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Sir Norman Fowler: The Minister has a great future as an estate agent, having given such an answer. He knows perfectly well that I was talking about the constituencies--the coterminosity of Members to constituencies.
I am delighted to respond to the other point, about the electoral system. My basic fear is that, when the Government talk about thinking and acting strategically, that means that the assembly will be remote from the public whom it intends to serve. That danger would be averted if our proposal were adopted.
The Government propose 25 assembly members, 14 of whom will be elected by first past the post. They will represent not areas that are coterminous with parliamentary constituencies, but massive constituencies with between 300,000 and 400,000 voters. That makes the assembly far more remote than Parliament or a local council.
The second eleven will be elected on a Londonwide basis, not by first past the post but through a form of proportional representation. They will be elected from a party list. Just when we thought it was safe to come out of the shelter, the Government are set for a new battle on the open and closed lists. The proposed system is precisely the same as the system for the European elections. That is why the Home Secretary did not refer to it.
Generally, the public will vote not for a named candidate but for a party. They can vote for named independent candidates but not named party candidates. The party will choose the order in which candidates will be elected, and the public will have no choice. For example, the Labour party organisation might put the name Raynsford at No. 1 and, with luck, the name Livingstone at No. 11; and party members might put the name Livingstone at No. 1 and, with luck, the name Raynsford at No. 11; but what is certain under the proposals is that the one group that will have no say in the order will be the electors themselves. They will not be able to re-order the party candidates.
Once again, we have all the other drawbacks of the party list. If a candidate fails in his constituency bid because of his unpopularity with the public, he can always get on the party list. Under the list system, there will be nothing as inconvenient as by-elections to replace someone who resigns or dies: the next man or woman on the list will simply be appointed. That is what the Government propose.
Again, we are witnessing a transfer of power from the public to the party organisation. The only change is that the arrangement has now been condemned by at least two reports. It was certainly condemned by the Jenkins commission on electoral reform, which has published its report since the White Paper was issued. The report said:
Sir Norman Fowler:
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to destroy Jenkins, I would certainly join him.
Mr. Straw:
I was merely asking whether the Conservative party was now moving from outright opposition to Jenkins to Jenkins a la carte.
Sir Norman Fowler:
We have made our proposals. I was seeking to demonstrate--I did so conclusively, I believe--how inconsistent the Government are. They set up the Jenkins commission, and when it reports they propose a different system.
I know that the Home Secretary has a hang-up about Roy Jenkins and all that, but Jenkins was not the only one to oppose the closed list. The Scottish Affairs Select Committee, in its report only a few weeks ago on what it descriptively calls
We do not support closed lists. The case against them has been stated thus:
The analogy with Northern Ireland has always been a bogus one, because the Government know that that system was introduced to meet the special needs of Northern
Ireland, as specifically explained by the then Prime Minister. The debate on the European parliamentary elections showed that there is little support in the House for closed lists, and I can tell the Government that we will oppose that proposal with all our strength.
Who will benefit from the new system? The answer was given by the Home Secretary in his 1985 article. It is a marvellous article and includes the following comment on Hitler:
To be fair, it is not only the Liberal Democrats who stand to benefit. On the basis of the 1998 London borough election results, it is estimated that the system proposed by the prospective candidate for mayor, the Minister for London and Construction, would give the Labour party 11 seats, the Conservatives nine seats and the Liberal Democrats five seats, although they would have won no constituency seats. That underlines the crucial importance of the Lib-Lab pact in local government.
Mr. Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Canning Town):
I am conscious of the limited time available for Back Benchers to contribute to the debate, and I will try to keep my remarks as brief as possible. I wish to raise several issues, including three on which I would like the Minister to comment when he responds to the debate. The first is on the London development partnership and the business case for London; the second is on the Metropolitan police service; and the third is on the London fire brigade.
The London development partnership is the shadow organisation for the development agency. There is a solid business case for additional river crossings in east London. Given that a decision on any such crossings will be delayed until the mayor and the assembly are in place, will my hon. Friend the Minister for London and Construction say whether the LDP will undertake the appropriate background, assessment and research work necessary before a decision is taken? If so, it will mean that the time between now and May 2000 is not wasted. In recent years, there have been extensive consultations about river crossings, and the package put together by the Government office for London over the past couple of years seemed to receive overwhelming support.
In addition, does my hon. Friend believe that the LDP in its present form is adequately resourced to undertake that background research in the period before the mayor and the assembly are in place? The chief executive, Eric Sorenson, is highly respected and leads a prestigious board. Its members would be more than able to get on with the job, but I should be interested to hear from the Minister whether they would require additional resources.
I turn now to the Metropolitan police service. Does the formula for funding that service take adequate account of the non-metropolitan or non-London tasks that the service performs, such as guarding embassies and providing diplomatic protection? Is the funding formula due for review? Will my hon. Friend say whether it is possible that the mayor might believe that additional resources would be appropriate in due course?
I am a member of the police parliamentary scheme, and over the past seven or eight months I have heard consistent resentment from police officers about the way in which the press have portrayed the statement from Sir Paul Condon, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Asked to estimate the number of corrupt officers in the Metropolitan police, the commissioner said that there were certainly fewer than 1 per cent. The tabloid press did some arithmetical calculations and said that that meant that there were about 300 corrupt police officers in the Metropolitan police.
No doubt there is some corruption in the force: no police service can avoid that. However, I agree with other hon. Members that the vast majority of officers in the Metropolitan police are committed and dedicated professionals. They go about their duties selflessly, sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect the capital and its residents. No police service is without flaws, and the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence has raised some serious questions. However, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, the Commissioner and his senior officers are committed to tackling the problem.
I join my right hon. Friend in welcoming the Commissioner's plans to move to borough-wide policing from next year. I commiserate with those chief superintendents who failed to win appointment as police supremos for their boroughs, and congratulate those who were successful, especially Chief Superintendents McPherson and Boylan, who in due course will be the officers in charge of Tower Hamlets and Newham respectively. Both officers are very professional, and will give great leadership to the police service in east London, which area will be better protected as a result.
My concern about the funding of the Metropolitan police is genuine and shared by many, and in the same way the funding of the fire service is causing consternation across London. This year's possible reduction in the number of appliances is the result of a national problem and has to do with the structure of the fire service pension fund. I know that the Home Office is studying the matter to work out a solution for firefighters' pensions in the medium and long term, but the immediate pressure on fire service budgets exerted by the requirement to pay pensions will not go away.
Contrary to what the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) has said, pressure on the fire service pension budget is so extreme simply because of life expectancy. For 30 years, firefighters expected to die soon
after retirement. As a result of the shorter working week--now 42 hours--health and safety legislation and, most critically, the arrival of breathing apparatus, they now have a normal life expectancy. Whether they have retired after 30 or 55 years, or on a medical pension because of ill health, retired firefighters in the capital outnumber the firefighters who are employed and contributing to the pension scheme. That pressure on the fire service budget will intensify in the years to come.
Recently, the hon. Member for Billericay wrote to Graham Noakes, chairman of the Essex fire brigade committee, saying:
"The Commission recommends that the second vote determining the allocation of Top-up members should allow the voter the choice of either a vote for the party or for an individual candidate from the lists put forward by parties. They should therefore be what are commonly called open rather than closed lists."
Mr. Straw:
Is the right hon. Gentleman defending Jenkins?
"the operation of multi-layer democracy",
said:
"We feel that an open list would be more in keeping with the principle of trusting the people and giving them the maximum choice."
It seems to me that the practical effect of what is happening is that, step by step, the Government are giving more and more power to the political organisations and less and less to the public. By one measure after another, the whole focus is beginning to change. Elected representatives will be answerable to the party bosses much more directly than they will be to the local public.
"Where PR is based on the list system, with votes effectively cast for a party, and the winning candidates taken, pro rata, from each party's list, power passes from the individual constituency party to those who draw up the list."
Those are not my words, but those of the current Home Secretary in an article in The Times in September 1985. [Interruption.] If the Home Secretary does not listen, he will miss the quotations.
"He rose to power in the Weimar Republic, which used a very respectable system of PR. I do not suggest that any other system would have prevented his rise. I do assert that PR did not prevent it--yet moderation and stability is the large, and wild, claim made for this system by our own centre parties."
On the subject of the beneficiaries of PR, he said:
"PR is not a matter of morality, but crude party advantage--which is why the Liberals only adopted the idea in 1922, when their decline really began."
For once, we can all--well, perhaps not all--agree with the Home Secretary.
"All Britain's fire services are far too overstaffed. It is one of the last dinosaur industries clinging to feather bedding, using shroud waving and blackmail to prevent the modernisation of the service.
That is a not uncharacteristically inflammatory comment--if hon. Members will excuse the pun--from the hon. Lady. I have a brother who lives in the Algarve and, were it "stuffed" with medically retired firefighters, I am sure that he might have mentioned it to me in the past 15 years.
The Algarve is stuffed with healthy young British males, living comfortably, their incomes supplemented by disablement pensions from the fire service."
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