| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Ian Pearson (Dudley, South): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hughes: In a second. As the Bill stands, that small number of people could be made up only of directors, or rich people, or men--all unacceptable propositions that would have to be amended.
Mr. Pearson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree that the City of London is unique, and that separate franchise arrangements can and should apply? Does he also agree that the City's financial institutions are Britain's only world-class industry cluster? We must think very seriously about any proposals to change that. On balance, although I accept that the Bill, in many respects, is defective, should we not consider giving it a Second Reading and then amending it in Committee, given that we need to modernise arrangements?
Mr. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman has identified the central question. Will the Bill, as drafted, improve people's participation in voting in the City, or will it make it worse? I repeat what I have said already: the Bill is an improvement because it gives the little newsagent and the City firm a chance to have a say, whereas before they had no say. However, I hope that the City comes up with something more because the Bill is still not good enough to pass the democratic test.
The Bill also does not deal with ward boundaries, or with the fact that some wards have fewer than 100 electors, but my final point has to do with the aldermen. No qualification is necessary for that position: if I understand the Bill correctly, a person could live in Cornwall and still become an alderman. However, the Lord Mayor of London can be chosen only from among the company of aldermen. That is entirely indefensible. The City has improved matters a bit recently, by providing that aldermen are elected only for six years, rather than for life. However, I do not think that anyone could defend the proposition that the senior representative of the council--its figurehead--should be selected only from a group of people who have so little in the way of electoral justification. I hope that the City deals with that, too.
Mr. John Cryer (Hornchurch):
I, too, oppose the Bill. I found the speech by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) absolutely extraordinary. He took his party's views on democratic representation back to the era before that of Earl Grey, who saw the great Reform Bill through Parliament.
I was also amazed by the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, South (Mr. Pearson). He seemed to want to take us back to an era before the Labour party even existed. When we challenge the principle of one person, one vote, and hand power and votes to people because they have property or a certain amount of wealth, we start to undermine the whole democratic process.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington):
Does my hon. Friend share my surprise that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), who once aspired to be the Liberal Democrat party's mayoral candidate for London, should take democracy in London so lightly?
Mr. Cryer:
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey is fortunate that no other Liberal Democrats are in the Chamber because his speech was quite extraordinary.
I may be called a sentimental old fool, but I have always believed in democratic accountability and in one person, one vote.
Mr. Pearson:
I do not want to stop the flow of my hon. Friend's Liberal bashing, but he referred to my earlier intervention and I wanted to make it clear that my view is that the City of London is a unique institution for which unique arrangements might apply. I would by no means support any arrangement other than one person, one vote for any other franchise.
Mr. Cryer:
I support nothing but one person, one vote anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances.
The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) seemed to argue that the City is unique in part because of its radical history. It is true that the City once had a radical tinge when the coffee shops were radical centres. It was so, for example, during the campaign to abolish slavery.
However, things have changed a bit since then. Two hundred years ago, the City was not full of toffs in red braces, driving Porches and moving large amounts of money around the globe. The City is no longer a radical centre. Far from it; it is a centre for wealth, privilege and power. I have always seen the City as one of the great bulwarks of the unfair capitalist society, to coin a phrase that is none too fashionable these days. The City has stood in the way of every reforming Labour Government, and even in the way of a few reforming Liberal Governments.
Despite what the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey said, changing the franchise to reduce, as the Bill would, the residents' share from 25 to 10 per cent. would be an attack on democracy. I do not think the present system worth defending; we should get rid of the corporation completely. However, to reduce the residents' franchise would be to extend the power of wealth, privilege and business in the City.
A minimum rateable value of £10,000 would entitle companies to one voter, and they could have another one for every additional £10,000. That is indefensible under any circumstances. Those who would nominate the voter would not have to be resident in Britain. They could be resident anywhere. It could be that a business man in the City who was resident in Peru could nominate a voter who was resident in Sri Lanka.
My main objection is not residency, however. The real objection is that political power will be distributed according to wealth. That takes us back to before the great Reform Act of 1832. Earl Grey--hardly a radical figure, ready to man the barricades on behalf of working people--managed to get that Act through because the system was so patently unfair. I have looked over some figures from before 1832 to judge how much power individuals wielded. The Society of the Friends of the People estimated in the 1800s that 154 individuals sent 307 Members of Parliament to Westminster. That might go down well on the Tory Benches; it would certainly give them an edge at the next election.
A Tory Member of Parliament, Croker, estimated in the late 1820s that 276 Members of Parliament--which was about half the House of Commons in those days--were returned by individual patrons. We are reverting to that sort of system, whereby a handful of individuals could potentially control thousands of votes on the City corporation.
I am concerned about the cosy relationship between the Tory party and the City--my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) mentioned that earlier in a point of order. I wonder how many Tory Members who will vote for the Bill tonight have close connections with certain City companies. The Tory party has always had a cosy relationship with the City and its institutions: banks, corporations, and so on. That relationship became much closer in the 1980s when the then Conservative Government passed legislation that gave great breaks to those corporations--the big bang, for instance--and allowed even greater profits to be made.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. We must discuss the Bill before us, not events in the City. The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) should keep his remarks within the scope of the Bill.
Mr. Cryer:
I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was simply drawing attention to certain connections that I hope will be apparent tonight. I hope that Tory Members who speak in the debate will be honest about their interests in the City.
Several defences of the Bill have been offered, but none of them holds water. The documentation that I have received from the Corporation of London does not attempt to defend the Bill. It simply says that the present system is pretty awful so we must move to a different system that is not quite as bad. I believe that the proposal this evening is even worse.
Surprisingly, the Association of London Government thinks that the Bill is worthy of support. That came as an enormous shock. The association wrote to me--I suppose it wrote to quite a few hon. Members--and said, in defence of the Bill, that the Corporation of London has
Mr. McDonnell:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way as I think it is important to clarify this point. I am happy to suspend the sitting so that we may ask the Chair of the Association of London Government, Lord Harris. The correspondence from the ALG on this issue makes no reference to any leaders or boroughs meetings that have endorsed the policy. Does my hon. Friend know whether the boroughs have met to discuss the matter? When the ALG discussed business districts, the London boroughs of Westminster, Wandsworth and every other Conservative authority threw out the idea. They prevented the Association of London Government from promoting business districts in the London Local Authorities Bill. I wonder about the authority of the letter from the ALG.
"contributed financial and administrative support to many London-wide initiatives, including the London Study, the Agenda 21 process and the London Drugs Policy Forum."
We could mount a similar defence of hereditary peers by saying that a few of them are quite nice old boys who donate a lot of money to homes for retired donkeys and other causes.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |