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Here we are again, about to face a general election and for many weeks citizens will not have access to the ombudsman because there will not be a Member of Parliament through whom they can do so. As the ombudsman has pointed out, this is a completely unsustainable position. It would take one simple clause of the kind that we have described to make the required change and I suspect that the House of Lords will be interested in that, even if we are not.
Finally, I said earlier that I thought that the Bill was a Christmas tree without Christmas, but there are things of value in it that should be welcomed. We might not get all the goodies that Christmas can bring, but we shall get the orange and the chocolate mouse, and they are certainly worth having.
9.37 pm
David Howarth: I certainly agree with what the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) said about this being a Christmas tree Bill. I also agree with what he said about the ombudsman. A number of serious aspects of the Bill could have been attached to the tree rather more usefully than some of the stuff that is in it.
In introducing the debate on Third Reading, the Minister said that the Bill had matured like good wine. It is certainly different from the previous version. It is very different from the draft Bill, to the extent that one might fear that this is one of those French wine scandals. The original draft Bill had about 45 clauses, 17 of which are now no more-they are nowhere to be seen. The remaining 28 clauses form less than a third-more like a quarter following our proceedings on Report-of the Bill. This is a very different Bill from the one with which we started. It is certainly much longer, as it is about double the size that it was when we started to discuss it on Second Reading.
The main measure of how different the Bill is can be seen if one looks at the long title, which is now nearly three times longer than the title with which we started. Topic after topic-and specific topic after specific topic-have been added. That is an interesting way of assessing what has happened to the Bill. The Government never wanted it to be a constitutional reform Bill in the sense that it was about the constitution of the country. The long title was never designed to allow extensive debate about any topic of constitutional reform. It was specifically designed to describe a small number of specific reforms. Having set out on that route, the Government then added more and more specific topics without any great theme.
Nevertheless, there is much in the Bill to welcome. Let me start with new clause 37, which the Minister spoke about at the start of his speech, about counting votes on election night. I strongly welcome his comments on that measure, especially the way in which he described how it will operate. It is important that it should have the flexibility that he described because there is a danger, especially when there is consensus in the House, of legislating at great speed and ending up with an unworkable, rigid piece of legislation. I hope not only that returning officers will listen to what the Minister and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), have said about how important this matter is to many Members of Parliament, but that they will listen regarding the important flexibility that the Minister put into his interpretation of the new clause. In some parts of the country, votes are never counted on election
night. Indeed, in some areas, such as the far northern islands and highlands of Scotland, there have been times when the count did not happen until the Saturday. We must understand the practical difficulties that many returning officers face.
The omissions in the Bill are very important. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) has described many aspects that the Select Committee on Public Administration wanted to discuss. One such missing issue is the measures regarding the role of the Attorney-General that were in the draft Bill but mysteriously disappeared from the version that was put forward on Second Reading. I have wanted to discuss that issue throughout the Bill's various stages, including Committee and Report, but we have not got around to it and we have never had a proper debate about what the Government were up to. It still strikes me as utterly unsatisfactory that a Minister of the Crown should have a decisive say in any way about whether a particular individual or company is prosecuted. That aspect of our system of government must be put right. International organisations have noted that that is not how a modern state should operate.
Nevertheless, the civil service part of the Bill is a great achievement and should be strongly welcomed. The last-minute acceptance of new clauses on special advisers should also be strongly welcomed. They are not quite right in our view and so we tabled some amendments regarding those measures, which were never discussed, about precisely how that should be done-in the law or simply in a code of practice. Another crucial issue that we never got around to discussing is how many special advisers there should be and whether there should be a numerical limit. Without such a limit it will still be possible to appoint 3,000 SpAds and to end up with a senior civil service that is more of the American style than the British style. We should have discussed that issue more seriously.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) on getting the provisions of the Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill through. He has been struggling with those measures for many years, and it is good to see that, in the end, they will make it to the statute book-at least at this stage.
I strongly welcome the progress on the treaties part of the Bill, but there has not been much progress. The Government still insist on using the negative resolution procedure, which effectively denies Parliament a voice. It is a more open procedure, but it still is not effective. It is disappointing that the Government have chosen not to move on other aspects of the prerogative on which they have promised to move since at least 2007 and earlier, such as war powers and the Dissolution of Parliament-an issue that we will face all too soon.
On the referendum on electoral reform, it is the wrong system, as it is not a proportional system. However, that reform is a small step in the right direction. We are prepared to face a referendum with equanimity. We hope that a future Government will move much more radically towards an electoral system that is not only fair but produces legitimate Governments. The present system produces Governments who are elected on such a low percentage of the vote that, regardless of party, they have little public support-so little, in fact, that they are unpopular and illegitimate from the start.
I very much welcome those parts of the Bill that deal with the implementation of Kelly. I think that the Government have fulfilled their promise in that regard, and that is much to be welcomed.
On the House of Lords, I am greatly disappointed that we have not made proper progress towards the promise that my party made in 1911. We promised then to introduce a House of Lords that was elected on a popular basis, but it looks like 100 years or more will pass before we achieve that. I am sure that there are members of the Conservative party who hope to delay it even longer, but it must come. We cannot have a legislature that is appointed. We cannot have people with a serious say in what counts as the law of the land who are not elected-
David Howarth: The hon. Lady says that we can have such people, and we do have them, but should we? Again, how is that a legitimate system of government? I do not think that hon. Members on any side of the House realise quite how near to the edge of illegitimacy we are with our system of government. We spend a lot of time congratulating ourselves here, without realising how deep the political malaise in our political system is. That malaise extends to the House of Lords and to the voting system for the Commons.
Progress was also made on the tax status of Members of the House of Lords, although it was not quite what it should have been. What sort of person should we have in the Lords? That is the question to ask: the important thing is not whether that person should pay tax, but whether a person who does not want to pay tax should be there in the first place.
Progress has been made on public order. Two steps forward have been taken by removing the excessive regulation of protest near Parliament, but the institution of a heavy-handed regime amounts to one step back. I believe that we will have to watch that regime very closely, to make sure that the powers that it contains are not abused.
I profoundly disagree with what the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said about noise. This is a constitutional Bill, and the noise made outside Parliament does not strike me as a big enough issue for a Bill such as this. Also, I caution him against treating noise as an issue significant enough to obstruct the progress of a Bill of this importance. I am sure that he did not mean that.
Mr. Grieve: I want to make two points to the hon. Gentleman that he may agree with. First, part of the Bill deals with demonstrations in Parliament square. Strictly speaking, that is not a constitutional issue, but rather one of the odd, Christmas-tree aspects of the legislation. However, he may agree that it is quite an important change, in light of the deep disquiet that exists about fettering freedom of expression and civil liberties. Given that context, the issue of noise clearly could have been dealt with in this Bill, and he may also agree that it is unfortunate that we have not done so.
Secondly, I want to make it clear that I do not see the question of noise as the be-all and end-all of this legislation. I never suggested that it was.
David Howarth: I am glad for the final sentence of that intervention. It strikes me as disproportionate to suggest that reform of the civil service should be put at any risk because of a disagreement about something else.
Mr. Grieve: I just want to make myself clear. As I indicated to the Minister, I have very deep disquiet about certain elements of the Bill, but the question of noise is not one of them. I expressed regret that a consensual approach-and I thought that we had achieved consensus on the matter-seemed to have failed. I also said that I hoped very much that the issue could be dealt with in the other place.
David Howarth: I am very glad of that clarification. I am sure that the Minister is too.
The big problem with the Bill now is timing. Its process through the House has not been handled well. We eventually had six days in Committee on the Floor of the House, whereas we were originally going to have four. The Government's real intentions for getting the Bill out of this House and into the other House were not made clear at any point. I suspect that the Bill will get its Second Reading in the other place some time between 22 and 24 March. That is very late in the life of this Parliament, and the Bill is unlikely to receive a Committee stage in the House of Lords.
The Bill contains important and welcome reforms, but it is in danger of being hacked to pieces in the process of negotiation that happens at the end of Parliaments. It would be regrettable if that were the case. This is not a real constitutional reform Bill, which would deal with much bigger issues. It would be a shame, however, if the achievement, such as it is, were lost in procedural wrangles at the end of the Parliament.
Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con): A few minutes ago, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the debates that we had on the provisions relating to the ratification of treaties. From memory, when we debated ratification processes-we also discussed Lisbon-I said that in the other place there had been a vote on the so-called in-out referendum, in which the Liberal Democrats voted against taking a different position from the one that they took in the House. We had another debate on a completely different topic last Friday. While I was preparing for it, I looked again at the Division lists, and in fairness, it turns out that the Liberal Democrats abstained from the vote in the other place, rather than voting against the measure. As he mentioned it, may I take the opportunity to set the record straight?
David Howarth: I am grateful for that partial peace offering from the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that that is the spirit in which the Bill makes progress.
9.51 pm
Mr. Dismore:
I do not want to say a great deal, but I do want to say something about chapter 4, which deals with Crown employment nationality provisions. I did not have a chance to address the matter when we considered my amendments in Committee, because of the guillotine that was operating. The extent to which
the Bill has been subject to guillotine motions throughout its progress is regrettable, as it has meant that we could not discuss many things that should have been discussed at greater length and that some things were not discussed at all.
I wanted to refer to the provision, because it is rather close to my heart, as several Front-Bench spokespeople have said. I began work on the issue about 10 years ago, and the measure has gone through various guises, including presentation Bills, ten-minute Bills and so on. The object was to straighten out the provisions on recruitment to the civil service. The measure has been around for a long time-I think that this was my ninth attempt to legislate on the issue-and it began as a hand-out Bill with Government support. The Government then went rather neutral and decided that it was not such a good thing after all, but eventually we won them round again. After a lengthy period, the measure in its various guises enjoyed different degrees of support from the Government, and the same is true of the Opposition.
The Bill, which had no priority at all, reached Report stage on three separate occasions, which was something of an achievement. The late Eric Forth took it upon himself particularly to victimise the Bill, and when he passed away, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) considered it to be the Eric Forth memorial Bill, given the right hon. Gentleman's opposition to it, so it was an effort to make progress with it. Realistically, we are now going to put right problems that go back the best part of 200 years. When the Act of Settlement was introduced, it was a welcome measure, but as time went by, it faded away, with the Aliens Restriction Act 1914, and a plethora of regulations, orders and EU directives, which intersected to create such a spider's web of provision that it was impossible to work out who was entitled to work for the civil service and who was not. Some strange criminal offences were created-people did not even know they existed-and there were weird anomalies whereby the widow of a 9/11 victim who was an American citizen married to a British person could not work for the civil service, but Abu Hamza, should he pass the exams, I suppose, could, because he had British nationality. There were all sorts of strange outcomes, but we now have workable provisions.
Clause for clause, this is probably the most scrutinised piece of legislation that the House has introduced in recent years, apart from the fox-hunting legislation, given the number of times that it has been debated and considered. We now have provisions that will create a civil service that is more representative of our multicultural society. The legislation will reserve about 10 per cent. of civil service posts where it is appropriate that UK nationals hold them, but overall we have workable and sensible provisions that will create a civil service that reflects our society.
I am very pleased that, at long last, we have been able to take the legislation this far. There is always many a slip between cup and lip, but given the assurances of support from the various Front Benchers, I hope that, with a fair wind, this part of the Bill will survive the wash-up and, equally, the depredations of the other place, which it has unfortunately never managed to reach. I live in hope that, at long last and after nine attempts, we have finally achieved the objective of reforming the nationality rules of the civil service.
9.55 pm
Mr. Wills: With the leave of the House, I shall say a few words in conclusion. This has been a good-spirited Third Reading debate, and I am very grateful for all that has been said. In response, I shall pick up on some of the points that have been made.
Much reference has been made to the Bill's protracted gestation, and dictionaries have been pillaged to find the appropriate imagery. It is true that the Bill has taken a considerable time to complete its journey to this stage, and one reason is that we have genuinely tried to move forward consensually. It has been, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) just said, one of the most scrutinised Bills ever, and I know that we could all have done with more time on it. However, there has been a great degree of scrutiny. All Members accept that we have tried to respond to the real concerns of this House and to move forward on that basis, and I think that we have had a great deal of success.
Despite all the grudging remarks about the Bill's lack of ambition, somehow everyone has found something good to say about it, and together that means that it is a significant Bill. I must give credit to the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) for the way in which he adapted his previous characterisation of the Bill, and I am extremely grateful for his acknowledgement that it is no longer a mouse-even though my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) seemed to think that a chocolate mouse was a good thing, rather than a pejorative phrase.
Anyway, I hope that when we look collectively at the endeavours in which we have all been engaged, we can all feel proud of what we have achieved. I am very grateful not only to all hon. Members present, but to all who have contributed significantly to the legislation on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, in the various Select Committee hearings and in all our protracted debates on the Floor of the House.
I have listened very carefully to what Members have said, and I particularly listened to what the hon. and learned Gentleman said about how we need to move forward. Clearly, there are still areas for further discussion and areas about which significant Members still feel strongly, but I undertake on my own behalf and that of my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State to do all that we can to meet those concerns in the remaining weeks of this Parliament.
I am confident and have no doubt that we can make some progress. I doubt whether we can do everything that everybody wants, and all of us may have to make some hard decisions in the next two or three weeks, but I hope that we can do so while remembering what gave rise to the Bill in the first place and the subject to which we have turned over and over again in all our discussions: the need to restore trust in our democratic politics.
The House has had a tough time during the progress of this Bill, and there have been many problems, but MPs' expenses did not create them; to a large extent it crystallised inherent problems, which all of us in our different ways-in our constituencies and here in this place-have wrestled with for a considerable time, and we have to take away that message. That is what gave rise to the Bill, and in seeing it through to what I hope will be its conclusion during the remaining weeks of
this Parliament, I hope that we can all remember why we are doing this: to restore the trust of the people whom we all serve.
I think that the Bill goes a considerable way towards doing that, directly through the measures that we have taken to set up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and everything around it, and indirectly by rewiring our constitutional arrangements in order to make them more transparent, to make all of us more accountable to the people whom we serve, to give power back to Parliament and to fetter the Executive. We have had a lot of discussion about that. I believe that when people look at the Bill, they will see that the Government's instinct is to give power away. It is important that we remember that as we move forward.
In conclusion, I pay tribute again to everyone who has contributed so much to the Bill. I am confident that when historians look at it, they will-
Debate interrupted (Programme Order, this day).
The Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
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