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Palestinian Authority

9. James Purnell (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab): What steps the Government are taking to support a more effective security force for the Palestinian Authority. [171837]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): The UK is supporting the Palestinian Authority in its efforts to improve its effectiveness in delivering security in the occupied territories, both for their own people and to prevent attacks against Israel. We are offering advice, encouragement and some limited practical support.

James Purnell : Both sides of the House want a two-stage solution to be achieved, based on a viable Palestinian state. Does my hon. Friend agree that a key part of the Palestinian Authority becoming a state is for it to show its control over security? Does he think that the key obstacle to its doing that is a willingness to use its capability, or the capability itself? What steps can we take to help the authority to achieve that goal?

Mr. Rammell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that, for the authority to become a state, the responsibilities of being a state need to be taken on. That is why we are helping and assisting as we are. The Palestinian plans appear to be a good approach to addressing some of the key security challenges. The international community, through the Quartet and other mechanisms, has urged the Palestinians to demonstrate 100 per cent. effort on security. Some effort has been made, but we believe that more can be done.

 
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Points of Order

12.31 pm

Mr. Michael Ancram (Devizes) (Con): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your assistance? Over the past 24 hours, there has been a glaring inconsistency in statements made from the Dispatch Box by two senior Cabinet Ministers on a matter of great importance. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Defence, referring to the report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, said:

"May I make it clear that there was no concealment? The report to Ambassador Bremer was passed to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, then to the military representative in Iraq and from there to the Permanent Joint Headquarters."—[Official Report, 9 June 2004; Vol. 421, c. 33.]

Earlier, in answer to a question, the Foreign Secretary told us that the report was not passed to Sir Jeremy Greenstock. That inconsistency is highly damaging in the current situation. I ask for your advice, Mr. Speaker, as to what action might be taken for it to be clarified as soon as possible.

Mr. Speaker: Before the Foreign Secretary rises on a point of order, I must point out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it is not for the Chair to deal with any apparent inconsistencies between Ministers' statements. Of course, he can always table other parliamentary questions.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am grateful to you, in any event: this is not a glaring inconsistency. I made it clear that the report was received by staff in Sir Jeremy Greenstock's office, and I fully endorse what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence said—that there was no concealment, and that the report was passed on to the military representative in Iraq, and from there to the permanent joint headquarters. However, I will ensure that a clarification is made to the House, later on today or tomorrow morning.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Foreign Secretary
 
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said that the report had been sent to the Foreign Office but had not been relayed to him, whereas yesterday the Secretary of State for Defence said that it was sent to the permanent joint headquarters, where it has apparently lain for some three months. We need more than just a clarification: we need a statement about the progress of the document. From which hand to which hand has it passed, in Iraq and in this country? What has happened to civil servants, in either the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign Office, who apparently did not consider that the report was important enough to go to Ministers? We really need a full explanation of that.

Mr. Speaker: These are not matters for the Chair.

Mr. Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness) (Con): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I want to raise a totally separate matter. Yesterday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills announced key policy changes to the delivery and working of the modern apprenticeships scheme, an essential and important education policy area. The announcement was made not in this House, but in a department store in Oxford street.

I am aware, Mr. Speaker, of your enthusiasm and keenness to have policy announcements made in this Chamber first. Have you received any approaches from Ministers to make a statement to the House about this change to what is a key area of policy? If not, is there anything that you can do to put pressure on Ministers to make such a statement, so that hon. Members can exercise their democratic right to ask appropriate questions on this key policy change?

Mr. Speaker: I have to be careful on this point. The hon. Gentleman says that it was a policy change, but I will have to look and see whether there was a policy change. All Governments are keen to try to train apprentices, and Ministers have to be able to make public announcements if there has been no policy change and the announcement is consistent with present Government policy. I will look into the matter.
 
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Prime Minister (Direct Election)

12.35 pm

Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the direct election of the Prime Minister; to require such elections to be held on the same day as a General Election; to make consequential provision in relation to the office and powers of the Prime Minister; to make consequential amendments to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000; and for connected purposes.

This Bill—the last great extension of the franchise—would symbolise our democratic maturity, convert our Parliament from an electoral college into a legislature and legalise an Executive currently built on smoke and mirrors. Stop me if you have heard this before, Mr. Speaker, but the prime ministership over many decades has evolved into an accidental presidency. The result is a dysfunctional democracy, in which power is over-concentrated, over-centralized and under-controlled. Our democracy is out of balance and dangerously short on popular consent and participation.

More than two years ago, I introduced a Bill to codify and legalise the massive, unwritten powers of the prime ministership. The Bill I introduce today goes one step further: it seeks to make the Prime Minister directly elected by the British people. I base the Bill on the simple principle that in a democracy anyone who exercises serious political power should be elected by the people.

The Bill represents a reality check for the British constitution—the emperor has no election. That realisation ends the laughable self-deception and the comforting myths of parliamentary sovereignty—that, somehow, the Prime Minister exercises power only by consent of Parliament, and that the Executive is under the control of the legislature. While my proposal seems revolutionary in this place, it is commonplace in most other democracies. Indeed, were, for example, the US or French chief executives to seek power without direct elections, it would be not only risible but illegal. Only in Britain—the last country in the empire—are the natives still not trusted to make this, the most important of political choices.

Even from Labour Members, I have been surprised to hear that the electorate cannot be trusted with a direct election. It is argued that they might elect some television celebrity—arguments that once found a voice in this Chamber from those who argued against votes for women and the working classes. They were not to be trusted to make the key decisions in their political lives.

Such a settlement is not directed at the current incumbent. Were we allowed to elect a Prime Minister, I would work to ensure, as I have done before, that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would be our candidate. He is by a mile the best unelected President we have, and would be by a mile the best directly elected Prime Minister we could have. The Bill is not about personality—it is about power. It recognises that the power of the key office in the British state has grown inexorably, without the design or intention of its occupant, in response to the demands and pressures on the British Government. That power does not need to be weakened, but it needs to be held properly to account. Self-evidently, that cannot be done through a
 
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Parliament that is controlled by the Executive, as was demonstrated last year when we were unable even to recall ourselves to debate the Iraq war. That power was held by the very office that we sought to discuss and to influence. It must, therefore, be made accountable to the British people by direct election, and that is what the Bill will do.

The Bill recognises that the British prime ministership has turned into a colossus; it is the only game in town. There is no office like it in the western world. No other democracy has one person at the head of Government, and in control of the party and the legislature. All political jobs, patronage, policy and image come from the same source—all are without effective democratic scrutiny or ratification. No other Head of Government in a western democracy has so much control and so many rewards and honours to give out.

Almost everything in British politics and the state now happens by the will of the prime ministership. A small and diminishing band believes fondly that we control that power when we elect a Parliament, yet in reality, barring the occasional electoral fluke, Parliament is rarely able to scrutinise the use of prime ministerial power, let alone temper or modify it. Such is the power of the institution that those parliamentarians who tried to influence policy on Iraq were told that we could do so only by threatening to end the prime ministership itself. As in 1640, Parliament was told, "Raise your standard and kill the king if you dare". The same was true of the rebellions over the poll tax and, more recently, over foundation hospitals and tuition fees.

Power is now so concentrated in No. 10 that Parliament cannot challenge policy without challenging the prime ministership itself. That is playground politics. We all know that there has to be a better way—a way that ends monopoly politics and does not fear, but revels in, other political institutions as partners and equals, adding value to the legitimate concerns and responsibilities of the prime ministership.

We are heading towards record low turnout for the European and local elections, and no doubt afterwards we shall come to this place and sagely talk about "disengagement from politics", "voter apathy" and, perhaps, about a new set of tricks: voting at 16, voting by text message, all-postal ballots, voting at weekends or voting in supermarkets. The cure for voter apathy is not to make voting easier, but to make it more worth while—above all by voting for the most important office in British politics.

The Bill would automatically double the worth and value of voting—it is a two-for-one offer. Instead of voting for an MP simply as a proxy for a Prime Minister—a member of a prime ministerial electoral college whose useful political life is extinguished within 24 hours, once their nominee goes to the palace—voters would choose an MP to represent them or their community and, separately, elect the best person to be our country's Prime Minister. With an independent mandate from their electors, MPs will regain the authority and confidence to do the job they cannot do now, which is, as Gladstone said,

"not to run the country but to hold to account those who do".

Parliament would cease to be the world's most sophisticated political prison and would become an independent legislature, with its own life separate from
 
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Government. There would be two valid independent viewpoints in politics: a separation of Executive and legislature, maturely cohabiting, debating and reconciling, even if the prime ministership and Parliament happened to be held by different parties. People will participate and people will vote if politics is repatriated to them and to their directly elected representatives and no longer confined to the incestuous relationship between No. 10 and its media courtiers.

We cannot go on asking people to vote for a myth. That is what we do now, when we ask people to pretend that they are voting for a sovereign Parliament, in control of the Executive, the arbiter of our nation's fate. This Bill, or something like it, will appear in some party's manifesto some time, just as inevitably as allowing the people to vote for a constitution has done in recent weeks. It would do many things: it would make an honest man or woman out of every future Prime Minister; it would create a free, independent Parliament; and it would revive political interest and make voting meaningful again—but, above all, it would be the last great extension of the franchise, standing in the long, proud history of my party—a democratic coming of age, enabling the British people directly to elect, for the first time, their own political leader.

12.45 pm

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