Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tristram Hunt and Mark Harper(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
4. If he will publish an implementation plan alongside the introduction of legislative proposals for individual electoral registration.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
We will indeed be publishing an implementation timeline with our response to the Select Committee’s report. In it, we will consider implementing individual registration from the point of view of the elector, the administrators and the Government.
Tristram Hunt
The truth is that this is one of the most anti-democratic Governments of modern Britain. They are having the longest parliamentary term in the world outside Rwanda, and their rushed plans for voter registration now threaten to disfranchise Britain. As well as committing himself to publishing an implementation plan, will the Deputy Prime Minister commit himself to a phased introduction of voter registration, an end to the opt-out clause, and a full household canvass in 2014?
Mr Harper
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman received the memo from his Front Benchers, who took a much more sensible position during the debate the other day. The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said:
“I welcome the process that the Government have adopted and how they are acting on this matter. We have had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny, and the Deputy Prime Minister has said twice on the Floor of the House that the Government are willing to listen to concerns”.—[Official Report, 16 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 475.]
I think that the hon. Gentleman ought to check what his party’s position is.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Tristram Hunt and Mark Harper(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I should like to make it clear that I am proposing that the House disagrees with their lordships on amendments 1, 2 and 9, and I shall set out the reasons for that. For the benefit of Members who have not had the chance to study the amendments in detail, they provide that the provisions in this excellent Bill be subject to a sunset clause after the next general election. Each subsequent Parliament would have the choice of whether to be a fixed-term Parliament or not. The Government want to oppose the amendments because we think that they fundamentally undermine the purpose of the Bill, which was welcomed by, among others, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of this House. I see a member of the Committee, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) sort of agreeing with me on the Opposition Benches.
In bringing forward the Bill, we are seeking to put in place a provision that we hope will become an established part of our constitutional arrangements—namely, that fixed-term Parliaments for this UK Parliament become the norm, just as they are for local government, for the devolved legislatures and for the European Parliament. Two of the most important things in the Bill—in the form that the Government would like it to take—are, first, the proposal for an ability to deny the Executive the ability to choose a date for a general election to suit their own ends and to ensure that the Prime Minister gives up that power for the first time, and, secondly, to deliver certainty on how long a Parliament will last, which will benefit not only parliamentarians but the public.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Was the Minister disappointed, as I was, that their lordships did not seek to alter the limit for the fixed-term Parliament from five years to four years, which seems to be what the majority of the British public would like?
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Tristram Hunt and Mark Harper(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Harper
On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, which is that public hearings are different from the old discredited system of local inquiries, he is spot on. They are designed to be different, because the academic evidence is very clear: the old system of public inquiries did not lead to an improvement in the boundaries.
Mr Harper
I am happy to take interventions, but let me at least answer the right hon. Gentleman first. Then, of course, I will take the hon. Gentleman’s point.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about Wales, he is quite right that Wales’s share of the House of Commons will fall from 6% to 5%, but we debated the issue in this House, the other place debated the representation of Wales, and both Houses decided that the current over-representation of Wales is not acceptable. All parts of the United Kingdom should be treated equally—
Tristram Hunt
In evidence to the Political and Constitutional Affairs Committee, we heard last week from Professor Ron Johnston, who listed examples of case after case where public inquiries and the voices of local people had changed the results of Boundary Commission studies. The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) will back that up. There is no argument that the system is somehow discredited; it is a proper voice by which people can have their say.
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will let me finish my argument, which does not have very much—[Interruption.] No, I am just saying that I have not got to that bit yet. If he will let me, I will get to it.
The amendments that we have proposed in lieu of Lord Fowler’s amendments would resolve the problems that I have mentioned. The Boundary Commission would be required to create two constituencies wholly on the island. They would obviously be outside the range of 5% either side of the quota—otherwise we would not be having this debate in the first place—but each would be closer to the quota than a single island constituency would be. That would ensure that electors’ votes were closer in weight to those cast elsewhere in the UK, which we believe is important.
Our amendments also make consequential adjustments to the formula used to apportion seats to the constituent parts of the UK and to calculate the UK electoral quota, so as to be consistent with the approach taken to the other exceptions in the Bill. To pick up on a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who is not in her place, they will therefore provide the Boundary Commission for England with a clearer task than under the amendment made in the other place.
Tristram Hunt
What is the difference in actual votes between the 76,000 quota and Isle of Wight constituencies of 110,000 or 55,000 people? Would 3,500 votes mean another whole constituency in the House, when the number is going from 650 to 600?
Mr Harper
I am sadly not able to do the maths at the Dispatch Box, but we have examined the matter, and what I have just said is borne out. I will do the maths when I sit down, or maybe inspiration will strike me, but two seats would be closer to the quota than one. That is the basis for our decision, which is very clear [Interruption.] The debate in the House of Lords supporting the amendment of the—[Interruption.]
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Tristram Hunt and Mark Harper(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I will not dwell on this issue at length, Mr Evans, because if I did so you would rule me out of order, but the coalition agreement does not say that. It says that we want to make the upper House more representative of the result in the general election, not exactly in line with it. The hon. Gentleman simply is not right.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) quoted from a judgment. I will not be drawn into the specifics of the Chaytor case—although the Supreme Court has given its judgment, there are ongoing criminal trials—but the flaw in the hon. Gentleman’s argument lies in the fact that the case concerns the administration of the expenses scheme. The House of Commons has never asserted exclusive cognisance of the expenses scheme. It has never said that the scheme, its administration and the matters that flow from it are parliamentary proceedings, which is why that is not a good example. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s judgment recognises the exclusive right of each House of Parliament to manage its own affairs without interference from the other, or from outside Parliament.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) quoted the views of the Clerk of the House. If the Government were alone in their view and the Clerk’s views were shared by everyone else, my hon. Friend would have a stronger case. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and the Lords Constitution Committee have taken a great deal of evidence, and the weight of independent expert evidence has supported the Government’s view. For example, Professor Robert Blackburn of King’s college London said—and I think that this is in line with the comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon—
“In my view, the government's Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill has been technically well-drafted by the Cabinet Office’s parliamentary counsel, particularly in avoiding judicial review of its provisions on early elections by way of Speaker’s certificates”.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, said:
“In the very limited time that we had to look at this matter, the Clerk was the only person to raise this question, and the academics who have been referred to—Professor Hazell, Professor Blackburn and others—completely disagreed with the view put forward by the Clerk.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 632-3.]
Tristram Hunt
The point was that we did not have enough time to hear other voices that might have agreed with the Clerk of the House, owing to our having to rush our consideration of the Bill and to the speed with which the Government are pushing it through.
Mr Harper
That was also the experience of the Lords Constitution Committee—and, in fact, we have not been rushing the consideration of this Bill. We published it in July, Second Reading was in September, and this is the third day of the Committee stage, in December. We are hardly rushing forward at an enormously swift pace. Months have elapsed. I feel sure that if hundreds of constitutional lawyers and academics agreed with the Clerk and disagreed with the Government, we would have heard from them.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Tristram Hunt and Mark Harper(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Harper
No, I am terribly sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has not been here for the debate, so I am not going to give way to him.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) drew attention to one of our arguments about the need for long-term thinking. Many commentators, politicians and members of the public would argue that Governments can be too short-term in their planning and decision making. We want to encourage future Parliaments and Governments to take a long-term view rather than look for short-term advantages. As a number of my hon. Friends have argued, a five-year fixed term would provide the country with a strong and stable Government.
I turn to the amendments in this group. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is not in his place, seeks to set the length of Parliaments at three rather than five years. I think perhaps he did himself a disservice when he quoted remarks of his own constituents suggesting that a three-year term was needed so that he might last it, because of his age. I am only repeating what he said; I do not agree with it myself. However, I simply do not agree with his argument. The flaw in it came when he said that the Government parties wanted not a fixed term but a five-year term. However, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is perfectly capable, while the Government retain the confidence of the House, of having a five-year term of office. That has always been the constitutional position, and the Bill is not necessary to ensure it.
Tristram Hunt
In some of the speeches that we have heard from the Deputy Prime Minister—I understand that he is giving one to the Hansard Society tonight rather than being in the Chamber to discuss the Bill, which is rather scandalous—there has been much talk about the Chartists and how this great reform is an echo of the 1840s. The Chartists were in favour of yearly elections, so why does the Deputy Prime Minister deny the will of the people by keeping Parliaments at five years?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is quite right about the point that the Chartists made, but I do not happen to think that annual elections would be a good idea, and from my experience I am not sure that the people of this country would be over-enamoured of us if we said that we would trouble them with a general election every year. I believe that they will be content with our proposal. We do not want to end up with a situation in which the people of the United Kingdom are subject to a permanent election campaign. That is the evidence that the Constitution Committee in the other place has received. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) drew attention to the matter when he looked at the US congressional experience in the lower House where, effectively, as soon as Congressmen get elected, they instantly turn their thoughts to their re-election and spend most of their period of office having to raise money for expensive election campaigns.
Mr Harper
Let me just finish this point. The Government could not accept amendment 32 as drafted even if we thought that keeping the clock ticking was the right thing to do. However, we thought about the issue carefully, which we also debated a little on Second Reading. The Government did not think that resetting the clock made sense for this reason. If there were an early election because the Government had lost their majority and gone to the country, and a Government were then returned with a significant majority, it would not be right for that Government, perhaps with a clear mandate, to be unable to put their programme to the country and carry it through. When people go to the polls, they expect that they are electing a Government who will last for a full term, with the ability to carry through a full programme. The Constitution Committee in the other place considered the evidence from other countries, including the Swedish model, and was told that the prospect of leaving the clock ticking actually protected the Government—the Executive—rather than the Parliament.
Mr Harper
Let me make some progress.
Finally, new clauses 4 and 5 would provide that elections to this House and the devolved legislatures could not occur on the same day. The problem with that proposal is that if it were agreed, it would provide that where a devolved legislature’s general election had been moved, the following poll would take place on the first Thursday in May four years later. For example, if one of the devolved legislatures delayed its 2015 elections by one year, elections to that legislature and the House of Commons would coincide again in 2020. New clauses 4 and 5 would mean that those elections would have to be moved again in 2020, so they are actually a back-door method of substituting a five-year term for the devolved legislatures.
I do not know whether that was the intention of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, who spoke so powerfully against a five-year term and in favour of a four-year term, but the effect of his new clauses would be to deliver a five-year term through the back door. For that reason I do not think that it would be very sensible to accept them. Also, new clauses 4 and 5 do not make provision for a super-majority, which appears to suggest that a majority Government in a devolved legislature could just play around with the election date to suit themselves, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve in this Bill. The Government therefore cannot accept new clauses 4 and 5, and I would ask the hon. Gentleman not to press them to a Division.
In conclusion, I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this debate, particularly those who were here for the whole debate and those who have tabled or supported amendments to clause 1. The Government are convinced that our Bill as drafted provides the right approach. I would urge hon. Members not to press their amendments to a Division and to support clause 1.