| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House must come to order. An hon. Member is addressing the House and there are too many private conversations going on. There are even private conversations going on at the moment below the Gangway. That is wrong and unfair.
Mrs. Lait: There is enormous confusion in the aims and objectives of those who oppose the Bill, but those of us who support it are unanimous that the corporation needs to be reformed in the way proposed.
9.50 pm
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North): I shall be very brief, because I know that the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) wants to reply to the debate. I am also conscious of the fact that most of my arguments have been made eloquently and powerfully by others.
As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the City was given a clear message about the need for reform. It has responded with one or two concessions outwith the Bill on the election of aldermen and the end of the veto. However, the Bill merely modernises the business vote qualification. That is a tragic missed opportunity. Those who have spoken in favour of the Bill have missed the point. The issue is the distribution of the franchise and the representation that each vote buys.
In his very eloquent introduction, the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster admitted that the share of the franchise held by residents would fall from 25 to 10 per cent. He advised us that they would maintain their representation because of the ward system. That is not good enough, although I accept that the argument is technically correct. We had some discussion about that earlier.
The argument is not good enough, partly because it is not enshrined in the Bill, so we have no guarantee. The Bill also does nothing to ensure progress towards greater democracy for residents. Progress could have been demonstrated by a significant shift towards improving the residential franchise, but that has not happened. Worse still, the business-nominated voters need have no connection with the City through either residence or work place. The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said confidently that common sense would dictate that there would be such a connection, but it is no disrespect to common councillors to say that democracy should not rest on such vagueness.
The City corporation is a local authority with responsibility for schools, personal social services, police and traffic control for a residential population as well as the vastly inflated daytime population--a characteristic that the City of London shares with Westminster and with Kensington and Chelsea.
That the City is an unusual local authority by virtue of its scale is not in dispute. That it should have the right to a unique system of government is entirely disputable.
9.53 pm
Mr. Brooke:
This has been a remarkable debate, although I shall not say that it has been wholly enjoyable. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) and the Minister for putting the positions of the Opposition and the Government.
The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen) was concerned about Epping forest and the open spaces. It is only 10 years since the City of London took on further responsibility for Hampstead heath. It has won golden opinions for the manner in which it has carried out that responsibility.
I should like to link the speech of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) with that of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Etherington). The hon. Member for Tatton was expressing the spirit of J. S. Mill in his remarks about universal suffrage. J. S. Mill was the Member of Parliament for my constituency in the days when my ancestors were Liberal Members of Parliament.
I should point out to the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) the irony that the City police force is governed by a local police authority, but the police force in the greater city of London is not.
The rules of common council would prevent the issue that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) raised with me in an intervention.
I have great good will towards the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer), so there is no edge to my remarks to him. An encapsulation of his speech would have been the moment when Blucher was taken up on to the dome of St. Paul's and, looking down on the City of London, said, "Vot a splendid city to sack!"
My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), formerly one of my constituents, and the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), my parliamentary neighbour, came in on an essentially local basis at the end of the debate, and I am grateful to both.
The heart of the issue lies with the speech of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, echoing the earlier speech by the hon. Member for Tatton. He paid me a compliment, and I pay him one in return. It was a remarkable and eloquent statement on the principle of universal suffrage--I see the right hon. Member for Chesterfield nodding--and I could not dissent from the philosophy expressed, but, as the Minister said, we are dealing with a unique institution.
The City of London is a curious animal. In about 1800, there were 200,000 people living in the City; there were still 60,000 or 70,000 in 1870; and still 14,000 at the end of the war; but it has shrunk. It consists of some pockets of flats, and there are publicans, caretakers and people in nurses' homes, as well as those in the Temple, but it is essentially a deserted area at night. Between 250,000 and 300,000 people come to work there in the day. It is a part of our nation which has essentially--by history, as it has been occupied for commercial purposes for 2,000 years--become a business district, just as the citizens of Melbourne have made the heart of Melbourne a business district, with a similar franchise.
The City is different, and the hon. Member for Sunderland, North need not worry that we are on a slippery slope and every body in the country will follow. Other bodies have not followed since Lord Herbert made the remark that the City was a unique body in the royal
commission of 1957-60. Nobody has suggested that the business vote should be brought back since it was abolished in 1969 in any other local authority because it has continued in the City of London.
The Liberals under Gladstone proposed that there should be home rule for Ireland and the great Dicey argued that it was appropriate to have different methods of government in different parts of the country. The present Government have followed that thesis in their various devolution arrangements.
On the European Parliamentary Elections Bill, the Home Secretary said:
Mrs. Lait
rose in her place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
Question put accordingly, That the Bill be now read a Second time:--
The House divided: Ayes 198, Noes 91.
"electoral systems should be appropriate to the nature and functions of the body that is being elected."--[Official Report, 26 February 1998; Vol. 307, c. 546.]
The proposals in the Bill are there because it is felt to be desirable that a business district with a remarkable past should have a remarkable future. I hope that the House will respond to the views of the three main parties expressed tonight in favour of the Bill.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |