Phone Hacking

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me deal specifically with the issue of John Yates, because this is important. He does an extremely important job for the country in terms of counter-terrorism policing. I have watched him and the job that he does at close hand. We have to have a situation where the police are operationally independent, and if we put our trust in Paul Stephenson to run his team, we must allow him to do that. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think about this: it would be quite dangerous, would it not, if politicians were able to point at individual police officers, particularly those who were leading investigations into other politicians? So there are some dangers here. I think that John Yates is doing a good job on counter-terrorism. Clearly, as he said himself, he has some questions to answer about what went wrong with the initial investigation, and I hope that he will welcome this inquiry, which will get to the bottom of what went wrong.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

In the light of and under the pressure of this inquiry it seems possible that serving police officers will go off on sick leave because of stress. Will the Prime Minister guarantee that in no circumstances will the taxpayer be asked to fund any pension of any police officer, either serving or now retired, who is found to be corrupt, as that would be the final insult?

[The Prime Minister]

I will have to look at the point that the hon. Lady makes. It sounds perfectly sensible but we have to obey the rules of the pension schemes and all the rest of it. However, people should not be rewarded in the way that she says.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I am most grateful, Mr Evans, for the opportunity to reply to the debate.

I regret that I feel compelled to press this matter to a vote, but I feel that the Minister’s response has been wholly unconvincing. We are faced with adamant and clear advice from the Clerk of the House that the Minister has chosen to dismiss as irrelevant. Let me remind the Committee what the Clerk said:

“The provisions of this subsection make the Speaker’s consideration of confidence motions and the House’s practices justiciable questions for determination by the ordinary courts.”

That includes

“what constitutes a confidence motion, the selection of amendments to such Motions and the consequences of their being carried”.

He goes on to say:

“As these would become justiciable questions, the courts could be drawn into matters of acute political controversy.”

The Minister has not responded with anything substantive to defeat that advice.

Moreover, the Minister has rested his justification for the Bill on the assertion that it would not be possible to write these provisions into the Standing Orders, which would be automatically immune. Let me read from the Clerk’s memorandum again. He said that

“a Standing Order regulating the matters in the Bill could provide for its staying in effect unless repealed by a specified majority”,

meaning that it could be entrenched,

“for example by…equal to or greater than two thirds of the number of seats in the House. Not only is the principle of specifying majorities already written into the Standing Orders of the House, but in the past the House has also required a relative majority for reaching decision.”

My hon. Friend the Minister also dismissed the comments that I read from Mr Robert Rogers, the Clerk Assistant and Director General, who made it clear that we can not only write into our Standing Orders provisions requiring super-majorities, but entrench a—[Interruption.] I am rather distressed that the Minister is not even listening to what I am saying. We can entrench a Standing Order with its own super-majority so that it could be removed only by a super-majority, if that is what the House chose to do. The whole basis of the Government’s advice remains contested by the Clerks. The basis of the Bill—that this has to be done through statute—also remains contested by the Clerks.

I doubt that we will win the vote in the Committee this afternoon, but the Minister has failed to give a full response or to acknowledge any of the points that have been made. His subsection refers to a Speaker’s “certificate under this section”, which is very unspecific. At least the amendment states

“Any certificate of the Speaker of the House of Commons given under this section shall be conclusive for all purposes”.

That word “any” and the reference to the Speaker make it clear that whatever the Speaker issues is uncontested, rather than leave it open to the courts to determine whether the certificate presented by the Speaker complies with the legislation. I am afraid that the Minister has not satisfied me and I do not think that he has satisfied a great many of my colleagues on the Government Benches or in the official Opposition. I want to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee proceeded to a Division.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Evans. At lunchtime today I was sitting in the Terrace cafeteria and, for the second time in a fortnight, I was unable to hear the Division bells at all. There was nothing to indicate that a vote was taking place. Can you facilitate Members’ ability to vote if they are sitting in that area, perhaps by asking the Badge Messengers to inform them that a vote is taking place while the problem is sorted out?

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for that point of order. I must say that I have taken a number of points of order in a similar vein since taking the Chair on 8 June, and this is clearly worrying for Members as well as irritating for the Chair. I will instruct that the matter be fully investigated, not just in the area that the hon. Lady has spoken about, but throughout the parliamentary estate. Clearly, it could affect the outcome of a vote. In the short term, I ask that, every time there is a Division today, a messenger goes particularly to that part of the House to ensure that Members are made aware that a Division is taking place.

Individual Electoral Registration

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I take exception to the hon. Gentleman’s use of the word “fiddling”. The boundary review proposed in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill will be carried out on exactly the same basis as previous reviews, using the same electoral register and based on the same data. I acknowledge that there are people who are eligible to vote who have not chosen to register, and that is why we have put in place measures to deal with that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) has made some helpful suggestions about what we could do this year, and we plan to fix this. When the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) raised this matter on Second Reading, I responded by saying that we would put in place measures to tackle under-registration, and I hope that he will be happy with what we have announced today.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

At the moment, we send national insurance numbers to young people who are approaching their 16th birthday, yet, on the declaration form that goes to the local authority, only those who are 17 and older are identified. How can we ensure that we pick up those who are 16 and over and put them into the registration process in anticipation? Would it be possible to promote this through the schools system? The other thing I would like to ask is about the arrangements that are going to be made to check up on those living abroad. What will happen? Is there any capacity to—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently explain to the hon. Lady that on these occasions Members should ask a single, short supplementary question? She has had a good run, but we will leave it there for today.