen. We have said that the broadcasters should make proposals, and we have accepted their proposals for three debates during the campaign. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) just reminded us, the Leader of the Opposition wants to debate the issues head to head with the Prime Minister. Realistically, there are only two leaders who could be Prime Minister after this general election, and the country should have the opportunity to see them debate head to head, and the broadcasters are proposing that there should be such a debate, alongside two others. That is why the Leader of the Opposition has said, to use his much quoted term, he will debate with the Prime Minister any time, any place anywhere. Of course, regardless of who is in power, we might expect the Leader of the Opposition to be bullish.
Greg Clark
Does that offer extend to appearing in the week commencing 23 March?
Stephen Twigg
If that is the proposal that comes forward and is supported by other parties, but not as the only debate. What the right hon. Gentleman and the Prime Minister are proposing is an election debate before the campaign has even started. As the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) have said in this debate, party manifestos will not even have been published in that week. If the citizens of the country are going to have an opportunity to question, and listen to, party leaders, that should happen after manifestos have been published.
Greg Clark
As the hon. Gentleman said, part of the Leader of the Opposition’s phrase was “any time”, but the hon. Gentleman is now saying that there is a certain time before the election that is not acceptable. How does he reconcile that with the commitment to debate any time, any place, anywhere? Why not the week commencing 23 March?
Stephen Twigg
Because we do not believe these are decisions to be cooked up between the party leaders. They should not be being made by the party politicians. They should be taken away from them. The broadcasters have proposed three debates, two with seven parties and one a head-to-head debate, and we have accepted those proposals. Why can the Conservative party and the Prime Minister not accept those proposals? Does the Minister want me to give way to him so he can tell us why they are so reluctant to accept a head-to-head debate?
Dr Huppert
The hon. Gentleman is making a strong case as to why we need to have debates, and I share his characterisation of the Prime Minister as a bit too scared to want to be properly involved, but why was neither his leader nor the Prime Minister prepared to take part in debates before the European elections? They both turned down invitations to debate with the leader of my party and the leader of the UK Independence party. If the Prime Minister continues to refuse to show up, is the Leader of the Opposition prepared to debate with the Deputy Prime Minister, leader of my party, or is he too scared to have that head-to-head debate?
Stephen Twigg
The reality is that the two people who may become Prime Minister after this election are the leader of my party and the current Prime Minister. I very much doubt that the Deputy Prime Minister, even in his most wildly optimistic moments, is expecting to form a Liberal Democrat-led coalition or majority Government after this election.
We want a debate between Labour and the Conservatives. Two of the debates proposed by the broadcasters would include the Liberal Democrat leader and other party leaders. The broadcasters have proposed a head-to-head debate as the third of three debates and we think that that makes sense. We accept that proposal.
Dr Huppert
I absolutely understand why the hon. Gentleman would like to return to two-party politics, with the two parties that get a larger share of MPs than their share of the vote. I understand why that is in his interests, but is he saying that his leader is not prepared to debate with the leader of my party head to head?
Stephen Twigg
I am not saying that at all. I am saying that we are prepared to have a debate with not only the leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party but the leaders of a number of other parties. We accept the proposals of the broadcasters. We want a head-to-head debate with the leader of the Conservative party because there are two main parties in this country that poll consistently higher than the other parties, and nobody is seriously arguing that there is a prospect of anyone other than the current Prime Minister or the leader of the Labour party being Prime Minister after 7 May. If the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) wants to intervene on me to say that there is a serious prospect of the Deputy Prime Minister moving into No. 10 on 8 May, I will give way to him one more time.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. It is very hard to tell what will happen. I understand that he would be concerned, given the performance by my leader in the three-way debates last time, but it is a great shame that his leader seems to be too scared to take part in such a head-to-head debate. Maybe we should have three head-to-head debates: one between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition; one between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister; and one between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. That could be a fascinating series of debates for the public.
Stephen Twigg
If the broadcasters come forward with such a proposal, we will of course take it seriously.
Stephen Twigg
I listened carefully to the right hon. Member for Belfast North when he opened the debate today, and I entirely understand the concerns that he raised. We certainly do not see the case for treating Northern Ireland any differently from Scotland or Wales. However, we strongly believe that it is for the broadcasters, not the politicians, to determine the nature of the debates. Even at this late stage, we hope that agreement can be reached.
Before I took those interventions, I was quoting my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. It could of course be said that parties in opposition will be bullish about these matters. Five years ago, when the current Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition, he said:
“I absolutely believe in these debates and think they are great”.
He agreed with us, saying:
“I think it is great we are having these debates and I hope they go some way to restoring the faith and trust into our politics because we badly need that once again in this country”.
I agree. In 2010, the then Leader of the Opposition was exasperated by any suggestion that the debates would not happen, saying:
“I’ve always wanted these debates to happen. I mean, they happen in every country. They even happen in Mongolia, for heaven’s sake, and it’s part of the modern age that we should be in.”
Even as recently as last year, when he was no longer Leader of the Opposition but Prime Minister, he said:
“I’ve just always believed that these need to happen. It’s good for democracy. It’s good to see”;
and only five weeks ago, he said:
“I want to go and debate”.
But when push comes to shove, the Prime Minister is running scared.
We heard from the Minister today that the Conservatives want an election debate before the election campaign and before there are any party manifestos for the party leaders to be interrogated on. The Minister also talked about Prime Minister’s questions being the forum for debate. The current Prime Minister used to argue that Prime Minister’s Question Time was not a substitute for proper television debates, but he is now attempting to use it as his way out. We know what happens at Prime Minister’s questions: the Leader of the Opposition and other MPs ask a lot of questions and the Prime Minister does not answer them. The idea that that is a debate that could be a substitute for a forum in which party manifestos could be held to account is unacceptable.
Has the Prime Minister lost his nerve, or has Lynton Crosby lost the Prime Minister’s nerve for him? This is perhaps typical of this Prime Minister. He used to hug a husky and clamour for the green vote. That has gone. He used to talk about compassionate conservatism, but that has gone. He used to talk about a new way of doing politics, including the importance of TV debates, but now he is even turning his back on that, too.
We cannot allow future Prime Ministers, of whatever party, to play games with these TV debates, and I welcome what the right hon. Member for Belfast North said about creating a set of rules. We have said that a Labour Government would put the requirement to stage a fair and impartial leaders debate on a statutory footing. The Minister has done his best to make that proposal sound incredibly Orwellian and statist, but it would simply introduce a system that would work along similar lines to the current party political broadcasts, with the Broadcasters’ Liaison Group having the power to come up with proposals for the debates.
In keeping with what the right hon. Gentleman said earlier, we believe that we shall have an opportunity in the next Parliament to get this right and to learn from what has happened during this Parliament in the lead-up to the election campaign. We suggest a deadline of 2017, midway through the next Parliament, for the proposed changes to be put in place. That would give everyone plenty of time to plan for the debates before the subsequent general election. This would be an important constitutional change, introducing a mechanism for the increased accountability of the Prime Minister and other party leaders. In our system, such reforms would be welcome.
Greg Clark
I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman’s proposal. Will he tell me whether it would appear in the first Queen’s Speech of a Labour Government? Would it be such a priority for the running of the country that it would appear in a Labour Government’s first legislative programme?
Stephen Twigg
As the Minister well knows, neither he nor I can indicate what would be in either of our party’s Queen’s Speeches at any stage. We have fixed-term five-year Parliaments, so I am not going to comment on the timing. However, we welcome the opportunity to debate that important reform, and I hope that he will engage in a serious debate on it.
The Prime Minister’s politics tutor at university, Vernon Bogdanor, has welcomed our proposal, saying that
“the public are entitled to see how party leaders perform in debate, and also how the Prime Minister and alternative Prime Minister perform.”
A Prime Minister, of whatever party, should not be able to duck debates and thereby potentially cancel them for everyone. If a party representative refused to appear on BBC “Question Time” on a Thursday night, the show would go on. These debates are important for the credibility of this election. How can the Prime Minister, as leader of his party, look the British public in the eye, having been so overt in his support of debates, when he is now running away from them? Why should he have a veto on the opportunity for the public to hear from other party leaders?
Julie Hilling
Does my hon. Friend not think that it is actually slightly worse than that? The Prime Minister is saying he will debate, but he is not saying he will debate head to head. He is trying to bamboozle people by saying he will take part in that debate. He is just saying things that are not really true.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Our right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has been quoted as saying that he will meet the Prime Minister “any time, any place, anywhere”, and we have accepted the broadcasters’ proposals for three separate debates—
Stephen Twigg
As the Minister confirms from a sedentary position, the Prime Minister will debate only with the other leaders, and only in a week before the election campaign, before the manifestos have been published. This Prime Minister is not prepared to debate head to head with the Leader of the Opposition after the manifestos have been published. That says a great deal about this Prime Minister and about the Conservative party’s approach to this election.
We on this side of the House are keen to make this happen, and we believe that there is still time for the Prime Minister to join us in accepting the proposal from the broadcasters. For the sake of democratic engagement, I really hope that he and his advisers will reconsider their opposition to these debates. Before the last election, the leader of the Conservative party—now the Prime Minister—said:
“I think people have the right to look at the people putting themselves forward as the next Prime Minister”
in TV debates. That could not be clearer. We agree. The public agree. Let’s get on with it.
Sammy Wilson
I am trying to explain my point, Mr Deputy Speaker. My point is that the inclusion or non-inclusion of the Greens in the debates will not make any difference because their policies are so outlandish that nobody will vote for them anyway. However, they have been included, and given that they are a small party and much smaller than our party, our argument is that we ought to be included as well.
The problem, which has of course been created by the broadcasters, is that if we end up with seven parties, as we now have, or eight or nine parties, we will not have a debate—or even a beauty contest given some of the people involved. We will have a shambles or, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said, a Tower of Babel—utter confusion—with points not being properly debated.
The problem created by the broadcasters is one reason why we believe that there should be some attempt, even at this late stage, to resolve the issue either by accepting the inclusion of all parties with a sizeable representation and candidates standing nationally and regionally, or by finding some way to narrow the number down. We cannot have the worst of all worlds, which is including some and excluding the others.
Another part of the motion that has generated a fair range of comment is about how we proceed. The proposal for an independent body to make an adjudication may well come too late for this election, but that is not to say that it should not be considered for future elections; otherwise this shambles might be repeated. On the one hand, there are the politicians who have their agendas, but on the other hand, the broadcasters have their own agendas, as we now know. The broadcasters are no less guilty in all this than those that some of the public may see as self-seeking politicians. We therefore believe in the creation of an independent body.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), asked how independent the body should be and how it could be made independent. Such an idea has already been rejected in the House of Lords, but only because greater faith was placed in the broadcasters than should ever have been placed in them. Now we have seen that they are incapable of the degree of independence and objectivity required to ensure fair, reasonable and rational debate on the issues, we must look again at having an independent body. It should be no more difficult to create an independent body to oversee broadcasts during elections than to have an independent body for any other job for which such a body is required. The Minister’s point about how we ensure the body’s independence should not cause us a great deal of concern.
Another issue that hon. Members have raised is whether whatever is decided should be mandatory, as the Labour party wants, or voluntary. Our view is that the job of the independent body should be to set the rules. If the rules are set fairly, there will be no need for coercion. People will be able to sign up to the conditions attached to the rules, so there should not be any unseemly rows. At the end of the day, I must say that I am not attracted to making participation mandatory. Even once the rules have been set and the parties have agreed to them, there should still be a right and an opportunity for the parties—they will have to explain the circumstances to the electorate—to decide whether to participate.
Stephen Twigg
Let me make it clear that I entirely share the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments. We are suggesting not that participation in the debates should be mandatory, but that it should be mandatory for the debates to be held.
Sammy Wilson
We agree that, once we have a framework for the debates, people should have the right to decide whether to participate in them.
The final issue is whether the debates should be held before or during the election campaign. I do not like the argument that if the manifestos have not been published, there could not be a debate. What do debates consist of? Very often, they are as much about looking back as about looking forward. They are about looking at the parties’ record in the past, because that is sometimes a far better way of judging what they will do in the future than what might be in their manifestos, given the cynicism of much of the electorate about manifesto commitments. We only have to look at the Liberal Democrats to think of how they made a major commitment, but moved away from it very quickly. A debate on the basis of manifestos may not be all that productive.
I can see the argument for having a debate in the period up to an election without its sucking the lifeblood out of the election campaign. As the hon. Member for Foyle pointed out, there are many formats for debating the issues. He mentioned the variety of formats used during the Scottish referendum campaign. Whether the broadcasts are straightforward head-to-heads between the two main protagonists, panel discussions, debates involving audience participation or a range of other things, they can be done in many ways, so we are not all that worried about their timing.
I must say that I can see the Prime Minister’s point that a shambolic debate, especially with seven different parties all fighting and squabbling for a bit of time in a one-and-a-half hour debate, might not be all that edifying in an election campaign and might distract from many of the other good ways in which parties and individual candidates seek to communicate with the electorate.
One issue that the independent commission must sort out—the hon. Members for Belfast East (Naomi Long) and for Foyle made this point—is the basis on which we make judgments about the parties, which is where this debate started. Should a television debate include all parties, those that reach a certain threshold of Members of the House, or those putting forward a certain number of candidates? Do those candidates have to stand nationally? Will the debates be based on the results of the last Westminster elections or the latest opinion polls? If we are to have a fair framework those issues must be considered by an independent body.
In conclusion, we cannot afford in this election to have the same shambles as we experienced in the previous one: it is not becoming to democracy or to the parties involved, and it is distracting. I suspect that the debate about the debate will be more interesting than the debate itself, especially if we end up with a seven-party squabble on TV, or a debate where the main issue is, “Why is the Prime Minister not sitting there and why is there an empty chair?”, or whatever.
Sometimes there are things that we as politicians can be blamed for, but I do not believe that the finger of blame in this instance can be primarily pointed at us. It is unfair that all the attention is directed on the Prime Minister, because he had a reasonable case for saying that the BBC was setting rules that placed him at an unfair advantage, so why should he co-operate in its game. If we are to avoid that in future, some of the proposals in this motion should be adhered to, followed through and worked on, so that even if we do not sort it out this time, we can sort it out for the next election.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
We have, once again, a debate about debates, and as the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said at the outset, these things matter in a democracy. Debate and discussion is how we arrive at consensus in a democracy, and how we inform the electorate about our respective views as parties and what we plan to do. It is important to have this debate today, although I recognise the comments by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) that in some quarters members of the public will be wondering why we have been talking about this issue for so long.
This is an important debate and it is surprising that, 60 days from the general election, the main opposition party in this House is more content talking about debates than about any other issue. What about the deficit, the fantastic employment figures, the fact that unemployment is down and wages are going up? Labour is willing to talk not about those things but about a debate—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said from a sedentary position, Labour did not initiate this debate today, but the Leader of the Opposition chose to focus on the TV debates in Prime Minister’s Question Time. He had the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister six important questions, but he focused on that debate, which is surprising.
I understand why Labour Members want the public to see more of the Leader of the Opposition before the election. I want that too. What is surprising, however, is the usual hue and cry that we have heard from the Labour party: “Let’s have legislation, legislation, legislation.” My right hon. Friend was right to ask whether, if we make debates compulsory, we will make watching them compulsory too. I dare say that Labour is staking a lot on having the Leader of the Opposition in the television debates. The understanding is that somehow after five years in this House, and four hours of debating at Prime Minister’s Question Time, an hour in the TV studios will make the British public finally see him as a future Prime Minister, but I think Labour is staking a lot on that idea.
Mr Gyimah
I have a short amount of time so I cannot take interventions.
All I am waiting for from Labour is a judge-led inquiry into the debates. The crux of Labour’s argument this afternoon—I will come on to the substance of the debates in a moment—is that we need a head-to-head debate, but the moment that idea was introduced we realised some of the problems with it. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) immediately asked, “Why don’t we have a head to head between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition?”
Mr Gyimah
I will carry on with my speech. The important point, while we discuss a head to head, is to remember that we are a parliamentary democracy and do not have a presidential system. People in this country vote for a party, and the leader of the party that is able to form a Government becomes Prime Minister. For me, the emphasis on the head to head is somehow misplaced, and the discussion about how the smaller parties can be incorporated and involved in that TV debate is important and powerful.
The Democratic Unionist party has more seats than four of the parties that it is proposed to include in the seven-way debate, and more votes than one of them. That raises a question about the influence and power of broadcasters to decide who is involved in debates and who is not. The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) made a powerful and eloquent case, forensically analysing that issue. He spoke about the BBC’s handling of the matter, and the questions that it raises about the BBC’s impartiality. His central point was that the BBC cannot pick and choose which parties matter for the election, and he rejected the idea that any broadcaster should do that. Three years ago the Prime Minister proposed that we should hold debates and that they should be as inclusive as possible, but that was disregarded. He also said that it would be helpful for the debates not to be held in the short campaigning period, because we do not want them to be the only focus during the campaign. The broadcasters rejected that out of hand, and as a result there has been a lot of discussion that could have been avoided.
The Prime Minister did respond to the Leader of the Opposition saying that he would debate with my right hon. Friend “any time, anywhere”, but it turns out that the Leader of the Opposition meant, “any time, anywhere, but not the week commencing the 23rd”.
Stephen Twigg
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Let me be absolutely clear: it is any time, any place, anywhere. Only two people can seriously be Prime Minister after the election, so we want that head-to-head debate. Why is the Prime Minister running scared of it?
Mr Gyimah
A key point that the hon. Gentleman made at the beginning of his speech today was that voter turnout is low and we need to engage and involve the public. One of the biggest features of British politics in this Parliament is the support going to the smaller parties. Why should not we have a debate that includes those smaller parties? That was the Prime Minister’s focus.
A point was also made about the timing of the debate and holding it before the short campaigning period. I understand the concern that if so many parties are involved in the debate, as the hon. Member for Belfast East said, it might resemble the television programme “Take Me Out”, but at least we would be giving the public a say and hearing from smaller parties, who would be put on the spot about the policies they are advocating. I believe that is as important as focusing on the policies of the main parties.
I want to make a quick point on the BBC and impartiality, and on consultation with the DUP. There is no specific requirement for the BBC to consult, but it would be for the BBC Trust to judge whether, by not consulting, editorial impartiality guidelines had been breached. It is worth putting that clearly on the record.
The DUP made a clear call. It wants an independent body to be in charge. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Cabinet Office raised a number of questions that need to be answered. How would it be established and funded? Which debates would it produce? Whom would it invite, and how would it stand up to challenge? How would it succeed in convening the parties, and how would it secure the distribution of the debates among broadcasters? It is an interesting suggestion, but it is obviously not a matter for the Government. Those are some of the questions that rightly need to be answered.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) talked about an unseemly mess that does not credit anyone. If the Prime Minister’s formula from three years ago had been followed, that unseemly mess could have been avoided. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is no clear rationale for what the broadcasters advocate in terms of which parties are included and which are not.
The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) said that voter turnout makes the debates important. He made a powerful point that it is deeply unfair if Northern Ireland is excluded on that basis.
I always enjoy listening to the mellifluous tone of the oratory of the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). He dwelt on the inconsistency of the approach to the different parties and said that the problem was caused by the broadcasters. I was surprised by his suggestion of the Green party’s campaigning approach in East Antrim—it is stopping people eating bacon butties to save the planet. I believe that was a caricature of Green party policy rather than its actual policy.
The hon. Gentleman made an insightful comment that elections are as much about track record as about what the party promises for the future. For most voters, track record gives credibility to what a party promises for the future. For that reason, it is possible to have debates before manifestos are pledged. In fact, we know where a lot of the main parties stand on some of the big issues, such as the deficit and the economy. We have debated those issues a number of times in the House. We can have debates before the short campaign.
This is obviously not a matter of Government policy. There have been a number of debates within today’s wide-ranging discussion. Several different party views were represented. That attests to the reasons why this is not an easy problem to address, but it was a worthwhile discussion.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House recognises the potential value of broadcast general election debates between party leaders; notes however that neither the broadcasters nor politicians can escape the charge of self-interest in their organisation, and that they should best be left to an independent body to arrange; further notes that the broadcast debate formats proposed for 2015 have been inconsistently and incompetently formulated so far; further notes that there exists a substantial danger as a result that these debates will now not happen; and believes that the point of any debates which do happen must be to benefit those who watch them, not those who appear in them or broadcast them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Greg Clark
Right across the country, we take the view that local people can be the best judges of how they spend the money. It should not be decided in Whitehall. Whether the money is spent in rural areas or in cities, we are pioneering a programme of getting money out of Whitehall and into the hands of local people.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
The best way to make constitutional change is for it to be led by the people and not by politicians. There is now wide support for a people-led constitutional convention. I know that the Deputy Prime Minister agrees with that. When will the Conservatives join the growing consent for such a convention?
Greg Clark
The difference between this Government and the previous one is that we have got on with devolution whereas they just talked about it. The Labour leader of Greater Manchester said that this Government have achieved more in their four years in office than the previous Government did in 13 years, so this should not be kicked into the long grass; we should continue with the programme on which we have embarked.
Recall of MPs Bill
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
When the Minister moved the Third Reading, he thanked several people, and I associate myself with the thanks he gave them all. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), the members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and Members on both sides of the House and on all sides of the debate. At various stages, we have attempted to reach agreement with Ministers, the Liberal Democrats, and the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and his cross-party group.
This debate is of real importance to our politics. We all know that many members of the public feel disconnected from this place and disenchanted with the political process. The principle of recall is just one way in which we can give more power to our constituents to hold their representatives to account. As has been said throughout the debate, all the three main parties committed themselves to recall in the manifestos in 2010. The Labour manifesto stated:
“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them.”
We maintain this position today: we support recall, but we accept that in designing a system there is a careful balance to be drawn between one that allows constituents to recall their MP if they are guilty of serious misconduct, and one that allows constituents to do so simply because of a disagreement with their MP’s views or policy decisions.
As was said earlier, the Government chose to table no amendments on Report. The Opposition sought to strengthen the Bill, and I am delighted to say that our attempts were successful, with three amendments being carried. I welcome the passing of amendment 14, which lowers the suspension threshold for recalling an MP. As a result, MPs such as those who received cash for questions in the 1990s would now, under the lower limit, be subject to recall. As we promised in our last manifesto, amendment 24 means that any MP convicted of financial misconduct under IPSA legislation—the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009—will be open to recall. I am delighted at that, because putting it into law will instil greater public confidence in MPs’ financial prudence in the wake of the expenses scandal. By approving amendment 16, the House has ensured that the Bill covers MPs convicted of offences that were not public knowledge when the electorate voted them in. I am pleased that that sensible amendment was adopted by a substantial margin.
We have worked to improve this Bill, and we will seek to explore further options in the House of Lords, including for a robust independent mechanism to enable citizen-based recall. We must tread with care when involving the courts in democratic processes. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) have been very clearly rejected, but they were real risks, because of the specific contents of their proposals. The Opposition believe that a robust independent mechanism to enable citizen-based recall is desirable, if an achievable and effective way can be found of doing so. I hope that a cross-party solution can be agreed in the other place.
The Bill is an important statement about our commitment to accountability and democracy. Throughout its passage, the Opposition have worked to strengthen it. We will continue that work in the Lords so that the Act ensures that the public have confidence both in this place and in the recall process so that there is greater accountability of Members of Parliament.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Gyimah
There was a clear referendum in Scotland and a clear result for Scotland to stay part of the United Kingdom. I advise the hon. Gentleman to wait for the proposals of the Smith commission, from which there will be heads of agreement at the end of this month and draft clauses in January, for the full answer to his question.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will know that last Friday the UK Youth Parliament met in this Chamber. Its priorities were shaped by more than 800,000 young people across the country. Does he agree that that shows again that many young people are engaged in politics? In learning from that and from the experience of the Scottish referendum, is it not time that we finally lowered the voting age to 16?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman has asked that question—[Hon. Members: “How old are you?”] [Interruption.] How old are you?
The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) has asked that question a number of times. As he is aware, there is no consensus within the Government on the issue, and therefore there are no plans to lower the voting age in this Parliament. It is great to see young people taking an interest in politics—I was at the rock and roll event held in Parliament yesterday as part of Parliament week—but there is no consensus on lowering the voting age at this point.
Recall of MPs Bill
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Crispin Blunt
We have a practical problem about how we adapt as an institution—both the Government, and Parliament in holding the Government to account—and about how we as elected representatives manage it. Of course the temptation is to begin to go down the road of constant referendums or opinion polls by e-mail, but that does not put together a coherent programme for Government. That is the issue we must address, and I do not think that the Bill or my hon. Friend’s amendments will do the job.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) spoke to set out our case for our amendments and to respond to those tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and others. In my speech, I will focus on the cross-party amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and others.
I want to restate the fact that Labour supports the principle of recall. It was in our manifesto, which the Minister quoted:
“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them.”
Against that test, our view is that the Bill is not strong enough. That is why we tabled the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife set out on lowering the suspension limits that might trigger recall and adding additional conditions, including on conviction for financial misconduct.
Recall of MPs Bill
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the tone and tenor of the Minister’s opening speech and in particular the commitment that he has made seriously to consider amendments that will strengthen the Bill. I will come to that during my remarks.
This is a debate of critical importance to our politics and democracy. People feel more disconnected from Parliament and more disenchanted with the political process than possibly ever before. Polling and academic research reveal the pre-eminence of this distrust, but all of us know that the most vivid displays of antipathy are found on the doorstep when we meet voters while we are campaigning. People feel let down by politics, they feel angry, and they feel that too often their voice is not heard and that we politicians are out of touch.
Of course, politicians have never been the most popular people. It is in the nature of our job that we have to make unpopular decisions at times, as the Minister rightly said. But in 2009 the relationship between politics and the people reached a nadir during the scandal about MPs’ expenses. We can never be complacent or overestimate just how much damage was done to the standing of politics, politicians and this House with the public by what was revealed in 2009. In tough times, when families had been taking difficult decisions about their own household spending and with the economy in recession, revelations about the abuse of MPs’ expenses understandably left the public furious with the system and furious with the individuals involved.
Richard Drax
I am tired of this general slagging-off of people who work so hard for their constituencies. Like many of us here, I was not an MP then, but I admit that some dishonourable behaviour sadly occurred in this House. What we need to restore is honour; we do not need legislation for that.
Stephen Twigg
I partly agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is about how all of us do the job and about the culture of politics, but it is also about legislation. I will come to that now.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I do not disagree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said about the level of distrust, but does he accept that the lack of independence of many MPs is the biggest concern for many of our constituents? Does he not think that one of the concerns about a recall Bill broadly, which I support, is that it would largely undermine that sense of the independence of the individual MP?
Stephen Twigg
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. Later I shall refer to a distinction that others have made in interventions and which the Minister himself made between our conduct as Members of Parliament and the issues that we vote on, and how we are held to account for our voting. The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point that although recall is, in my opinion, a correct mechanism for dealing with misconduct, it is a more questionable mechanism for dealing with issues to do with voting. One consequence of a particular model of recall could be to undermine the independence of MPs, for the reason that he gave.
In 2010 each of the main parties made proposals to change the system in response to the tide of distrust that I described. As the Minister said, each of us had a commitment to some form of recall in our manifesto. The Minister said that the Government have not rushed into this. That is an understatement: it is a shame that it has taken more than four years to have a Bill before the House. At one point both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister promised to pursue a new politics of democracy and transparency. Well, it has taken them quite a while to get round to it, and now that they have, neither of them seems very pleased with the Bill before the House.
The Deputy Prime Minister, who led on the Bill that was published earlier in this Parliament, said this summer that he agreed with the critics of that Bill, and just yesterday he said he wished that the latest attempt—the Bill before us today—had gone further. The Prime Minister, at Prime Minister’s questions last Wednesday, four and a half years after declaring his intent to pursue a new politics, said that the current Bill is the minimum acceptable. Surely after four and a half years they could have come up with something better than this.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument about the disgust that many of our constituents still feel about politics and politicians, and about the importance of the Bill. Does he think that the measures relating to accountability and in particular to MPs adjudicating on themselves are strong enough?
Stephen Twigg
I will come to those issues in a moment. The straightforward answer is no, I do not think those measures are strong enough. During the Committee stage we need to strengthen them significantly.
Labour supports recall. Our manifesto commitment in 2010 stated:
“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall”.
We need a system that improves accountability and gives more power to the public to hold their representatives to account between elections. That is a matter of fairness. People go to work each day and they know that if they break the rules, if they behave inappropriately at work, they may face the sack. The job of a Member of Parliament should be no different. If we are to regain the trust of the people, we cannot place ourselves outside or above this basic principle.
However, the system of recall needs to reflect what the job of a Member of Parliament is. We are not delegates to this place. We have a representative democracy, in which Members of Parliament are sent to represent their constituencies, and sometimes that involves making difficult decisions. A balance has to be drawn between giving people the opportunity to recall MPs for misconduct, and allowing MPs to make difficult decisions. For misconduct, recall makes sense. For holding MPs to account for their voting record, general elections are the appropriate mechanism. We will support this Bill on Second Reading, but look forward to strengthening it in Committee.
We believe that the Bill is an unacceptably minimalist interpretation of the right to recall. For example, as the Minister set out, one of the triggers in the Bill is when an MP is suspended from the House of Commons for at least 21 sitting days or 28 calendar days. Had this rule been in operation over the past 25 years, there are only two occasions on which Members of Parliament would have been caught by this proposed change. As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr Roy) pointed out, for the Members of Parliament who were caught up in the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s, because of the nature of the punishment they faced, recall would not have been triggered.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Can the hon. Gentleman envisage a situation where the political pressure would be on the Standards Committee to increase the penalties? The political pressure means that 21 days’ suspension has to be given as a punishment to bring in the trigger mechanisms, so in some ways the trigger is a foolish mechanism, and the Standards Committee probably should not be involved at all.
Stephen Twigg
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I will address the role of the Standards Committee in a moment. These are precisely the sort of issues that we want to address in Committee next week.
Greg Clark
To correct the shadow Minister and for the information of the House, I point out that there are in fact six Members of Parliament who would have been caught by the provisions. I mentioned Chris Huhne and Eric Illsley on the imprisonment aspect. In terms of suspension, there would have been four more—Teresa Gorman, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), Denis MacShane and Patrick Mercer.
Stephen Twigg
The Minister is including Members who resigned from the House before the Standards Committee’s proposals were considered, but I acknowledge what he says. I still think that six is a very small number, considering the scale of the challenge that we face. With reference to the particular example that my hon. Friend cited of the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s, there is a concern that the length of period covered by the Bill would not have affected the MPs in that case.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is providing a strong critique of the Government’s Bill and I agree with much of what he says. At the Committee stage there will be a wide range of views about what needs to be done to improve the Bill. The indication is that the Conservative party will be offering a free vote. Will we hear that from the Labour party as well?
Stephen Twigg
I thank the hon. Gentleman. I will refer shortly to some of the proposals that he has made. I am not in a position to make announcements about the Opposition’s whipping arrangements or the Government’s, but they will be made available in due course.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
While we are correcting the record, the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), who is no longer in his place, said earlier that Garry Allingham was thrown out of the House for passing on notes. In fact, he was suspended from the House because he had alleged that other MPs had been bribed by journalists with drinks to give them tittle-tattle. The only person who had been thus involved was the said Member, Garry Allingham. Interestingly, the one person who felt that he could not vote to suspend a man for drinking too much with a journalist was Winston Churchill.
Stephen Twigg
I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the record.
The example of the “cash for questions” scandal in the 1990s exemplifies the weakness in the Bill. If we accept the principle of recall, then surely such clear examples of misconduct should fall within the criteria that I set out.
Mr Heath
The stories mentioned by the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) demonstrate part of the problem, which is the self-importance of this House and its willingness to act as a gentlemen’s club rather than, at the end of the day, giving the verdict to our constituents. That is why this Bill, with I hope, a widening of the trigger mechanism, is so important.
Stephen Twigg
I absolutely agree. That is why the principle of recall is so important and why this Bill is welcome, but I hope that over the coming weeks the House will work hard to strengthen its provisions.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman believes, as I do, that the Bill needs to be strengthened and expanded. We have heard several interventions about the limits that result from the triggers. Would he trust the electorate such that, instead of having triggers, we simply said that a reason for recall had to be given, with the name of a sponsor calling for it? Might that be a better way forward, because we would not try artificially to prescribe in advance what the trigger might be?
Stephen Twigg
Clearly, we will have amendments to that effect before the House meets next Monday, and it is right that we consider them in detail in Committee. The danger with that very pure approach is that we could cross the line between misconduct and how we vote as Members of Parliament. That is problematic, for reasons that I will set out later.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend think that there is any room in this Bill to deal with the situation where Members of Parliament are elected and then do not take their seats, but continue to get substantial amounts of money? Surely that is, in some way, bringing this House into disrepute.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend is tempting me into an area that I do not think I will be tempted into. I am sure she will have opportunities to raise those issues in the House at later stages.
Lady Hermon
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to tempt him in a related but different direction. Will he confirm to the House that the Labour party welcomes the fact that this Bill extends to absentee MPs, given that the Minister said, correcting his earlier reply to me, that it applies to all MPs on the day after polling day, not when they take their seats, and therefore does apply to Sinn Fein?
Stephen Twigg
Yes indeed. It is very important that this legislation applies to all elected Members of Parliament from the point at which they are elected. I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to confirm that from the Dispatch Box.
It is important that the public are able to hold Members of Parliament to account for serious wrongdoing and misconduct—for example, taking financial reward for everyday parliamentary activity. Any system of recall needs to pass that rudimentary test. In Committee we will look at ways to strengthen that aspect of the Bill.
The length of suspension required to trigger a recall petition is currently too high, and it fails to catch some of the clear cases of misconduct that we have witnessed. There is also the question of how we can and should improve the process of suspension that would lead to recall. As the Minister confirmed, the Bill does not mention changes to that process, or, indeed, changes to the Standards and Privileges Committee. I hope that in Committee we will look at ways in which we can ensure that the process is not party-politicised and, as a number of Members have suggested in interventions, more independent. It is sensible to rebalance the Standards and Privileges Committee so that it does not reflect a Government majority, whoever is in power, and to increase the lay membership of the Committee, as the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), said.
The second trigger in the Bill allows for a petition if an MP receives a custodial sentence. As the Minister said, some of the people who would have been caught by these proposals received a custodial sentence for political protest. One of my predecessors in Liverpool, Terry Fields, who was the MP for Liverpool Broadgreen, would have faced a recall petition when he was sent to prison for refusing to pay the poll tax. We need to bear these issues in mind when we are debating this aspect of the Bill. At the same time, I think it would be widely felt that if a Member of Parliament committed a crime and was sent to prison, it would be appropriate that, whatever their motive, the public in their constituency had the opportunity to sack them if they wished to do so rather than moving to a general election.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman’s point about Terry Fields proves exactly why it is so hard to define what is wrongdoing. In those circumstances, it would not just have been a matter of his constituents having the choice of recalling him—it would have required just 10% of them to throw him out of his job, even if he might then have clawed his way back through a by-election. That is one of many problems with the Bill.
Stephen Twigg
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point of substance that we need to consider as the Bill progresses. I imagine that Terry Fields would have been re-elected by a massive majority for the stand that he took against the poll tax.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
A moment ago my hon. Friend referred to the need for lay members to be involved in the process of trigger determination. Does he agree, however, that it is important that we do not just get the usual kinds of people but have genuine members of the public involved?
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I am glad that he has made that point. That will be a crucial part of our consideration not only in Committee but in some of the wider discussion that is happening about the future of the Standards and Privileges Committee. The political membership is contentious in terms of MPs policing ourselves. We could address that by ensuring that the lay membership is genuinely credible with the wider public.
Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
There has been some discussion about the need to ensure that we have more lay members involved in deciding whether to trigger a recall. Surely the lay members are called constituents, and we should have a mechanism that allows them to decide whether a recall is triggered. They are, after all, the lay members who count most.
Stephen Twigg
I know that the hon. Gentleman has campaigned on this issue for a very long time and has a consistent stance that is reflected in his intervention. I am going to set out my thinking on such a proposal in a moment, so if he could be patient I will respond to his point.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman said that Terry Fields would probably have been re-elected with a massive majority. Would it not be a failure of any legislation if it brought about a situation where a Member faced a by-election and came back with a massive majority? Surely the point of recall legislation is to put the issue to the test on something that is marginal and not something where there could be a situation involving vexatious constituents who perhaps opposed the poll tax and knew full well that the MP would be returned with a massive majority.
Stephen Twigg
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about the risk of a relatively small minority of—to use his phrase—vexatious constituents abusing the system. That is a risk with a pure recall system, as I will explain in a moment.
Mr Charles Walker
I have great admiration for members of the public—after all, they are my electorate—but could the shadow Minister define “genuine members of the public”?
Stephen Twigg
I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman is asking that question. Did I use that phrase?
Mr Walker
The shadow Minister agreed with the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) that we should involve “genuine members of the public”, but what does that mean? “Genuine members of the public” is a political phrase like “innocent victims”—I have never come across a guilty victim. What are “genuine members of the public”?
Stephen Twigg
They are those who are representative of the full range of the public. Often people who are appointed to some of these committees will tend to be—how shall I put it?—the great and the good, who are not necessarily entirely representative of the full range of the public. That is what I understood by the phrase, “genuine members of the public”. Of course, there will be strong opinions on both sides of this debate, which is why the Committee stage will be so important.
Let me now address the amendments that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is likely to table. First, I welcome his contribution and that of all Members on the committee chaired by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). It is probably fair to say that the Government may not have put this Bill before the House had it not been for their hard work and persistence. The proposals of the hon. Member for Richmond Park manage to avoid some of the problems associated with the Government’s Bill. As he said in his intervention, there would be no issues about unfairly allowing a petition when an MP is imprisoned for protest; about having to debate the length of suspension from this place; or about the independence of any recall trigger mechanism. His likely amendments would allow for the trigger to be in the hands of the people, and there is a simplicity to that proposal that is, of course, attractive.
The hon. Gentleman’s proposals, however, run into trouble when we assess the potential effect on the constitutional role of Members of Parliament. If we accept that the job of an MP is to be a representative, not a delegate, that has consequences for where we stand in this debate. MPs on both sides of the House need to be able to sometimes make difficult decisions. Sometimes they have to fulfil roles in government and there is a risk that the hon. Gentleman’s likely amendments could challenge that.
For example, the hon. Gentleman’s model of recall—the pure model—has the potential to give enormous power to well-funded, wealthy groups and organisations that could run concerted campaigns to pressure MPs to act in a certain way.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very good point. We need look no further than the United States, where the Koch brothers use their multibillion-dollar war chest for no other partisan reason than to get rid of individuals who do not agree with their warped sense of the world.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which reinforces a concern felt by many—not just in this House, but outside it—that without proper regulation a system of pure recall could be subject to abuse.
Richard Drax
May I add to the excellent point the shadow Minister has just made that if there were three or four petitions against a sitting MP during a five-year term, their reputation would be damaged, perhaps unfairly, and their chance of being re-elected severely reduced? That cannot be right.
Stephen Twigg
I agree with the hon. Gentleman and will return to that point in a moment.
The constant pressure of notices of intent, even if they are supported by only a very small minority in a constituency—a notice of intent could be triggered by just 5% of the electorate—could prove destabilising to the ability of the Member of Parliament to fulfil his or her duties, both in this place and, frankly, in their constituency. Politicians often have to make decisions that are unpopular in their constituency, but they may be decisions that are ultimately right for the country as a whole. In our system, a Secretary of State is accountable to this House, but if they are a Member of this House they also have a constituency. Does it make sense for a Secretary of State to face recall for making a decision that may be unpopular in their own constituency but may make sense for the country as a whole?
Mr David Davis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for referring to our committee, but I think he underestimates the wisdom of the public. When I had my by-election, the policy I was campaigning against had the support of 72% of the public, and yet I was returned by 75%. In the proposal authored by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the thresholds are sizeable: there would need to be, in effect, 15,000 votes in a normal constituency and then 50% of the constituency would have to agree before a recall could be triggered. That is a much higher threshold than this rather ill-thought-through Government proposal.
Stephen Twigg
The right hon. Gentleman has anticipated the next and, Members will be relieved to hear, final part of my speech. I accept that his committee produced rather high thresholds for the later stages of its proposal, but the 5% threshold for a notice of intent is low. There are sensible ways in which some of these concerns could be countered. Is there a way in which we could ensure that MPs could be recalled only for their misconduct?
Mr Winnick
Is there not a danger in all this of intimidating Members of Parliament against taking up unpopular causes? For example, as a Labour Back Bencher in the late 1950s, Barbara Castle argued for a settlement in Cyprus when British troops were being killed by EOKA. It was a very unpopular cause and one can well imagine what would have happened to her had there been recall legislation. She may have survived it, but she would have felt under intense pressure. At the end of it all, of course, she was right: there was a settlement in Cyprus.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend makes that case strongly, as have others, both in this place and elsewhere. That is why I reaffirm the distinction between causes, which my hon. Friend has just mentioned and for which the election is the vehicle for accountability, and conduct, which is, rightly, the focus for recall.
Jonathan Edwards
Will the shadow Minister give an indication of the Labour party’s thinking? If the House of Commons is going to have a recall mechanism, no matter what it is, does the Labour party agree with the principle that the other Parliaments of the British state, including the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament, should also have the ability to introduce their own recall mechanism, whatever type it may be, should they so wish?
Stephen Twigg
That is a matter that should be decided by those devolved bodies. I understand that there have been discussions in Scotland about doing so. [Interruption.] I am being tempted to announce a policy on Welsh devolution, but that is slightly outside my remit. I think that, in principle, if this House has a reserve power, it should give it up so that it becomes a matter for the devolved bodies themselves to decide, but a decision would need to be made by those bodies. I suspect that I may have moved party policy on, so some clarification might be given later, but the principle has to be one whereby the decision is made by the appropriate body.
By the way—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who will wind up the debate, will talk about this—there is also a very good case to be made that the kinds of recall mechanisms we are discussing for Members of Parliament should be considered for other positions, such as those of police and crime commissioners and mayors. That may be outside the scope of this Bill, but we should consider it at an early opportunity.
I will close with some final comments on the proposals of the hon. Member for Richmond Park. I have said that we should look at whether there are ways in which MPs could be recalled only for their misconduct. To address the issue raised by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), could there be a limited number of recall petitions per Parliament? Some of the American states with the power of recall limit the number of times it can be allowed within a legislative term. Are the proposed thresholds reasonable? Could there be a higher threshold at the early stage?
Members on both sides of the House are in favour of the principle of recall. [Interruption.] I hear some dissent. I think that most Members of this House, as will probably be demonstrated in today’s vote, are in favour of the principle of recall. There will be very important debates in Committee about what the best system might be and how best to deliver it. As I have said, the Bill needs to be strengthened considerably from its current state in order for it to have meaning. The “minimum acceptable”—which was the phrase used by the Prime Minister last week—is simply not good enough. The public will, rightly, expect more. We will support the Bill’s Second Reading, but we will work hard in Committee to strengthen it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Gyimah
I thank the hon. Lady for a very good question. The purpose of IER is to match people on the register through the Department for Work and Pensions matching service and local matching. Currently, 80% of people on the register have been matched, but the job of EROs is to ensure it is as complete and accurate as possible, and that involves writing to people and, where there is not a match, getting further proof of identity.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the Minister on his appointment.
In the other place, the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Roberts has moved an amendment to the Wales Bill placing a duty on EROs to organise voter engagement sessions in schools and colleges. The amendment is supported by all four main political parties in Wales. We will support it: will the Government?
Mr Gyimah
The Government are conscious that as part of the move to IER we must make efforts to maximise the register. To do that, we have allocated £4.2 million to 363 local authorities and partnered with five national organisations. We will obviously take a look at what is happening in Wales, but we are already taking steps to maximise the register.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Greg Clark
I am sure there are lots of people in Bassetlaw who are very keen to vote, but it is hard to say whether they will vote for or against the hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right that, in times past, a smaller number of students have been registered to vote in other places. That is why under the funding formula more money now goes to every place where there is a substantial student population, including Sheffield: £47,000 has been allocated to Sheffield city council specifically to drive up electoral registration.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
Last time, I asked the Minister about the schools initiative advocated by Bite the Ballot. I welcome what he has told the House today about the early take-up of online registration, but does he agree that there is no need for an either/or option? May I press him again: can we not combine online registration with a duty on schools and FE colleges so that we ensure that we have a maximum number of young people on the new register?
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect, needs to update his brief. Online registration is now live. There is no point in going back to the system that prevailed in Northern Ireland when only paper-based voting was needed. The group most likely to take up the opportunity of electronic registration is young people. In fact, the latest figures show that 43% of those registering are under 30, so online is the way to go with young people.
Conflict Decisions and Constitutional Reform
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Dr Coffey
The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, so I will accept that. I will do some more work. It is, however, right that we put power back more locally. I simply sound a note of caution. I grew up in Liverpool in the 1980s. That is why I became a Conservative: it is thanks to Derek Hatton. When the council had control of all the different levers, dare I say it, a lot of tax rates went up and a lot of people and businesses left. It is one reason why the population dropped suddenly, as those people went to other areas around Liverpool to escape the high-tax regime.
I apologise to hon. Members: I said I would speak for a short time, but this is probably one of the longest speeches I have made in Parliament. The topics are interesting, and having two debates in one is a novel and wonderful idea.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I am trying to resist the temptation to be drawn into a debate about Liverpool. All I will say in response to the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is that the current Labour council there, led by Mayor Joe Anderson, is hosting an international festival of business, attracting business, and working well with central Government through its city deal.
I join others in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for his brilliant chairmanship of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and to all members of that Committee for their work. That work is critical to our efforts to address the issue my hon. Friend spoke of at the end of his speech. Frankly, there is a crisis in our democracy because of the disconnect that people feel between their life and what we politicians do, in this place and more generally.
It is good to set that as the frame for our debate on these two important, thorough and rigorous reports by the Committee. Each report is on an issue of profound significance for our constitutional arrangements, and both concern the fundamental principles on which our system is built. I shall address them in turn.
I will begin by talking about Parliament’s role in decisions about conflict and war. As other hon. Members have said, it is an issue that goes to the heart of how our constitution can ensure the effective separation of powers, a long-standing and vital principle that ensures that the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature have separate roles and functions, so as to protect the nation and its people from tyranny. The power to deploy troops in a conflict situation goes to the heart of the principle of the separation of powers.
As my hon. Friend has said and as the report acknowledges, this is a difficult issue. We want the flexibility that the royal prerogative has allowed the Executive, but as democrats we rightly expect that Parliament, on behalf of the people, should have a say. At the same time, as the report acknowledges, there are enormous challenges in keeping the courts out of decisions about peace and war, as those are rightly decisions to be made by elected politicians. The powers that derive from the royal prerogative remain, in a sense, an oddity of our parliamentary democracy. The constitutional writer A.V. Dicey said that they are the
“residue of arbitrary and discretionary authority”.
I do not think that prerogative powers sit easily with our modern concepts of democracy, and those of us who favour further reform feel slightly uneasy about them.
Nevertheless, the power to deploy troops is a prerogative power and is arguably the one of utmost importance. The decision to take military action should never be taken lightly. It is literally a decision of life or death, and as others have said, it can have long-lasting consequences for our nation. As my hon. Friend said, we need to learn lessons about how to do things better in this regard in future. Putting our troops in harm’s way should not be a decision made without due diligence and consultation.
There is a case to be made that the convention that has developed in recent years that Parliament should be consulted on such decisions shows the maturity and flexibility of our constitution. My hon. Friend reminded us of the events in the build-up to the war in Iraq 11 years ago, and in his exchanges with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) we relived those moments. What was clear was that we had a vote in 2003; indeed, as the hon. Gentleman said, we had several. That, in a sense, was unprecedented and has created the new convention, which is crucial to this debate. Since then, when action was taken in Libya, Parliament was consulted immediately afterwards, and, as we have already heard, a potentially momentous constitutional moment occurred when the Government attempted to secure parliamentary support for action in Syria. Parliament did not provide that support, and the Prime Minister rightly said that he respected its decision.
The report sets out in a helpful way the options for taking the matter forward. One option is simply to have a strong convention—a development of the convention that has built up over the past 11 years from the experiences on Iraq, Libya and Syria. Others advocate new legislation. The report proposes that Parliament adopt a resolution. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that there are wide-ranging views on the matter, and suggested that he would support attempting to make the convention as strong and solid as possible, but we know that previously the Foreign Secretary intimated that legislation may be the preferable route.
Of course, it would be best to have a single view from Government. I do not say that in a partisan sense, as this is clearly a matter of utmost importance, and it is right that it be debated within the Government, as well as in Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North acknowledged, the decision to deploy troops is a difficult one, which sometimes has to be made very quickly and may sometimes be unpopular but nevertheless be deemed necessary.
One concern is that putting the convention into legislation could open such decisions up to judicial review. Although the courts have previously made it clear that certain royal prerogative powers should not be challenged through judicial review, where there is legislation there is always the potential for judicial review.
The report also points out, as did several contributions to the debate, that there are definitional issues. The nature of war has changed fundamentally since the 19th century, and indeed since the 20th century. There is a vast array of different operational options. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) spoke about Helmand; the action there was in the middle of the conflict in Afghanistan, so would that be covered by legislation on this issue? The threats we face in the 21st century are real and dangerous, and no Member would want us to compromise on security.
My view is that the report’s proposal of a parliamentary resolution is interesting and should be considered seriously. Questions remain that would have to be thought through thoroughly with independent legal advice. Would the resolution merely state that Parliament must be consulted, or would it give Parliament the power of veto? What language would be used to cover the definitional issues? It is critical that we work together on the matter, on a cross-party basis. The Labour party is happy to take the issue forward, working both with the Select Committee and with the two Government parties to see whether we can achieve consensus, based on the Committee’s proposal for a resolution.
I turn to the second report, which assesses the case for a constitutional convention. I welcome the diligent work and research that the Committee and its staff have obviously undertaken in producing the report. It goes without saying that it comes at a critical time. We are fewer than 100 days away from the people of Scotland going to the ballot box to decide the issue of independence.
Our view is that the United Kingdom has been a successful political union. The Acts of Union in 1707 brought our countries together and placed power in this place, the Westminster Parliament. Since then, the rules and principles of our constitution have evolved. The report quotes Professor Vernon Bogdanor, and it is worth repeating what he says, as it is often forgotten quite how much constitutional reform there has been in the past two decades:
“We have all been living through an unprecedented period of constitutional change, an era of constitutional reform which began in 1997 and shows no sign of coming to an end.”
After such a period of transition, and with seemingly more change on the horizon, there are strong arguments in favour of having a constitutional convention to discuss the direction we are heading in, to give a voice to the whole United Kingdom, and to ask the most basic question: what can we do better? I very much support the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North that any further constitutional change should be rooted in the two principles of union and devolution.
The report helpfully looks at international examples of such conventions. In Iceland, a national forum took place four years ago, involving 950 citizens selected randomly from across the country. In an age in which the public feel disconnected from their politics, such an initiative has real attraction. In Canada, which established a citizens’ assembly, the fact that the public felt involved clearly meant the process had some worth, even though the final proposals were not implemented in practice.
At the same time, there are reasons for caution. In his evidence, Iain McLean pointed out that successful conventions usually require overwhelming political support for change. Setting up a convention without the political will for change risks creating a fine exercise in democratic citizenship, but without an outcome at the end. There is a danger that we could see the existing disenchantment with politics worsen.
As the report acknowledges, there needs to be a question for a convention to answer, but there also needs to be a broad political coalition that wants the answer to that question. The example I want to highlight is the Scottish constitutional convention before 1997. At that time, there was a clear commitment from the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and a large swathe of Scottish civil society to the principle of devolution. The convention was therefore asked not to answer the question, “Devolution—yes or no?” but to say what Scottish devolution should look like, and that proved a great success.
The Labour party is therefore not against the idea of a convention outright, but more groundwork needs to be done on exactly what question we need to answer. There is—let us be frank about this—no lack of potential questions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North described some of them: the English question; the West Lothian question; further devolution to the nations of the United Kingdom; devolution to the regions and the cities of England; localism; regionalism; broader political reform; and reform of this place, including, crucially, of the second Chamber.
We may well be coming to an appropriate moment for a constitutional convention, but further groundwork needs to be done to make sure it has a clear remit for change and is supported by as wide a political consensus as possible. A convention must not be an exercise in kicking difficult issues into the long grass; however, if it provides an opportunity to engage the people of the United Kingdom in a serious debate about how we best improve our democracy, it is certainly an option worth considering.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Twigg Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Greg Clark
With respect, the hon. Lady is bringing together two different points. The Electoral Commission has already said that individual voter registration should proceed, stating:
“We have independently assessed how ready the plans are for this change…and have concluded that it can proceed.”
The decision on whether to close the transition is a decision for the next Government and the Electoral Commission has said that it will provide advice during the next Parliament.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
When individual registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, the registration of young people fell dramatically. A duty was then placed on schools and colleges to help register their students and Northern Ireland now has registration rates among young people that are higher than those in the rest of the United Kingdom. Will the Minister introduce a similar duty to apply to schools and colleges in the rest of the United Kingdom so that we maximise the number of young people who are registered?
Greg Clark
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this matter, as he knows. We have learned the lessons from Northern Ireland and that is one reason we have provided the funding we have to enable groups of people to go into schools and encourage people to register. One of the differences from which we have learned a lesson concerns the importance of online registration, which was not available in Northern Ireland. Our approach to registering young people is to encourage them to register online, and that will be carried out across the country.