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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again. However, he must differentiate between a Second Reading speech and dealing with the amendments. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Gentleman must direct his remarks specifically to the amendment before the House.
Mr. Pound: I accept your criticism, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which is entirely justified.
I am especially concerned with amendments Nos. 79, 80 and 26, which seek to address the democratic deficit of the franchise proposed by the Bill for the City of London. It is perfectly possible to argue, as the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster has done, that religious bodies and voluntary sector and community organisations
are already represented. Even if amendments Nos. 79, 80 and 26 are accepted--I do not doubt that they will be, as I have faith in the good nature, will and intelligence of the House--that will not resolve the issue, and will provide the City of London with no more than a fig leaf of democracy.I am told that my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington spoke for more than 100 minutes. Many hon. Members wish to speak, so I am reluctant to speak at that length. However, in considering the Bill we should ask ourselves--as has been said in an intervention--what legacy we wish to leave the people reading the history of the 21st century. In discussing amendments to a Bill in the House of Commons in the first year of the first decade of the third millennium, are we seriously considering a mediaeval formulation of property franchise, which is not based on any justifiable or defensible system anywhere in the world? Indeed, it is a modern artifice grafted on to a mediaeval structure.
When those who follow us read what we have said tonight, will they be able to understand why we were seriously suggesting that any democratic organisation--even a soi-disant democratic organisation--in this country could, seriously and intellectually, try to base its franchise on property value and the ability and skills of employers, whether at first or second remove, and nominate its staff to vote on its behalf? I cannot believe that future generations will regard that with anything but amazement and bemusement.
If there were a clause in the Bill abolishing the City of London it would gain support but, unfortunately, there is no such clause. We must therefore content ourselves with the 20 amendments tabled by my hon.--soon to be right hon.--Friend. His amendments address consistently the issue of appointment, which goes to the heart of the concerns that many of us have about the continued existence of the Baltic trading post that has grown and swelled into the vast City of London today. The 21st century is surely not the century of appointments. If it is anything, it must be the century of election, of democracy, of accountability, of the--
Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton): House of Lords?
Mr. Pound: I naturally exclude Labour's plans for the House of Lords, in response to that quiet aside from the hon. Member for somewhere south of the river.
We must avoid an appointments system that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington graphically demonstrated, is so open if not to misuse at least to misunderstanding. There is no accountability or transparency in it. How can one possibly attempt to structure a democratic model based on such appointments when any number of mechanisms may flow into the nomination or appointment?
9.30 pm
An election along the lines proposed in the amendments, the numbers of which have temporarily escaped me--I suspect that they will be whispered in my ear in a moment--
Mr. Pound: The numbers 3 and 40 come as if from the ether. The amendments would go a long way towards meeting the problem, filling the vacuum, providing that element of accountability. They may not provide the democracy that those who work and live in the City of London are entitled to demand, not as a privilege but as an absolute bounden right, but at least they would go some way towards meeting the need for accountability. It is for that reason--surely, no other reason is necessary--that hon. Members should support the amendments.
Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) strayed on to the issue of the Baltic exchange, some of us questioned whether he was really holding to the amendments. The House is entitled to know. Will you give us your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I shall obviously bring the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) into line whenever I think it is appropriate.
Mr. Pound: I was going to thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) for that intervention, but I shall in future have to refer to him as my hon. and learned former Friend. However, he makes a good point, which has occurred to many hon. Members. I can see eyes glazing over and the laser-like glare of the Whips drifting in my direction.
I implore the House to take the amendments very seriously. There may seem something farcical about the Bill--almost a Gilbert and Sullivan, comic-opera aspect to it. I mean no disrespect to the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, the Bill's sponsor, or to the representatives of the City of London, although there is something strange about people who wear fur hats and carry on at the Mansion house in the way that they do--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has almost run out of things to say about the amendments.
Mr. Pound: In conclusion, although there are comic aspects to the Bill--that is undeniable--I ask right hon. and hon. Members seriously to consider the amendments and simply to address themselves to the one fundamental question at their heart: will they make the Bill better, or is the Bill fundamentally flawed in the first place? We need to consider that. My contention is that my hon. Friend's amendments would make a bad Bill better. They would make it not defendable, but less indefensible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Keith Hill): Perhaps it would be helpful if I clarified the Government's position on the amendments.
As we have made clear, the Government welcome the fact that the City is beginning to face up to the need to put its governance on a more modern footing. We believe that its proposals are a step in the right direction. I remind the House that many of the City's proposed reforms do not require parliamentary legislation. There is the
abolition of the aldermanic veto, the introduction of a shorter term of office for aldermen, improved qualifications for aldermanic candidates, a reduction in the size of the court of common council, normalisation of the term of office for common council men and the better allocation of members between wards. The City also gave an undertaking in Committee to adjust the boundaries of the four residential wards to preserve their residential character, and to review the number of members returned by the residential wards to ensure that they retain the same proportion of the overall membership of the common council as at present.The proposals for a corporate franchise as expressed in the Bill are based on electoral systems introduced recently in Melbourne and Sydney, so they are precedented elsewhere. The Bill's provisions serve to double the number of voters involved in elections in the corporation from about 19,800 to about 40,000.
In general terms, the Bill provides for a report to be brought to the House after four years for further consideration of the progress that has been made under the current provisions and, I dare say, for consideration of other changes.
The amendments would make major changes to the Bill's core provisions. They would alter the basis on which voting entitlement would arise and restrict the ability of companies to appoint voters in a manner that is appropriate to their own way of working. The City corporation considered a franchise based on the work force in its initial consultation but concluded that that was not a reasonable basis on which to proceed because of the impracticalities of such a system.
Mr. John Cryer: My hon. Friend might know that in Havering, the borough that covers my constituency, there are thousands of City workers. A few of these workers are higher paid but many of them are low and medium earners. Is there not a justifiable case for arguing that they should be entitled to some say in how the corporation is run, rather than, for example, bankers sitting in a boardroom in Tokyo or Frankfurt?
Mr. Hill: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that thought. However, it is not for me to get sucked into the detail of the proposals that are before us. Many different and fascinating proposals have been discussed this evening during an important and interesting debate, one of the main lessons of which has been my discovery of the pronunciation of "hereditament". My hon. Friend makes an interesting observation but not one on which I wish to be drawn.
For all the reasons that I have enunciated, the Government cannot support the amendments. We had a substantial debate on many of the matters raised by them when we began consideration of the Bill on Report in July 1999. Those earlier amendments were rejected and I hope that the House will not support them this time around.
Question put, That the amendment be made:--
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