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Madam Speaker: I repeat what I said earlier. I am always informed before midday if the Government are seeking to make a statement. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman and to any others who wish to change the business of the House that they should approach the Leader of the House on Thursday during business questions to see whether there is any opportunity for a statement or debate.
Mr. David Marshall (Glasgow, Shettleston): Further to the point of order raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), Madam Speaker. As you are the protector of the rights of Back Benchers, I am sure that you are as concerned as I am that approximately 30,000 houses in Glasgow have suffered flood damage as a result of burst pipes, due to the exceptionally severe weather. More than 1,000 families are now homeless. However, the Scottish Minister responsible for industry and local government either complains that it is his day off or blames everything on school janitors. Can you advise me what one has to do to obtain a statement from the Secretary of State for Scotland on the problem, which is so important to the whole of Scotland?
Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman might reflect-- he has been here for a number of years--that there are now greater opportunities for hon. Members to raise such issues in Adjournment debates. Perhaps I might direct his attention to the fact that, when matters are raised in Adjournment debates, the Minister has to make some response.
House of Commons (Reform)3.58 pm
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): I beg to move,
- That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a United Kingdom Convention for Parliamentary Reform; to require it to take evidence and to make proposals; and for connected purposes.
I am delighted to have this opportunity to ask leave of the House to introduce a Bill to establish a United Kingdom convention for parliamentary reform. I say that in spite of the fact that, as I shall describe in a moment, the process of winning the right to put the Bill before the House was in itself an excellent example of the reasons why the Bill is so necessary.
The purpose of the Bill will be to allow reform of our parliamentary system and procedures to be discussed objectively and in a non-party political manner, drawing on the wisdom of experts who are currently engaged in politics, and of those who are not. In that way, my Bill will allow proposals to be made and debated not on the basis of how much benefit they would bring to one political party or another but solely on the basis of their benefit to the citizens of our country, on whose behalf our present parliamentary set-up works so poorly.
My proposals are based on the highly successful work done by the Scottish convention. Although two of the four main parties in Scottish politics declined the opportunity to participate in the convention, the broad measure of agreement achieved over a wide range of political issues by the two parties that did participate was highly significant. It clearly showed that people of good will, when they are forced to put mere party self-interest on one side for a while, can produce a result that meets far better the needs of the electorate than the current political dog-fight ever can.
So why can we safely say that the present parliamentary set-up needs reform? For a start, there has been for some time widespread agreement on the need for change. Within the past few years, we have had the Jopling proposals and more recently the Nolan committee. But neither of them has come anywhere near satisfying the general public. As politicians, we are now just about the most despised of all the professions; only those who inhabit the Press Gallery--in the nether regions above your head, Madam Speaker--are more widely despised by the public than we are. How demeaning that we should be considered only marginally better than journalists. I say that as one whose father was a journalist--which at least proves that I am upwardly mobile.
If we are to gain more respect not just for ourselves-- that is comparatively unimportant--but for the processes of government, so that our society can work better, and above all with a more widespread acceptance that our laws are sensible and worthy of being obeyed--with all that that means for the sense of well-being and common purpose in society--we should surely start by demonstrating that we can accept and understand the need for the reform of our own institution.
It was, I believe, Sir Cyril Smith who once memorably called this place the longest-running farce in Whitehall. Let us look at one or two examples of what he meant. In order to be sure of obtaining the chance to bring my proposals before the House today, I had to spend about 15 hours cooped up in a small room off an upstairs corridor
somewhere that seemed, judging by the noise throughout the night, to be strategically placed just below Big Ben. There, my four hon. Friends who will be presenting the next four ten-minute Bills to the House joined me as we tried to snatch what sleep we could in a scene all too reminiscent of the doorway of some major London store on the night before the start of the January sales.
No doubt, next time, someone else will be so determined to ensure his place in the queue that he will feel compelled to wait not just for the 15 hours that we endured but for even longer. What an absurd way for Members of Parliament to decide who shall have the opportunity to put legislation before the House. Here we all are, paid more than twice the average wage, yet to do our job we have to indulge in this strange pantomime.
To take another example: every time we come to vote, it can take 20 minutes or more from the moment the vote is called to the moment a result is announced. I shall never forget the occasion, soon after I arrived in the House, when we started voting on a series of amendments to an education Bill at about 9 o'clock in the evening; apart from a short debate in the middle, lasting about 20 minutes, we then did nothing but vote until 1 o'clock in the early hours of the following morning. It is absurd that Members of this House should spend their time going through the Division Lobbies time and again, spending 20 minutes on each Division, three or four times an hour, for four hours on the trot. If we were setting up a new Parliament today, can anyone believe that we would not introduce some form of electronic voting system? [Hon. Members: "No, we would not."] Of course we would.
It is not just the procedures that we use which are desperately in need of modernising if we are not to appear as a ridiculous anachronism to the average voter. If we were setting up a new Parliament today, can anyone imagine that we could do so in a debating Chamber that is large enough to hold only about two thirds of all the Members of Parliament? Of course we would not.
Nor would we dream of building a Chamber in which the main participants face one another a few feet apart, resembling gladiators in a Roman arena. The absurdity of that arrangement becomes clear when we remember that it arose from the simple fact that the Commons first sat in St. Stephen's chapel, where Government and Opposition occupied respective choirstalls. How often since the broadcasting of Parliament began--and particularly since it was televised--must the audience of Prime Minister's Question Time have wished that those occupying the Front Benches behaved less with the ferocity of gladiators and more with the decorum of choirboys?
Does anyone in the House believe that we can win the respect of the electorate as long as we maintain a system of questioning Ministers under which they are thought to have performed well only when they have been successful in hiding any glimmer of what might be called useful information?
As I have pointed out, we are the object of ridicule to many people. Is that any surprise, when we insist on maintaining practices and procedures that waste huge amounts of time and energy for no good reason other than that is the way in which it has always been done in the past?
Let us use the opportunity that the Bill can provide to see ourselves for once as others see us. The longer we hide from ourselves the extent to which the public despise us, the harder it will be to win back their respect. We need to clean up the mess of our politics, and where better to start than the way in which we run our own affairs?
My Bill will give Parliament the chance to hear proposals made by an objective, non-party political body as to how we can reform ourselves, so that we can once more win the respect of the electorate.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Rendel, Miss Emma Nicholson, Mr. A. J. Beith, Mr. Archy Kirkwood, Mr. Menzies Campbell, Mrs. Diana Maddock, Mr. Matthew Taylor, Ms Liz Lynne, Mr. Paul Tyler, Mr. Don Foster, Mr. Robert Maclennan and Mrs. Ray Michie.
Mr. David Rendel accordingly presented a Bill to establish a United Kingdom Convention for Parliamentary Reform; to require it to take evidence and to make proposals; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 9 February and to be printed. [Bill 39.]
Order for Second Reading read.
Madam Speaker:
I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sir Patrick Mayhew):
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of the Bill is to make special provision in Northern Ireland for the maintenance of order and the rule of law. It will do so by re-enacting, with omissions and amendments, the current Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1991. The Bill is made necessary by the continuing character and level of cruel and criminal terrorist activity in Northern Ireland, and by the fact that the current Act expires in August.
I described the scope of this terrorist activity when the House last discussed the current Act on 12 June last year. That scope has not diminished; rather, it has increased. To the catalogue that I then listed--the preparation of explosive devices, robbery and extortion for the purpose of acquiring funds, intimidation, brutal beatings, the training of operational terrorist teams, the researching of improvised weapons, the targeting of victims and the maintenance of undiminished supplies of illegal armaments--we must now add our recent experience of murders carried out for blatantly political purposes.
Since the beginning of December alone, five men have been gunned down in public or murdered in their homes. The very dogs in the street in the communities involved know that it is the work of the IRA. Putting it more elegantly, the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) has described the so-called Direct Action Against Drugs group as a flag of convenience for the IRA. The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Dr. Hendron) concurs. The RUC knows that they are right, and has said so. These murders were procured by the IRA.
The Government react to these killings with the deepest anger and concern. We have conveyed that in our public statements, and I have written to Senator Mitchell and the other members of the international body to draw the murders to their attention. They illustrate all too vividly the central importance of the issue of illegal arms. All the constitutional parties in Northern Ireland, Church leaders and community leaders, and the Irish Government, have condemned the murders in the most forthright terms. Although the murders themselves are revolting, almost as sickening has been the evasion of leading Sinn Fein people when they, too, have been called on to condemn them.
However disappointing it is, by reason of all these matters this is not the time, I must submit to the House, when we can sensibly say that the need for special provision for Northern Ireland has passed.
Like its predecessors, the current Act has enabled the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland to function effectively and fairly, despite ferocious terrorist attacks on it. In addition, it has set up a legal framework for action
by the security forces against terrorists that is proportionate and effective, while yet providing individual citizens with appropriate safeguards.
The House will be grateful to Mr. John Rowe QC for his thorough reviews of the current Act and of the prevention of terrorism legislation in recent years. With Mr. Rowe, we believe that there is a continuing need for a special provision for Northern Ireland, and in the form of a new emergency provisions Act. Nevertheless, I judge that there can be no one in the House who does not regret the necessity for retaining any of this legislation. I have long made clear my wish to see conditions established that will mean that the emergency legislation has done its job and can be repealed. I am only too mindful of how easy it is for emergency legislation, once enacted, to stick within the statute book.
There have, of course, in recent times been changes in the scene, and welcome changes for the better: the ceasefires of August and October are foremost among them. I certainly acknowledge again the efforts of all who achieved them. Especially, I pay tribute to the resilience and courage of the police, the Army and all the ordinary people of Northern Ireland in resisting terrorism over 25 years.
The Government have not been slow to respond to these changes. On security, the Government's response has been positive and wide-ranging: routine military patrolling in support of the police is down by 80 per cent.; 1,600 troops, including three battalions, have been relocated from Northern Ireland; North Howard Street Mill and other security bases have been vacated, some demolished, and a number of security installations, including the tower at the Rosemount police station in Londonderry, have been removed; closed roads at the border with the Republic of Ireland have been opened to traffic; the majority of orders under the vehicle control zone order were revoked on 1 August 1995; all Northern Ireland exclusion orders have been lifted; and the civilian search unit has been disbanded.
These measures and a range of other steps, including changes to remission rates in prisons, give the lie direct to those who accuse the Government of foot-dragging or of refusing to build on the new situation. We will go further when I am advised by the Chief Constable that we can prudently do so.
In the political field, the Government are fully committed to achieving inclusive all-party negotiations aimed at a comprehensive political settlement based on consent. We wish to see the removal of what at present disqualifies Sinn Fein in particular from participating in those negotiations. We want to see it there, in common with other parties, in right of having established a commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful methods, as the Downing street declaration makes clear is necessary.
It is a partial peace that we have in Northern Ireland today. It is no more than that. It is sometimes referred to simply as "peace" only because of the horrors of what for so long preceded it. As I said in our last debate on the Act,
Since then, the opportunity to end those actions has not been taken. On the contrary, the murders that I have already mentioned illustrate how it has been cynically spurned. Therefore, in the opinion of the Government,
there is little room for debate as to whether the need has gone altogether for an emergency provisions Act for Northern Ireland; the evidence is too clear that it has not.
On the contrary: in the face of today's diminished but nevertheless established threat, the debate should be about what is a prudent and proportionate response to it. Let us remember that the current Act contains power to suspend many of its provisions--a power that has been exercised in respect of detention under section 36. That power is also incorporated in the Bill, and it would be exercisable even from the outset of the new Act if circumstances then warranted it.
There is also room for wider debate. For example, Mr. Rowe recommends that the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act, which applies only to Northern Ireland, and the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989, which applies in the main to the United Kingdom as a whole, should be consolidated in one comprehensive statute, providing all that is needed to cope with the perceived threat of terrorism anywhere in the United Kingdom.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and I believe that there is much merit in that. In our debate on 12 June, I spoke of the need for a
My right hon. and learned Friend and I have invited him to
These new arrangements will not affect the annual review of the way in which the prevention of terrorism Act has operated in 1995. Mr. Rowe will duly report on the Act, as he has for the past two years.
I am also very glad to announce that Lord Lloyd will be assisted by a distinguished adviser from Northern Ireland, Mr. Justice Kerr, who is a judge of the High Court there. It will not be possible for Lord Lloyd's review to be completed in time for new legislation to be enacted before the current Act expires. Accordingly, in recognition of that situation, the Bill provides for its own expiry only two years after it takes effect, and it, too, will be generally subject to the need for renewal after its first year, under the provisions of clause 60, and contrary to the terms of the Opposition's amendment.
As to there being no power to amend the Act annually, for which we are criticised in the amendment, no predecessor statute, I believe, has ever incorporated such a power, and it would not be practicable to introduce one now.
There is one other salient question to which I should refer before I come to the detail of the Bill: the holding centres and the electronic recording of interviews conducted within them. The holding centres are, of course, police offices where a person suspected of terrorist offences and who has been arrested under section 14 of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act
1989 is detained for questioning, subject to substantial safeguards, which include a statutory maximum time limit of seven days for the power to detain. Like, I should think, every hon. Member, I look forward to the day when holding centres can pass into disuse, with all interviews being subject to rules under the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, but I am advised by the Chief Constable that that day has not yet come, and I accept that advice.
4.7 pm
"what is really needed to move the peace process forward is the ending of actions that rupture or menace the peace."
"wide-ranging look at all the options for permanent counter-terrorism legislation once a lasting peace is established".--
[Official Report, 12 June 1995; Vol. 261, c. 503-509.] Today I am very pleased to be able to announce that the distinguished Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has agreed to lead such a review.
"consider the future need for specific counter terrorism legislation in the United Kingdom, if the cessation of violence connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland leads to a lasting peace, taking into account the threat from other kinds of terrorism, and the United Kingdom's obligations under international law; and to make recommendations."
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