Examination of Witness (Questions 280-299)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP
4 JULY 2006
Q280 Chairman: That is an addition,
is it?
Mr Straw: Neither should you necessarily
discourage it. Getting the balance is difficult; it is the exam
question that we have given to Sir Hayden Phillips. It is easier
to say what you do not want than what you do want. I would like
to see perhaps more party funding but not beyond a certain point.
Q281 Dr Whitehead: It is added value
for people's efforts rather than replacement?
Mr Straw: How one incentivise
parties to raise funds themselves and then match them is very
important. My personal instinct is that we may want to increase
policy development and there may be other appropriate grants to
be made. I believe that the Short money is pretty generous as
it is at the moment. One may want to change the support that is
given at a local level by way of free envelopes and so on, but
beyond that I think the most attractive case for additional support
for political parties is that of matched funding by one device
or another.
Q282 Keith Vaz: Do you believe that
tax relief on small donations, perhaps up to £200, to political
parties would make a significant difference to party finances?
Mr Straw: I cannot give you the
figures, but plainly with matched funding some form of tax relief
would make a difference. There are the Power proposals whereby
you put a tick in the box and the party of your choice then gets
some funding.
Q283 Keith Vaz: What do you think
about the proposals to tick a box?
Mr Straw: I think that a proposal
where the general taxpayer is matching or providing an incentive
to people to take part in the political process is better than
straight grant. I just said to Dr Whitehead that there are some
countries that I know of, but will not name, where there are very
high levels of state funding of parties. I do not believe that
it is good for their democracies. You may resolve one set of problems
but you gain all sorts of others and effectively you get state
bureaucracies running political parties and all sorts of other
problems, including detachment. For the moment, I do not have
to decide the merits of tax relief versus the Power proposals,
and I shall not do so. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
The Power proposals are quite attractive and simple. They would
provide a further incentive to parties to get the vote out. People
say that it would be difficult to administer. For the life of
me I cannot see how because all you do is have another box and
you count it at the same time. On the other hand, parties of the
extreme right and left would make use of this, just as would the
parties represented round this table. Tax relief has obvious advantages.
One needs to think about making some arrangements where donations
come from those who are not within the tax system.
Q284 Keith Vaz: In view of your earlier
answer about not being in favour of a cap on donations, obviously
you disagree with the Power Commission's suggestion of a cap of
£10,000 on individual donations.
Mr Straw: I chose my words carefully.
I said that I was sceptical about a cap on donations because I
was not sure that the disadvantages were outweighed by the advantages.
I do not rule it out altogether. It would be insulting to Sir
Hayden Phillips in advance of his case and argument to do so.
Nor do I suggest that what Neill said eight years ago is the last
word on this. Mr Tyrie is nodding in agreement.
Q285 Mr Tyrie: Things have changed
a little.
Mr Straw: But what has not changed,
as far as I can judge, is the position as far as the trade unions
are concerned. There is literally zero evidence on it.
Keith Vaz: Mr Tyrie wants a cap.
Q286 Chairman: This is not the end
of the story. I am conscious that we may have a couple of divisions
fairly shortly, so I want to give you an opportunity to tell us
what in the view of the Government are the constitutional functions
of the second chamber?
Mr Straw: I was thinking about
that. I was very struck by the view of the fifth report of the
Public Administration Committee. I am sorry to quote the competition.
In that report it said that as far as the Committee was concerned
it was about strengthening Parliament as a whole in relation to
the executive that is uniquely powerful in the British system.
I believe that it is about strengthening Parliament as a whole.
I do not happen to believe that strengthening the role of Parliament
involves a zero sum versus government. I am quite clear that good
governance is enhanced by a strong Parliament, not to the point
where Parliament is taking over the role of the executive, but
there is plenty of work for a second chamber to do. I am also
clear that its function is principally one of revising, reviewing
and questioning. It is not there to deliver or sustain government.
Q287 Chairman: How can it have a
function as a revising chamber if it does not have the capacity
to challenge and all its revisions, except those that the Government
likes, can be ignored?
Mr Straw: I am a minister who
can give testament to the power of the chamber now. It was one
of my Bills, the European Parliamentary Elections Bill, in respect
of which the Parliament Act had to be used for the first time
for decades. Another of my Bills, the Criminal Justice (Mode of
Trial) Bill, hit the ground altogether; it was kaput. There are
plenty of examples I can give—with which Members will be
very familiar since during many of the debates they were on the
other side—where revisions to some of my excellent Home
Office Bills were made by their Lordships. The Bills came back.
What happens? The power of the Lords at the moment should not
be ignored. If you are a busy minister and have three or four
Bills on the go—it was ever thus with Home Secretaries—at
this time of year you are irritating the business managers like
crazy. They are not terribly interested in the merits of clause
102, but they are interested in whether the Government will be
embarrassment if people at both ends get really stroppy. One is
then under very considerable pressure to concede where one can.
That is exactly what has happened. I may say that most of the
time I accepted Lords' amendments. I believed on mature reflection
that they improved the Bill. That is another reason for enhanced
scrutiny.
Q288 James Brokenshire: I should
like to move on to the Joint Committee which has been established
to examine the conventions relating to the work of the House of
Lords. Obviously, this was established in advance of the decisions
to which we shall move in terms of the composition of the House.
Would it have been better to do the two together, and why was
it believed that it was appropriate to do this part in advance?
Mr Straw: As you indicated, the
detailed decisions were made before I became Leader, but I happen
to agree with them. There is a need for greater clarity on the
conventions. The Committee is, as you know, looking at whether
it is practicable to codify the conventions, which also requires
that they be better identified. As to composition, I believe that
it is now the responsibility of government to bring forward some
proposals. We had the Wakeham Royal Commission, the first Cunningham
Committee and two White Papers. To put the issue of composition
into commission again would not have been appropriate. What would
have emerged from it would be a wide range of views. My job is
to see whether it is possible to find a consensus.
Q289 James Brokenshire: Can one take
it that, given the Joint Committee is not using its remit to modify
or codify the working practices of the House of Lords, as I understand
it, there will not be a further debate about the function of the
Lords and it is purely the composition that then follows? You
will appreciate that there is an inextricable linkage as to whether
we end up with a de facto unicameral system because the
second chamber does not have sufficient powers to hold the Commons
to account?
Mr Straw: The purpose of the working
party is to codify, not modify, notwithstanding the fact that
during the course of a very good but unexpected debate on 10 May
David Howarth, the Member for Cambridge, who turned out to be
an eminent jurist, gave us a short lecture on the French approach
to codifying. He said that French jurists used the adage that
to codify was to modify. We are English lawyers and we take a
slightly different view.
Chairman: And he is in another committee.
Q290 James Brokenshire: To ensure
we are clear, we are following English rather than French law
practice?
Mr Straw: Yes. I have also said—I
cannot recall whether I said it to the Joint Committee but I certainly
said it in other places—that it is no part of the Government's
intention to reduce the power of the House of Lords. Indeed, we
are only interested in the power of the House of Lords insofar
as it affects relatively the power of the House of Commons. Over
the past 40 years in my judgment the House of Lords has become
more active in scrutinising the work of government, and long may
it continue. As long as that does not conflict with the key issues
of primacy I do not have a problem; I think it is a good thing.
Q291 James Brokenshire: Do I take
it that, therefore, you are not committed to a suggestion which
has been made about the timetabling of Bills in the House of Lords,
because that obviously seems to be a modification rather than
codification and cuts across that?
Mr Straw: That was a manifesto
commitment and was free standing from the establishment of the
Joint Committee. What I said to the Joint Committee was words
to the effect that we were not coming forward with proposals to
legislate in respect of the 60-day provision pending any recommendations
or conclusions of the Joint Committee, and that remains the situation.
I understand the objections to the 60-day limit and hope that
colleagues here will acknowledge, whether or not they agree with
that limit, that we were trying to deal with a genuine mischief,
namely what we saw as an abuse of delay to the point where it
equalled veto. I do not think that that is part of the function
of the Lords.
Q292 James Brokenshire: Do you accept
there is some criticism as to the drafting of legislation and
that the House of Lords continues to fulfil a very effective role
in improving language and drafting, which takes time? That may
suffer if one has timetabling. In the context of the existing
conventions, they are framed now as practices rather than on a
timetabling basis. Therefore, there can be an inconsistency.
Mr Straw: We said in the manifesto
in effect that we would legislate to provide that most Bills—I
believe that that was the qualification—would be subject
to a 60-day limit. That admitted there would have to be some exceptions.
Q293 James Brokenshire: How would
that be determined?
Mr Straw: That is an interesting
question. The answer is that we are happy to look at alternatives
to legislation. Of course legislation can be improved. Everybody
involved in the legislative process, from officials to parliamentary
counsel to ministers, accepts that the way legislation is drafted
means that when it is presented to Parliament it is almost never
in perfect form. The whole purpose of scrutiny by Parliament is,
first, to see whether there is agreement in principle to the legislation
and, second, to ensure that what is intended in the legislation
is carried through in the language. There are plenty of occasions
when I have been concerned with Bills in the Home Office, including
a number of measures dealing with constitutional matters, and
people have challenged me on what a particular clause means. I
would look at the clause and my brief and say to myself that that
is a very good question and go away and look at it. That is Parliament
at work.
Q294 James Brokenshire: In terms
of the wider issue, what is the Government's current policy on
the composition of the House of Lords? Does the Government believe
that all or part of the Lords should be elected?
Mr Straw: We do not have a current
policy. We have said—we shall stick to it—that there
will be a free vote which will apply to all members of the Government.
Q295 Chairman: Have you worked out
a system for that?
Mr Straw: No, but I am very anxious
that there should be proper consultation on it—it may have
to be informal consultation—because it would leave a very
sour taste if we ended up with the kind of situation that we had
before. The arithmetic is quite complicated, but it is very important
that we spend a bit of time thinking about it.
Q296 Chairman: So, d'Hondt comes
into it?
Mr Straw: For aficionados of the
European Parliamentary Elections Bill, we could have endless conversations
about d'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë and all sorts, but I do not think
it does. We have to work out what is the best interactional hierarchy
for making those decisions in principle so we do not end up in
a position where, as last time, most people wanted reform but
every proposal for it was voted down. Therefore, we do not have
a policy. I have been tasked with the job of seeing whether there
is a consensus and, if so, where it is. I note from the report
of the Public Administration Committee that it was rather derisory
about the idea of consensus and instead spoke about the requirement
to find where the centre of gravity was. For the life of me, I
do not quite see the difference. What I intend to do is to bring
forward proposals, obviously with the agreement of cabinet colleagues,
which set out what I believe to be the best way forward both in
terms of composition and phasing. It is then for the House to
decide whether or not that is the best way forward or that an
alternative is put forward.
Q297 James Brokenshire: You do not
favour one option over another?
Mr Straw: Personally, I will come
down in favour of one option over another. I believe that part
of my job is to work out where that best arises, and so I will
do so.
Q298 James Brokenshire: Are you able
to reveal that now at the exploratory stage, because clearly it
may influence the way the debate goes?
Mr Straw: It may well be that
the Government as well will give an indication of where it believes
the centre of gravity and consensus is, but that will not prevent
members of the Government from exercising a free vote. But I believe
that the discipline of all of us trying to work through what proposal
is most likely to command the greatest support is a good one.
There is nothing original in what I am about to say. I think that
the most likely consensus is to be found in a mixed chamber, part
appointed and part elected, and the most feasible way to introduce
it is over quite a period, so there is phasing.
Q299 Keith Vaz: How did you do it
last time?
Mr Straw: I voted for an all-appointed
chamber.
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