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Mr. Fabricant: Would my right hon. Friend speculate on what grounds he thinks that some of those classes of individuals should be disqualified--some, perhaps, because they have a conflict of interest?
Mr. Forth: That is an obvious one. The judiciary has a special lack of relationship with the legislature, if I can put it that way. The military and the police are in another position. It is a matter of great pride to us that our civil service is non-political, and therefore--above certain relatively low levels--civil servants are not able to stand for the House of Commons. They are disqualified. These reasons are well understood and well founded, so we can lay to rest the Minister's spurious argument, which he has used two or three times now.
That point must be so self-evident that it is hardly worth making. Yet, it appears that we have to make it because the Minister said that there need be no necessary conflict between being a Minister in one jurisdiction and being a Back Bencher--I think that that was the word he used--in another. That is patently absurd. It is absurd at the level of practicality and at the level of the everyday discharge of a Minister's responsibilities.
Dr. Julian Lewis:
I wish to support my right hon. Friend's argument. Is he aware of the report that was produced at the beginning of the year that showed the voting record of the past two Secretaries of State for Wales, both of whom hold offices in the Welsh Assembly and remain Members of this House? In 73 Divisions in the House, one of them voted only once and the other did not vote at all. Does that not illustrate my right hon. Friend's point?
Mr. Forth:
What a typically perceptive and helpful remark from my hon. Friend. I could also cite the example of the Prime Minister. How often in the discharge of his high responsibilities does he find time to come to this legislature, of which he is a Member, to vote? The reason that we are given--if we are ever given one--for the Prime Minister's signal failure to attend the House, which he holds in such contempt, is the weight of his ministerial responsibilities. He is busy spinning, making ridiculous visits for photo-opportunities or doing other things, but he does not come here. My hon. Friend makes the effective point that it is difficult to square fully the responsibilities of ministerial office with the full discharge of legislative responsibilities.
I do not want to be particularly offensive or personal, but the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is not here now. He is probably in his office, signing his letters, going through his red boxes and discharging his ministerial responsibilities. He is not participating in a debate in the House on a matter that relates to his Department. It goes almost without saying that the nature of ministerial responsibilities preclude someone from carrying out a full role in a legislature in his own country, never mind another.
I have referred to the narrow departmental commitments of Ministers. However, they have many others that they rightly have to discharge. They attend meetings with interest groups and travel around the country so that they are aware of the circumstances with
which they have to deal. That is right and appropriate, but it is a serious obstacle to their even contemplating a proper role in a legislature elsewhere.
Then there is the issue of the loyalty to Government expressed through the collective responsibility doctrine with which we are familiar. Again, that is proper and it is expressed in the meetings of Cabinet, Cabinet sub-committees and similar bodies. One does not have to think for very long to realise that the proper exercise of collective responsibility, binding as it does Ministers closely together in the unified discharge of their responsibilities, must be at odds with the suggestion that they could, at one and the same time, be Members of a legislature in another country. The demands and loyalties of collective responsibility must almost constantly conflict with the proper demands of the other legislature. We begin to see emerge a clear pattern of problems and conflicts that provide insurmountable obstacles to someone being a Minister in one jurisdiction and a legislator in another.
I have not yet mentioned the EU dimension, which brings such problems into sharp focus. There, Ministers have to discharge a different responsibility, one that is unusual and provides greater challenges. When a Minister from a country that has the misfortune to be a member of the EU has to deal with the representatives of other EU member states, he finds himself operating in a new political dimension, in which new tensions arise and new loyalties are suggested. He is removed from his own legislature and his own country, never mind that of another. The status of the United Kingdom and the Republic Ireland as EU member states would give rise to conflicts of interest, even in the voting procedures in the Council of Ministers. Such conflicts would provide the ultimate expression of the lack of harmony that one might imagine exists.
At every conceivable level, we can see that the job of a political Minister in an Administration, in the governmental context, carries with it a range of demands, requirements and responsibilities that effectively preclude that Minister from discharging any sort of responsibility in another country's legislature.
The other heading I have jotted down is "Information". Ministers, by definition, are in possession of large amounts of confidential information. Many Ministers are in possession of highly confidential security information that is vital to their country's national interests. It is possible that, were someone in that position to gain a place in a legislature in another country, that person's position might be significantly compromised by his being both in possession of security information from one country and a member of a legislature in another.
I have given a few examples to illustrate the fact that there is a real principle at stake and practical considerations at work. That brings me back to my first argument--that a purist or an innocent like the Minister might argue that such matters can be left to the electorate. However, that is not true.
Mr. George Howarth:
Democracy.
Mr. Forth:
The Minister mutters, from a sedentary position, the word "democracy". Democracy is a process whereby voters are enabled to choose their
Mr. Hayes:
The point is not one of democracy, but one of democratic legitimacy. The legitimacy of the House is derived partly from those who can sit as Members and the means by which they come to do so, and partly from the restrictions on those who cannot, for good constitutional reasons, sit as Members of Parliament. My right hon. Friend gave the excellent example of civil servants and in this sense the democratic legitimacy of Parliament is partly dependent on ineligibility.
Mr. Forth:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. I doubt whether it will elicit a helpful response from the Minister. I believe that I have posed a perfectly proper question. Either the Minister will have to say that he intends to repeal the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, because it cuts across his apparent concept of democracy, or he will have to accept that his concept of democracy can encompass a disqualification process properly passed by Parliament in the past.
Dr. Julian Lewis:
Is not the Minister's reliance on the abstract concept of democracy rather fatuous when we consider that if we are talking about a proportional list system in at least one of the parliaments or assemblies, the position on the list may be such that the people have no effective say about whether they can punish an individual for a conflict of interest that he has not satisfactorily resolved? Does not the same apply even in a first-past-the-post system, if he happens to stand successfully for a very safe seat on behalf of his party? The people cannot resolve these conflicts of interest by a process of abstract democracy.
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friend is again correct. Regrettably, we have had a redefinition of the practicalities of democracy by the Government, principally through their introduction of the wicked and pernicious closed-list system for the European elections. The Minister will have to think more carefully before he parades this new and ill-formed definition of democracy before us, which seems to encompass closed lists and the electorate running amok and electing anyone it wants because the Minister will presumably have to repeal the 1975 Act. He cannot have it all ways round and it will have to be one or the other.
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