Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-211)
MR MICHAEL WILLS MP
29 APRIL 2008
Q200 Chairman: Charles's question goes to the heart of the Britishness stuff too. I do not understand whether this articulation of Britishness, this statement of values that is coming, is going to be an aspiration—that is, a statement of what we would like to be—or whether it is a statement of what we are. If it is a statement of what we are, it is going to have some pretty unpleasant stuff in it.
Mr Wills: That depends on your point of view of the British people. I would describe it as a mixture of both description and aspiration. In the end, we have quite deliberately given the control of this process over to the British people in a way that we do not propose to replicate very widely in terms of policy making, but this is a special issue. We think it is important that they have it and it will be for them to decide. In my own view it should be about the best of what we are. Like all nations we have patches which we would rather ignore and that will be part of the discussion. In the end, Parliament will make its own judgment, for all the reasons that Charles has just mentioned, about whether it agrees with that deliberative process. In the end, all of us as democrats must have some faith in the representative body, 500 or 1,000 demographically representatives of the British people. I do.
Q201 Mr Walker: It is called Parliament. We have 656 of us. I do not understand why we need another 1,000 people who are unelected and may not be representative. This is where it falls down. We have the House of Commons. "Commons" means common people, ordinary people, 656 of us. Maybe it is too many. Maybe it is not enough but that is what we do and I do not understand why these 1,000 people transported into this auditorium will be gifted with any more insight than we have.
Mr Wills: They will not necessarily but it is a question of increasing the range of mechanisms. We are not proposing this to replace Parliament. We are saying there are certain very specific issues to consider like a British statement of values. I note your scepticism—I say "scepticism" rather than "cynicism"—about the whole process but just assuming that you could be possibly persuaded that this was a worthwhile exercise at least as a discussion, imagine what would happen if Parliament took this on to itself. Immediately out there people would say, "Who are you?" Large numbers of the British people do not feel we represent anybody except ourselves and however invalid we may think those opinions are that is what they feel. If we look at the equivalent statements in other democracies, in the United States, in continental Europe and elsewhere in the world, these are profoundly important in their national lives. It will only take root and endure if you believe that that is worth doing if the British people themselves have ownership of the process. That is what we are trying to achieve. Parliament will be fundamentally involved. We are not excluding Parliament from this. You will be able to have your say in great detail and Parliament will have the final decision. It is an addition, not a replacement.
Q202 Chairman: When Peter Hennessy was here last week, he reminded us of what I think he called the George Formby view of these things which was, "It's turned out nice again" and we should not go off looking for systemic solutions. We should muddle along—I am paraphrasing him now—as we have always done at a high level. If you had to say historically what had been distinctive about the British, it would be things like, unlike foreigners, they do not have to fly flags and swear oaths of allegiance. When we start telling people they should fly flags and swear oaths of allegiance, we start looking silly, do we not, and very un-British?
Mr Wills: With great respect, you are conflating giving people the opportunity to do something with forcing them to do it. They are very different things. Giving public buildings the opportunity to fly a flag on St George's Day is one thing. Forcing people to have them in their front gardens is something completely different. We are not forcing anyone to do anything. That is the whole point, but we should be able to give people these opportunities. National identity is very important to the great bulk of the people of this country. Having said that, the question is what then? Do we just let it be important to them and, as a government, do nothing much? Do we not discuss this issue because we feel it is so well established we do not need to have a national debate about it? It is something we feel intrinsically and people can express it for themselves as they wish? I understand that argument very, very clearly. For most of the period since the Second World War, we have not discussed it. Before then it was a matter of vigorous, national concern. If you look back into the late 19th century, this was the stuff of a lot of discussion about what it meant to be British. We may disagree with the conclusions that the British people came to at that point, but it was a matter of vigorous, national debate. If we as Parliament, as democratic politicians, do not enable a process for discussion and deliberation on this, there are poisonous influences in our society that seek to colonise this territory for themselves. If you leave a vacuum at a time of profound social and economic change globally from which none of us is immune, we may be very disappointed to see what comes in and fills it.
Chairman: I understand the point but I happen to think that muddling along is our greatest salvation. Gordon?
Q203 Mr Prentice: I do not know if I am persuaded by all this.
Mr Wills: You might be persuaded.
Q204 Mr Prentice: Can I go back to citizens assemblies and you mentioned Canada? In Canada there was a citizens assembly set up in British Colombia and they were to go away and come forward with a recommendation on whether or not to change the voting system from first past the post to PR[3]. In Ontario last year, or the year before, a citizens assembly was set up to look at the voting system in Ontario. On both occasions the citizens assemblies stuck with first past the post. If you want to give citizens real powers, why do you not have a citizens assembly to look at first past the post in the Westminster Parliament? The ultimate decision would rest here in Westminster. Or why do you not have citizens in Scotland deliberating on whether the Scottish Parliament should have tax-raising powers? The Prime Minister has set up a Constitutional Commission to look at these things. Why not hand it over to a citizens assembly? It comes back to the point I made at the very beginning about whether this is a pretend exercise or whether it is actually delivering real powers to people which they can exercise. Are you with me?
Mr Wills: It certainly is not intended to be a pretend exercise, there is no doubt about that. As the Chairman has pointed out in the very excellent Hansard study, this is not a vote-winner, this is not what people are talking about on the doorsteps, there is no point in doing that sort of exercise at all. This is about re-wiring power in our society but it has to mean something, and everything we are doing we want to mean something. Some of this we have to proceed quite carefully and cautiously with because potentially this is radical constitutional change and it must endure, it must be sustainable across parties and over time, and you have to proceed cautiously with that. In relation to the voting systems we have published a very thick tome—
Q205 Mr Prentice: It was not very well received, was it?
Mr Wills: It was not very well received by those in favour of PR because it did not come out with an unequivocal recommendation of PR. I think actually if you read it, you will see it is very fair-minded in analysing various systems of electing parliamentarians and the various merits and disadvantages of each of those systems. We published it precisely in that way to inform the debate about the future. We cannot ignore discussion about the voting system in discussing all these wider areas. Whether it is appropriate for a citizens assembly to say that, or Parliament, or a referendum, this is something which has to be discussed.
Q206 Mr Prentice: Are there big gaps though? We had Robert Blackburn, who is a professor of constitutional law, in front of us last week, and he accused the Government—and I hope I am not misrepresenting him again—of adopting an ad hoc approach. You have constitutional renewal which takes in flag flying, the reform of the Civil Service, war-making powers, treaties, it is all very ad hoc and there is nothing to link it altogether. I think that was the criticism he was making. If you are coming forward with legislation grandly entitled "constitutional renewal" there has to be more of a linkage there.
Mr Wills: I do not think I would describe it as ad hoc, I would describe it as a step by step approach, and for the reasons I have just outlined I think that is important, but I would argue that there is a fundamental driving analysis behind this, and I would argue there is a theme behind all these different bits of work that we have put in place. Just to repeat myself briefly, these are the things such as that power tends to accumulate towards the powerful, healthy societies have mechanisms which diffuse that power constantly, and what we are trying to do is produce new mechanisms to meet new challenges.
Q207 Chairman: Finally we are getting to the question you came to talk to us about although we are just ending. Professor Blackburn, just mentioned, did say what Gordon said he said but he also said in a note to the Committee, which I think goes to the heart of the whole question of prerogative powers and their transfer and so on, "In my view, the draft legislative proposal should clearly indicate that Parliament is or will become the source and legitimising body for the current executive powers under consideration, including armed conflict and treaty making. However, the terms of the draft Bill and the White Paper would imply the Government still wishes to retain its authority under the ancient theory of the Crown, simply imposing qualified procedural requirements in the exercise of these powers. In the case of war powers they are not even constitutionally enshrined in statute." So the question will be, the aspiration is there from the Prime Minister's original statement to put Parliament in the driving seat, to transfer executive powers, but if you look at it and ask which powers have unequivocally been transferred, it is very, very hard to find any. What you can find is, as Professor Blackburn says, some procedural constraints on those powers inserted, and that is quite a different enterprise, is it not?
Mr Wills: I am not sure it is quite as different as you are suggesting in fact. What we are trying to do is fetter the power of the Executive, and if you call that procedural constraint on the Executive, it is, but we are trying to systematise and regularise some of this—something which in practice is already taking place; I do not dispute that for a second. These are difficult issues. On the question of war powers, for example, we conducted a very wide-ranging consultation, we had very different responses, including from people who were extremely worried about this, exactly the same with the position of the Attorney General, and all these different areas, and there are very different points of view about all this. I come back to the fundamental point that any constitutional change, unless it takes place out of war or revolution, has to be careful because it has to endure in a democracy. As far as possible we have to proceed as consensually as we can. It is not always possible but as far as we can we have to start from that supposition because you cannot change your constitution at every election.
Q208 Chairman: No. People point, as Professor Blackburn has done, to the gap between necessarily the rhetoric and the reality. The statements were, "We are stripping the Executive of its prerogative powers and enthroning Parliament", but, when you look at it, that is not what is happening, we are inserting Parliament into part of the picture but in each case there is a saving power for the Executive.
Mr Wills: I think the test is how this will all look in 20 years' time. Well, it is an important point. If you look at the 1832 Reform Act, at the time this was seen as revolutionary but actually very, very soon it was seen as a timid move, not nearly far enough, we had two other great suffrage acts and actually the whole process was not completed until well over a hundred years later. You need a bit of historical perspective to judge the true significance of these measures. We want this to be significant, we have made it clear this is not a blueprint, it is a route map, and this is the beginning of a process of change. The symbolic significance of this is considerable in our view. Whether it actually puts everything on a statutory basis and fully codifies these non-personal prerogatives is another matter, but I think the changes are considerable and we want them to be considerable and we will continue with this process. This is not the end of the story.
Q209 Mr Prentice: When are we going to get the full list of prerogative powers because you are scoping at the moment? When will you finish your scoping?
Mr Wills: I am sorry, this is not going to be a very satisfactory answer, I am afraid, but as soon as possible. Your report four years ago did say that was the very least the Government could do and we agreed.
Q210 Mr Prentice: We wanted a requirement in six months, I think from memory, and we are four years down the track and you are still scoping.
Mr Wills: Yes, and this is, as it were, a new administration. The scoping has begun now. It is taking us rather longer than we had hoped. We have had a lot of replies in. It is sometimes quite difficult to identify, for example, because some legislation either expressly or impliedly repeals a prerogative and it is sometimes not altogether clear whether the prerogative still in fact exists technically. Some of the big obvious ones we are dealing with in this Bill but there are an awful lot of them tucked away and if we are going to do this we need to do it properly. It needs to be fully comprehensive and then we can deal with it. It is being done, I can assure you, and I am happy to come back in a few months' time and answer for any further delays but we do want it completed as quickly as possible.
Q211 Chairman: That is a fine offer which we accept. We are very grateful to you for coming along and talking to us in this rather non-joined-up way about a variety of things and I suspect we shall do it again when you visit us. We have enjoyed it very much. Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Wills: Thank you.
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