I do not want impunity for Ministers, as that would enable the current situation to continue for ever and a day, and get worse. Scrutiny improves ministerial decisions and government so we must put an end to the current
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process of impunity. However, I do not want to bring Mr Speaker into the decision-making process. That is why I support the motion.
The motion will not in itself make the required change, however. The Government would have to introduce a motion to change standing orders to bring that change into effect. I hope that in doing so we would arrive at a policy that rendered Government accountable to Parliament and unable to exercise the impunity they have at present without bringing you, Mr Speaker, directly into play.
4.45 pm
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who made a number of excellent points. However, it is unfortunate that, in effect, only one Opposition Back Bencher is present for the debate—two if we count the hon. Gentleman, who today is a quasi-Back Bencher.
Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab): There are three of us, in fact.
Mr Knight: I see that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is sitting in the far corner of the Chamber. On Thursday he told me he did not think he could be present for the debate. Perhaps that was why I did not notice him, but I am delighted that he is in his place for this important debate.
As has been said, the Procedure Committee was asked to undertake an inquiry by the House, which unanimously agreed to a motion inviting the Committee to develop a protocol for the release of information by Ministers. This was the first debate scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee last year.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has pointed out, the current position is that the ministerial code sets out the “general principle” governing the release of information by Ministers. It states:
“When Parliament is in session”—
as I said in an intervention, that is widely taken to mean when Parliament is not in recess—
“the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.”
The Procedure Committee published its report earlier this year. It set out three principles underpinning its recommendations: that statements were valued by Back Benchers and that Ministers should be encouraged to make them; that important Government announcements should, indeed, be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere; and that it is a grave discourtesy to Parliament for information to be released before a statement is made.
The Procedure Committee decided without division that it was neither practical nor desirable to produce a detailed protocol, and recommended that the House agree the following resolution:
“That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting, and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements not to be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament.”
The Government responded, agreeing with the Committee that a detailed protocol would not be a good idea, but rejecting the solution proposed by the Committee and instead favouring the status quo.
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On enforcement, the Procedure Committee recommended that complaints should be made to the Speaker in the first instance, and that the Speaker should have the power to dismiss trivial complaints and complaints made without basis. The Speaker could rule in cases where a minor breach had occurred. One might envisage a case where the Speaker receives a complaint and deems it to be a minor breach, and decides to allow an urgent question in the light of that complaint. The Procedure Committee did not envisage the Speaker rapping knuckles in all circumstances. There may well be cases where the granting of an urgent question is deemed sufficient. We also took the view that more serious cases should be referred by the Speaker to the Standards and Privileges Committee.
In their response, the Government did not even acknowledge our recommendations relating to the role of the Speaker, but they rejected our recommendation that complaints be referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee and maintained that the current range of sanctions was “adequate”. In our earlier debate, a number of Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is not in his place, discussed what sort of sanctions should be available, over and above what happens now. The Procedure Committee concluded that a recommendation from a Committee of the House that a Minister do come to this House and apologise was a sufficiently serious sanction, and that no new sanctions were required. The Government’s response to that was that our Committee’s recommendations were disproportionately severe, which I find a little odd.
I have looked at the Government’s response in detail, and in my view it is highly unsatisfactory. As I have said, the Government agree with the Procedure Committee that it would not be “practical or desirable” to have a “detailed protocol” trying to cover all eventualities, but they said that they did not support the Committee’s approach that the House should agree a motion in terms very similar to the current position as outlined in the ministerial code. The Government stated:
“It is not clear…what purpose would be served”
by such a motion, in which the current position is simply restated.
The Government had clearly failed to recognise the significance, although it was explained clearly in our report, which was that the House would be taking control of the protocol away from the Government. We are not envisaging setting up double jeopardy; we are saying that it should be the House that should decide—via the process of a complaint going to the Speaker and then, if necessary, to a Committee—whether the protocol had been breached, and not an obviously partial and forgiving Prime Minister, who is currently the arbiter. In saying that, I make no criticism of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, because the natural instinct of any Prime Minister will be to want to defend his or her Ministers—after all, the Prime Minister of the day appoints all Ministers in the first place.
Chris Bryant: It would sometimes be somewhat hypocritical if a Prime Minister were to complain about a Minister briefing, because often it is Downing street that briefs the policy change, rather than the Minister, doing so with the full knowledge and understanding of the whole ministerial team.
Mr Knight: That is a very good intervention and the hon. Gentleman underlines my point.
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The Government response went on to suggest that an increase in the number of statements made and urgent questions granted means that
“there is no case for the protocol that the Committee proposes.”
I am not clear what the logic is in that response.
On enforcing the protocol, the Government repeated the assertion made in the oral and written evidence that the Procedure Committee received that the House already has a sufficient range of options to deal with cases in which statements are made outside Parliament first. The Government’s response went on to suggest that the involvement of the Standards and Privileges Committee would risk dragging that Committee into party political disputes, which they say would undermine
“the integrity of its role.”
That response does not acknowledge your role, Mr Speaker, as envisaged by the Procedure Committee, in acting as a “gatekeeper” against frivolous complaints. Under the system that we proposed, any complaint that was a mere cover for a party political row or dispute would be dealt with by you and, in my view, would never reach the Standards and Privileges Committee, which would be asked to determine only serious or complex breaches of the rules
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): It is said that this procedure might drag the Speaker into politics, but surely there is one way the Government can ensure that that does not happen, and that is to behave in future.
Mr Knight: I agree, and I must say that we are used to Mr Speaker telling us when we are out of line, so it seems to me to be a natural extension of the role of the Chair to act as gatekeeper in this process.
Sir Paul Beresford: Of course, the opposite point is that the complainant might be being political.
Mr Knight: The complainant might indeed be being political, but if a complaint was made with no grounds, in fact I would expect Mr Speaker to block it. I do not know whether my hon. Friend was suggesting that there would be a difficulty in the process, but I do not particularly think that there would. I have every confidence that the occupant of the Chair—whoever it was—would see that justice was done.
The Government made some issue of the fact that the Procedure Committee did not receive any formal evidence from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on this proposal. I am rather baffled by that comment, because the Procedure Committee’s report does not suggest that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has any role in the process, so it is not clear why the Government think that we should have received evidence from him.
The Government said that they do not accept the Committee’s recommendation that the penalty for a breach of House protocol would be a recommendation from the Standards and Privileges Committee that the Minister concerned should apologise to the House. Instead, the Government note that there is no evidence that there is a significant problem with Ministers refusing
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to apologise to the House when a breach occurs. However, that rather misses the point, which is that the Standards and Privileges Committee would have no need to use its powers if there was no problem to be dealt with. If a Minister had already apologised, there would be no need to go there.
It is perhaps also worth reminding those on the Treasury Bench that the Government have repeatedly expressed support for their own protocol and that the Government are saying that they agree with the majority of Members of this House that the House should be told first when there is an announcement of Government policy. It seems to me, therefore, that the serious leaks that occurred last week should also be deplored by those on the Treasury Bench. I hope that the Leader of the House, when he comes to address us, will add his voice to those that have already placed on record a number of concerns about the leaking of large parts of the autumn statement. Many Members wonder why the Chancellor has not apologised.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con): My right hon. Friend referred earlier to the discourtesy of leaking to the press, but does he agree that these leaks involve a discourtesy in that they might be given to some hon. Members before others, placing some Members at a disadvantage?
Mr Knight: I do indeed, and I believe that that happened last week. For example, the BBC television news in Humberside had the Chancellor’s announcement on the plan to reduce the tolls on the Humber bridge pretty much word for word and ran it 24 hours before the House was told. It seemed rather strange to me that a couple of hon. Members who happened to have seats near the Humber bridge were available on the bridge itself to do media interviews when the leak occurred.
If the Government do not believe what they say about Parliament being told first and want to leak or announce policies or decisions to the press first, they should come out in the open and say so and they should change their ministerial code.
I now turn to the motion before us. Although I think we are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering for bringing this matter before us today, I must say that I would have preferred it had he consulted the Procedure Committee before he settled on the wording of the motion. I understand that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, to whom I have spoken about this matter and who chairs the Standards and Privileges Committee, was also not consulted on the terms of the motion before it was tabled or the timing. That is unfortunate. I do not want to tell the right hon. Gentleman, who does his own job perfectly well without any intervention from me, what he might or might not want to do, but he might have wanted to take the matter to his Committee and to have shown it the scope of the draft motion before it was brought to the House.
It is a pity that neither of the two Committees that the House has asked to consider these matters was consulted by the signatories to the motion. That is important because we have not yet debated the Procedure Committee’s report in the House, but the motion addresses only some of the issues raised by the Committee in its report on ministerial statements and ignores others. It is
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a cherry-picking motion and its scope has been determined without any reference to those who have responsibility for looking into this matter, having been asked to do so by the House.
The motion ignores the Procedure Committee’s recommendations on urgent questions and written statements. For example, we believe there are some occasions on which written statements should be open to oral scrutiny. The motion is therefore unsatisfactory and its timing, coming as it does without that consultation having taken place, is unfortunate. I do believe that action on this issue is necessary, as Governments of both political persuasions have been prepared regularly to flout the ministerial code when it suits them by leaking news to the press. However, I also believe that the way this matter has been brought forward today is unfortunate. Rather like the leaks themselves, it is no way to do business.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): Is Mr Kevin Barron not standing?
Mr Deputy Speaker: Then I call Robert Syms.
5.1 pm
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con): I welcome the chance to debate this issue today because it is important sometimes to debate first principles about what we are for and what we ought to get up to in the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) criticised the Government for behaving in the same old, bad old ways, but of course this debate would not have occurred under the previous Government or in any of the previous 13 years I have been here. The Government have made reforms and have been rather more open-minded about how the House has proceeded than their predecessors.
My criticism of my hon. Friend is that he is harping back to a mythical golden age when all decisions were made in this House and everyone outside waited for the House to hear a statement. The reality, certainly in my time in the House, is that that has never been the case. It was not the case under Mrs Thatcher or in the 1950s when many Governments—Macmillan’s and others—had Information Ministers in their Cabinets. It certainly was not the case when Winston Churchill, one of our greatest Prime Ministers and a great parliamentarian, was running a Government in very difficult circumstances. He had a lot of mates in the press and things were leaked to them. Neither was it the case when Neville Chamberlain arrived at the airport with his piece of paper. He did not say, “I’ve got to nip back to the Commons and make a statement.” He said, “Peace in our time.” So let us be clear about this—nothing much has changed in the way that Governments have done business ever since the emergence of the popular press.
Mr Gray:
I am disappointed that my hon. Friend has become some kind of apologist for Ministers who leak things. He might be right to say that it has always happened, although I think the pace has accelerated very sharply in recent years. The purpose of this debate is to discuss not whether this has happened but whether
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it should happen. Surely what we are saying is, “No, it should not happen. Things should be announced in this House first and Ministers should not go to the media and announce things there first.”
Mr Syms: I think we have to live in the real world—a world with 24-hour news. We know that when Governments consult on policies, some of those who do not like those policies decide deliberately to leak information, and Government Ministers are then sometimes called into studios to defend or explain their position. If we have a protocol within the House that makes it difficult for Ministers to explain what the Government’s position is, a lot of our constituents will be worried unnecessarily because, to coin a phrase, a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. That quite often happens with people maliciously trying to misrepresent Government policy.
Sir Paul Beresford: I was tempted to rise because the previous intervention was made by an hon. Friend who was a political adviser to me when I was a local government Minister. He assisted us in deciding whether it was appropriate, with regional issues, to make announcements in the areas to which they related rather than in the House of Commons.
Mr Syms: We have to look at the situation realistically. When the Prime Minister goes to the EU to negotiate with other leaders, at the end of that negotiation he stands on a platform next to the Union Jack and the EU flag and announces what has been discussed, what we have agreed with and what we have disagreed with. He sets out how he has been batting for Britain. What we are now saying is that whereas Merkel, Sarkozy or any of the other leaders can put the best face on their negotiation, the British Prime Minister will not be able to do so because he will have to come back here to make a statement, which he does anyway.
Dr Wollaston: Clearly, in that instance, Members of this House hear the statement at the same time as members of the press. If leaks are going to take place, which my hon. Friend is justifying, should they also be to Members at the same time?
Mr Syms: We all watch the news. I suspect that the vast majority of us are addicts of the 24-hour news channels. I keep being criticised by my wife for switching from channel to channel watching what is on the news, on Bloomberg, on ITV and on Sky. We all watch what goes on. Other Government leaders can stand up and announce what they have negotiated, but we are saying to our Prime Minister, “You can’t do that. You’ve got to whiz back here and give a statement.”
Let me give another example. We have a eurozone crisis. The markets are moving faster than the Governments and the political leaders. What happens when there is a eurozone crisis at the end of business on a non-sitting Friday, and the Chancellor has to make a statement before the markets open on Monday, which is a sitting day? Does he sit in the Chamber till 3.30 pm before he sets out what the Government are going to do, or does he make a statement setting out the Government’s emergency plans before the markets open in Europe
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and in the UK? If we think it is more important for him to speak to the House, he shuts up and people get plastered in the markets.
The reality is that we want Ministers in whom we have confidence and who speak for the majority of the people in the House. They have to command a majority. The Chancellor would have to come here eventually to answer questions about why he had conducted business in a particular way, but modern markets and modern international negotiation sometimes mean that Ministers make statements in press conferences and for the TV, rather than in the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab): I have some sympathy with the argument that the hon. Gentleman is making. It is right that we should be realistic about what announcements can be made and when they should be made, but does he accept that the amount of the autumn statement that was leaked was extraordinary? Does he think that is justified?
Mr Syms: Certainly, I found that shocking. I have sat in the House since 1997 and I have to say that the present Government leak a lot less than previous Governments in that time, but it does happen. We have to understand that.
Ministers should make more effort. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, said that we want the Government to make a special effort to come to the House when they can. My point is that in the modern world, with 24-hour news, it is not always possible for them to do that.
Mr Gray: I am extremely puzzled by my hon. Friend’s speech. He said a moment ago that Ministers should come here when they can. His position is a great deal more extreme than that of the Government. The Government have said that Ministers will always come here and will always make important statements here. My hon. Friend seems to be suggesting that they should sometimes decide not to do so. I am afraid he is probably on his own in the House today.
Mr Syms: My view is perfectly clear. It is not always possible for Ministers to get here. If something happened today in the markets, I would expect Treasury Ministers to make their best efforts to come here, as we are sitting, and talk to us, but that is not always possible.
Dr Julian Lewis:
I am an exact contemporary of my hon. Friend and it seems to me that, comparing what happened under the previous Government and what happens under this Government, he is absolutely right about the quantity of leaking, which was enormous under the previous Government. The trouble is that the leaking under the present Government is getting more and more specific. I remember, when I complained about leaks by the previous Government, one of the Deputy Speakers saying to me, “Well, it could have been a case of intelligent anticipation by the media of what the Government and the Minister were going to say.” With the sort of leaking that is going on now, there is no question of that. It is straightforward, direct and specific.
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The logical conclusion of what my hon. Friend is saying is that we should tear up the ministerial code. If he thinks that is the case, he ought to advocate that.
Mr Syms: I am not advocating that at all. All I am saying is that sometimes in the real world briefings are needed to set out the context and background of Government policy, because there are many complex political problems, for example in relation to the financial markets or pensions, in relation to which journalists want to know where the Government are coming from. Sometimes journalists speculate or, as we all know, make things up. I know most of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, and I know that they do their best to keep the House informed. The House must keep on its toes to ensure that Ministers keep to the ministerial code where they can when they come here, but that is not always possible. I am against having a set protocol, which I do not think would work for the reasons I have set out.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab): I understand the practicalities of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but it appears to me, as a relatively new Member, that the vast majority of leaks to the press are on matters that are not desperate, will not cause problems in our markets and about which it would be quite reasonable to expect Ministers to speak to the House first.
Mr Syms: Ministers might listen to this debate and improve their conduct in front of the House, but it is easy to criticise their behaviour and bring in a protocol that will make life a lot more difficult for Ministers who are batting for Britain and doing their best in difficult circumstances. We live in a very unsafe and unsure world. Our Prime Minister and others are going to negotiate in Brussels, and our Treasury Ministers are doing their best to keep Britain out of the storm caused by the eurozone. Parliament ought to accept that they are doing their best for Britain and give them more backing.
5.11 pm
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD): I sit on the Procedure Committee and the Backbench Business Committee, so I have looked at this issue for some time. It is a question of the separation of the estates of the constitution. Previously, if an hon. Member’s written question was not answered, their best option was to make a freedom of information request. That was changed in the previous Parliament, and there is now a process for investigating why written questions are not answered by Ministers. We now have a system whereby, in the interests of improving governance and scrutiny and ensuring that what is done for this country is in its best interests, new Government policy on substantial issues is, as a general principle, announced first to the House.
The motion does not try to produce a detailed protocol. In the previous Parliament, a written statement would be made on, for example, the banking crisis, a regulatory news announcement would be made in the morning and an oral statement would be made during the day. That achieved a process of accountability—the Regulatory News Service was used so that all the financial market matters were dealt with and an oral statement was
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made, enabling Members to hold Ministers to account—and I do not think that anyone would say that there was anything wrong with it.
In deciding whether to support the motion, we must ask whether we should leave things as they stand so that, if Ministers take no notice of the ministerial code and make no effort to ensure that information is given first to Parliament and there is no investigation—a point of order can be raised but nothing further happens —or whether we should we have a process whereby we will not tolerate Ministers doing that. I accept that the Government do not like it because it is inconvenient for them, in the same way as answering questions can be, but in the long term, for the Government parties to be re-elected, we need good government, meaning we—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): Order. The hon. Gentleman appears to be crossing the Floor. I would be extremely grateful if he clarified his position.
John Hemming: I apologise for my foot fault, Mr Deputy Speaker. I must apologise for my foot faults on previous occasions, which were not raised with me. I am sorry, but I was unaware that I was breaking protocol, and without being corrected I did not know that I needed to stand a sufficient distance to be two sword lengths from the other side and to toe the line, which I am now doing. That makes my point, because the motion simply states that Ministers should toe the line, which is why hon. Members should back it.
5.14 pm
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con): I am not the only member of the Standards and Privileges Committee present, but I am probably the only one who is going to speak—and I note a nod from the Chairman, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), sitting on the Opposition Benches. I am not going to speak for the Committee, however, because quite simply it has not looked at the proposal at all, or responded to it, but it should, if we proceed any further with the suggestion—or with a report, because after this discussion it might be more appropriate for the Procedure Committee to take the matter back, look at it again and decide whether to change its approach or to submit the issue to the Standards and Privileges Committee.
As a former Minister, I remember the requirements of the ministerial code hanging over me like a heavy weight if I thought I was ever going to step out of line, and also—taking the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who is no longer in his place—decisions on whether it was appropriate. Many such statements are a matter of judgment, and one has to recognise that there are a vast number of statements.
Many statements relate to timing, to regions or, from my experience, to local authorities, and, if a local authority is awaiting a statement, it is appropriate to make it in that area. The thought of what would happen to the House if we were gummed up with every single statement coming out of the Department for Communities and Local Government alone is beyond the imagination.
There are leaks, but one only has to consider a Minister being stuck with a journalist, particularly one from TV or radio, who has come forward with either a leak or an educated—or an uneducated—guess and a
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question to which the Minister needs to respond to see how someone with a political motivation might take it as a statement that should have been made in the House, even though it might in fact be made in the House later.
It is quite inappropriate not to recognise those difficulties, but, if we follow the Procedure Committee’s suggestion, we will be hitting with a heavy sledgehammer what is generally—albeit with exceptions—a very small nut. My own experience, which is from some time back, was that there was little or no leaking. I do not remember any, but perhaps my memory is slipping.
If such a complaint were sent, through the normal procedures, to the Standards and Privileges Committee, it would first go to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who is an official of the House. He would consider whether it was appropriate to investigate, but many such complaints would verge on the political, because the decision on the appropriateness of a statement made outside the House, whether substantial or not, is subjective and made by a Minister, with a measure of political judgment, be that with a small or large “p”. So, in effect, the motion asks for an officer of the House, the commissioner, to make a decision on a political issue, which I think would be absolutely inappropriate, as I believe and suspect the commissioner, from my discussions with him on other things, would, too.
Essentially, the Committee looks into complaints that Members have brought the House into disrepute. Decisions, including the Committee’s, are non-political, and the commissioner’s report is non-political. Most complaints fall by the wayside, because many sent to the commissioner—on the way to the Standards and Privileges Committee, if they ever get there—are political, are made by the public and are, quite often, from individuals who have been defeated in an election in a constituency. It is a well known technique, but fortunately it does not progress too far, because many such complaints are political, as many would be on the issue before us.
Ministers have to make a decision on a statement, but, with such rules hanging over a Minister, many statements would not be made outside the House when they should be; they would end up in the Chamber and, as I have already said, clog up the business. [ Interruption. ] There was an interjection, and, if the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) would like to stand up and interject, I might be able to respond, because I am hard of hearing and did not catch it.
Chris Bryant: That argument takes us to the point where we might as well do away with parliamentary government and just have government.
Sir Paul Beresford: The hon. Gentleman knows that I, of all people, would not follow that tendency of the previous Government. I absolutely disagree with him, and today’s examples, whether from this Government, the previous Government or the one before, have been of substantial leakages on substantial statements. The majority are not substantial, and we will clog up the business if we bring through all the minor statements, especially the regional or local ones.
We must also remember that we are, in effect, asking the Speaker, who must be non-political, to make a judgment on what will often be a political complaint.
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The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was correct to say that it would be inappropriate for it to be referred to the Speaker.
This debate will be helpful for the Standards and Privileges Committee if the matter is brought before it. However, the debate is being held too soon, because the matter will need to go before the Committee if the Procedure Committee decides, in the light of what is said, to go ahead with this technique. The Standards and Privileges Committee will have the opportunity to look at the whole issue again—I hope that it does—to think again, and possibly to look for another procedure to move forward with in the light of the comments that are made today.
5.20 pm
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con): On reading the motion, my initial instinct was to support it, as it seemed intrinsically to be a good idea. However, it has some weaknesses and there are practical issues that we have to consider.
I do not believe that any Minister would ever dream of acting in a dishonourable way by leaking information prior to coming to this House. However, these things can occasionally happen, perhaps through a casual conversation that has been picked up by a journalist and reported at a later stage. More fundamentally, there is the greater issue of the definition of what is important. In my constituency, something that is important to someone in Halfpenny Green, for example, may not be as important to someone in Codsall, Bobbington, Kinver, Featherstone, or many other places. I could come up with a large number of places where it is not as important as it might be in Halfpenny Green. What is the definition of “importance”?
Chris Bryant: I think that the hon. Gentleman used a great deal of irony at the beginning of his speech. I have always thought it would be good if Hansard could put comments in italics if they are made ironically. I am sure that he would agree that the Queen’s Speech and the Budget are equally of interest to his constituents in each of the different villages that he mentioned, as in those in my constituency. It is not all that difficult to spot what counts as an important issue.
Gavin Williamson: The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Yes, there are issues of great importance, such as the Queen’s Speech, Budget statements or the autumn statement. It would be nice if no details ever got out into the media before they got to this House, but the danger is that this motion could sweep up much more.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con): A post-election Queen’s Speech is presumably based on the winning party’s manifesto, and it would be difficult for that not to be announced in public and announced only in Parliament.
Gavin Williamson:
Indeed; my hon. Friend makes a valid point. The coalition agreement set out many aspects of what this Government would be bringing forward in the Queen’s Speech and enacting into law. The key is
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that this is not necessarily about those issues but about the smaller announcements that are often made in this House. What is important and what is not?
Mr Nuttall: The Procedure Committee report makes it clear that if a complaint is made by a Member to the Speaker, the Speaker would have the power to dismiss trivial complaints.
Gavin Williamson: It would be marvellous if this debate were purely about the Procedure Committee’s report, but it is not—it is about the motion.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con): Is my hon. Friend concerned that people may deliberately make frivolous or vexatious complaints, even if they have no prospect of being upheld by the Speaker, with a view to establishing negative press stories about the Minister involved?
Gavin Williamson: My hon. Friend will be incredibly shocked to hear that there are people in this House who act for political motives and who go about trying to damage right hon. and hon. Members on the Treasury Bench who are trying to deliver the business of the Government. He hits the nail on the head: there would be an awful lot of such complaints, and that is not what we want.
It may be a shock to you, Mr Deputy Speaker but I guarantee that every Member who sits on the Government Front Bench lives in fear of angering or annoying you, and of the displeasure that you might feel towards them, let alone the displeasure that Mr Speaker might feel towards them. I have seen members of the Government quake at the thought that they might be dressed down by the Chair. I cannot think of any greater sanction than that. That is a cast-iron certainty.
What is proposed in the motion does not recognise the realities of today. Often, information has to come out before a statement gets to the Floor of the House because the House does not sit in the early morning. That might be true of a financial statement, world events or wars in different parts of the world. The Government have to respond.
It is vital that Ministers are always duty bound to come to the Floor of the House to respond to such events as quickly as possible. That is why I am so proud of this Government. They have made it clear that it is a top priority for Ministers to be in this House. The relevance of this House is much greater today than it was under the previous Government. One of the first great parliamentary occasions after the Queen’s Speech was when the Prime Minister came to this House to report back on the Bloody Sunday inquiry. It was a moving moment, I think we would all agree, and a moment when the House was united. The Prime Minister summed up the feelings and emotions of this House wonderfully. This Government have made sure that this House matters. The Prime Minister has made more statements to this House than any Prime Minister since 1979, when the great lady, Baroness Thatcher, first came to power. How can we doubt that this Government are putting the right foot forward when they are following in such great footsteps as those of the great lady?
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We never need to doubt that it is this Government’s intention to deliver great parliamentary scrutiny and great parliamentary involvement in the decisions of the nation. That is what the Government are doing today and it is what they shall do tomorrow. We do not need this motion. That is why I urge all colleagues to vote against it.
5.27 pm
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con): This debate is the continuation of a debate that has gone on for centuries in another form. In the 18th century, the line was that the influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing and ought to be diminished. It is the perpetual, almost the eternal, job of this House to try to keep the Executive, Her Majesty’s Government, under check.
There is a wonderful picture in this House of the Commons trying to persuade Elizabeth I to marry. Elizabeth I said clearly, “It is not your business to talk about it.” Governments always wish to do that. They wish to maintain information for themselves, to use at their convenience. As a former Lord High Chancellor said, “Knowledge is power”. Governments preserve knowledge carefully. That is not an unreasonable thing for the Government to do from their point of view. However, the ministerial code, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), says otherwise. It is a splendid document, because its foreword shows the ambition of Her Majesty’s Government and the Prime Minister to restore people’s trust in politics:
“It is our duty to restore their trust. It is not enough simply to make a difference. We must be different.”
I discovered, thanks to listening to “Yesterday in Parliament”, that the previous Government leaked the whole time. Or perhaps, to go back to “Yes Minister”, the approach was “I brief, you leak, he breaks the Official Secrets Act”. There has been a change, and this Government have got rather better at putting Parliament first, coming to the Chamber and telling us what is going on rather than gratuitously leaking every little titbit of information that is available. They have therefore done something to move towards the ministerial code.
However, the ministerial code is a most unsatisfactory document. Although it runs, I think, to some 30 pages, the truth is that Ministers abide by the code as long as they maintain the confidence of the Prime Minister and, as shown by newspapers and other media outlets, of the British people. Those 30 pages are quite a lot of waffle around that main theme, whereas a resolution of the House is something substantial, solid and dignified. It seems to me that things that go on in this House ought to be regulated by the House of Commons, not by the ministerial code.
It is worth bearing in mind that one Deputy Prime Minister could punch an elector on the nose and still not be deemed to have broken the ministerial code in any way. I know that it was secret at that point whereas it is now a public document, but it seems to me that it is flexible in its interpretation. The fundamental point, as I said, is that Ministers must maintain the confidence of the Crown and of Her Majesty, as advised by her Prime Minister. Indeed, the code states that the Prime Minister is foremost within its application and is the judge and jury of it.
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That brings us back to the motion, to how we should deal with statements that are leaked and to why statements should not be leaked. That is the rather important question that we have perhaps neglected slightly. With some honourable exceptions, everyone broadly feels that statements ought to be made to the House first, but why? Why does it matter that we hear things before the News of the World, as was, or Sky News or the BBC? The reason is that control of the news agenda gives the Government an extra advantage over the Opposition, over their critics and over those who wish to hold them to account, which they would not be able to afford themselves. That advantage is paid for by public money.
The Government are indivisible but have two parts and two hats. They are party political on the one hand, yet they are the impartial Administration of the nation’s affairs on the other. The Labour party has perhaps two dozen press officers sitting in its current headquarters, but the Government can have two dozen in a single Ministry, able to brief and guide the press. The same is true when the situation is the other way around—the Conservatives have a small number, and the Government still have a massive advantage in controlling the news agenda. They use taxpayers’ money to do that, rather than money given to them through free donations, and they use that power to guide the views of the nation.
Nobody pretends that propaganda is not powerful. We all know it is, otherwise Unilever would not be, as I believe it is, the second largest spender on advertising in the country. I believe the Government are still the largest. Propaganda underlies how all of this works, and it is why the Government are so determined to maintain control of their ability to leak statements when they feel it is right to do so. They feel that if they use that power, they can ensure their electoral popularity and their re-election, at the expense of the British taxpayer. That is when the other, non-political side of the Government has to say, “This is improper. This is wrong. It is all right while we are in office, but we will not be in office for ever. The other side will come in, and they will be more ruthless than we are. They will use this propaganda advantage to ensure their continuation in power.”
The check on that is, and has been for centuries, the House of Commons nit-picking, banging away at the Government and saying, “This isn’t right. We are holding you to account on this. Our electors want to know about this”. It is not about us, or the fact that we are here representing North East Somerset or other, lesser parts of the country. Actually, I cannot say that with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) here, because I get into trouble if I am not very polite about Yorkshire on all occasions. We are representing our constituents, who wish us to hold the Government to account. Once we are elected, our constituents are not necessarily our political friends and supporters, but we represent every one of them and all their concerns.
I sympathise with the Government. I say that not because I am a loyal hack—I do not think I am the loyalest of loyal hacks—but because I absolutely understand the predicament in which they find themselves.
Chris Bryant:
The hon. Gentleman referred to the non-political side of things, which I suppose in part means the civil service. One problem is that when we make an accusation—it could be an important one,
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such as, for instance, that the Government have issued false immigration statistics deliberately four days prior to the real statistics coming out—we write to Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, and he writes a beautiful episode of “Yes, Minister” back. The Cabinet Secretary will never find against a Minister. Without the motion, there is no proper arbiter.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a model in opposition of how people ought to approach this matter. As I understand it, he was a model in government, although not as invariably successful as a model ought to be.
The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of the indivisibility of the Government, who are both political and impartial. In a sense, it is much easier to be a judge or to be the Speaker, because people in those positions are always impartial. The Government are always seeking re-election, but at the same time, they must make decisions in the interest of the nation impartially and fairly—one hears Ministers talk about being in a quasi-judicial position in certain circumstances. Parliament seeks to divide those indivisible roles and to say, “That bit is political. Therefore we are holding you to account for political reasons, not necessarily because we disagree on the benefit to the nation.”
The Procedure Committee debated with a great deal of amusement whether impeachment could be reintroduced. I would love to see the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) introduce articles of impeachment against a Minister whom he thought had misbehaved. If that did not work, perhaps he could go further and attaint a Minister, which would be the final sanction.
However, the Committee decided, cautiously and prudently —to some extent this answers the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms)—that, as the conclusion of part 1 of the report states,
“We do not believe that it is practical or desirable to produce a detailed protocol that would cover all possible situations”.
That is clearly right, because there will be circumstances in which Ministers must answer questions urgently—perhaps they would be pressed to do so or the financial markets demand it. However, there will also be occasions on which the Minister knows perfectly well that he has a jolly good, fat, juicy news story that he would like to put out to his chums and he does so. That is what we ought to be trying to stop.
I have great confidence in this Government when I think of what they have done so far to restore the standing of Parliament. We can see how much better debates are attended than they were under the previous Government.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab): I suspect that that is more because of the quality of the hon. Gentleman’s speeches than those of any Minister.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I am deeply grateful to, and flattered by, the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Knight:
My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution to this debate. In essence, is not our problem that the ministerial code, upon which we rely for justice
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in this respect, is presided over by the Prime Minister acting as a judge, when in reality he must also be an advocate for, and on the same side as, his Minister?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is important that this be brought to the Commons as a matter of our procedure, and that we do not rely on the good will or benign nature of the Government to see that it is enforced.
I want to finish on the sympathy that I have for the Government. They have allowed the formation of a Backbench Business Committee, which is letting debates such as this take place. Ministers are regularly making statements and they are answering questions for over an hour on those statements. There is a more rigorous approach to the treatment of scrutiny, and the House of Commons is being treated more seriously. That is a thoroughly good and admirable thing. None the less, the House of Commons should be greedy and say, “We want more scrutiny of the Government. We want to push the Government further so that we may keep them under control and under a proper check because they wield the most gigantic power.”
The Government have all the organs of state at their control. They have as many press officers, briefers and leakers as one may wish to cast a stick at. The Opposition do not have that. Nevertheless, the day will come when the Conservatives are once again in opposition and we will want to claw our way back into government and will not want to have the dice loaded against us as they were between 1997 and 2010. For that, we must make tough decisions to hold the Government to account when it is a Government whom we support, and that scrutiny must be firmly embedded, reinforced and made solid in the culture of the House. Although the motion may not be ideal, it unquestionably moves in the right direction. If the Government do not accept it today, I hope that they will at least indicate what they will accept and how quickly they will pass this from the Government, the Crown, and back to Parliament.
5.41 pm
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con): I have spent only a year and a half of my 46 years inside this place. I have observed that there is no time when the House of Commons makes itself more ridiculous than when it is suffused with self-serving piety. I accept that there is no one here with a greater claim to true piety than the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and he has made, as he always does, some brave and bold arguments. However, it was with some relief that I saw my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr Syms) and for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) breaking through that self-serving piety with a little common sense.
Chris Bryant: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is accusing me of self-serving piety. For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that I have no piety about me.
Nick Boles: I was accusing the House of being suffused with self-serving piety and giving the hon. Gentleman a bye on the basis that his past suggests that true piety is one of his qualities.
Let me start with where I am in agreement with other Members, including my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Holding
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Government to account is one of Parliament’s primary functions, but it is not its only function. Parliament is also there to supply and support a Government.
If Parliament’s primary function is to hold Government to account, no Government in recent times have done more to strengthen the power of Parliament to do such a job. It was this Government who introduced elections by Back Benchers of Chairmen and of members of Select Committees. Previous Governments, including the one of which the hon. Member for Rhondda was a member, appointed as Chairmen people who unfortunately needed to be eased out of their ministerial berths, where they had not been a success, and to be bought off for the rest of the term of that Government. This Government have turned their back on that naked attempt to suborn Parliament and have empowered Select Committees through the introduction of direct elections by Back Benchers.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab): As a member of the parliamentary Labour party, I have to correct the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. The PLP instigated a rule stating that nobody straight out of serving in government could become a Select Committee Chair. After I left government and served on the PLP, which is the equivalent of the Conservative party’s 1922 Committee, no person coming straight out of ministerial office went into a Select Committee chairmanship.
Nick Boles: I am happy to be corrected on that point, but I hope the hon. Lady will confirm that it was this Government who introduced the election of Select Committee members and Chairs by Back Benchers, which significantly strengthened the independence of Select Committees and their ability to hold the Executive to account.
This Government also introduced the Backbench Business Committee, and so far have allotted it about 30 days of debate in Parliament for the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers. It was also this Government who introduced the concept of e-petitions to allow the House to debate not only the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers, but those of most interest to members of the public. It is clear, therefore, that it is this Government who have done most to strengthen Parliament’s ability to hold the Executive to account.
To be fair, we must also acknowledge that Mr Speaker has done more than any recent Speaker to ensure that Parliament can fulfil its function of holding the Executive to account. No Speaker has used urgent questions more regularly to force Ministers to come and account for their decisions and to answer questions from hon. Members.
Dr Julian Lewis: I am sure that Mr Speaker will be gratified by that vote of confidence—I say this without irony—from my hon. Friend, but does he not agree that it was at least unfortunate that, as Mr Speaker made explicit in response recently to a point of order from me, he felt it necessary to keep the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Dispatch Box as long as he did during the autumn statement precisely because he considered that the Chancellor had been saying far too much, in far too much detail, about that statement in advance to the media?
Nick Boles: No, I do not actually, and I shall explain later why I do not agree with my hon. Friend.
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No Speaker has done as much as the current Speaker to place strict controls on Front-Bench waffle during questions, thus ensuring that more Members can ask their questions and get answers on behalf of their constituents. And no Speaker has presided over such long statements, including the Chancellor’s autumn statement, thus ensuring that all Members with questions to ask on behalf of our constituents can be heard. It is clear, therefore, that this Government and this Speaker of the House of Commons have done more in a very short time than any recent Government to strengthen the power of the Chamber to hold the Executive to account.
What puzzles me about the argument put forward by most Members who have spoken is the suggestion that holding the Government to account requires a monopoly on first communication of the Government’s decisions. Surely the days are gone when Parliament should think of itself as and behave like a priesthood that gathers together the only people in the country with the intelligence and education sufficient to consider matters of state. Surely what matters is that Parliament has an opportunity to discuss any announcement by Ministers on the day that it is made or, if it is made over a weekend, on the next sitting day. Is it not our duty, in this place in 2011, to adapt this ancient institution to modern democratic principles, and does that not require that we strike a balance between Parliament’s essential role of holding the Government to account and the public’s right to know what their Government are doing as soon as possible?
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con): It seems to me that the best way of tackling the matter is this: when a Minister or a member of the Government needs for urgent reasons to make a statement publicly, he or she should do so and then come here as soon as possible. I am thinking, in particular, about matters in which military forces are involved. I do not see a problem with that. I think that the motion might allow for that—I hope that it does because that is how I interpret it.
Nick Boles: I thank my hon. Friend for that important and interesting intervention. I would go further, although I accept that very few people are of the same mind. We make a mistake in thinking that we can somehow reserve to decisions of military or financial sensitivity and urgency the possibility of their being made outside this place and then discussed fully inside this place.
Sir Paul Beresford: Does my hon. Friend not agree—from his vast experience in this place, and perhaps also looking from the outside—that although a considerable number of statements are of little or no interest to the House because they are regional, specific or small, perhaps involving one or two MPs, and so on, the decision on that, which the Minister takes, must be subjective, which makes the Minister vulnerable to attack, as we are seeing?
Nick Boles: I agree with my hon. Friend. This House has many opportunities to embarrass and annoy Ministers who seem to act with discourtesy towards us. I am not for a minute arguing that we should not make full use of that; I am just arguing against this motion.
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I would like to move on to the example of the autumn statement—which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) raised earlier—in which, as I think we can all agree, some of the most important announcements of this Session were made. It is true, as we should admit without embarrassment, that many of the proposals in the autumn statement were discussed widely in the media—on television, in the newspapers and in the blogosphere—in the several days before the statement. I have no idea whether that was by accident or by design, but I fervently believe that this ensured that public awareness and understanding of the contents of the Government’s plans and their response to the difficult economic situation in which we find ourselves was far higher than it would have been if nothing had been revealed until the statement was made. I ask Members to ask themselves two questions. First, how many people are willing and able, in their busy working lives, either to watch the autumn statement as it is broadcast on television or to read parliamentary reports? Secondly, how many of them, given the slightly weird way in which we all speak, will understand it when they do?
Michael Ellis: Is it not also a rather unsatisfactory and unsafe assumption for those supporting the motion that it is the Minister, or a servant or agent acting for the Minister, who leaked sensitive information? Is it not also possible that the information was accidentally leaked, or in some way given by a third party, against the interests of the Government? Might not passing this motion also open up the sphere for misuse of the complaints procedure, whereby the mere fact of a complaint would bring down adverse criticism on the head of the Government and the Minister?
Nick Boles: My hon. Friend is a distinguished member of the legal profession and therefore well understands the ability of people to abuse otherwise well intentioned elements of the law. However, I intend to go further than he suggests, because I argue that we should move away from this idea that it is a leak when the Government decide to announce in advance to the media some elements of their proposals. I believe that it is directly and strongly in the public interest that the public are given a chance to understand the detail of the Government’s proposals and the range of views and arguments that will be expressed, and for Parliament also to contribute to that debate, but not to have the monopoly on first communication.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: My hon. Friend makes a perfectly reasonable point. It would be perfectly possible to write a ministerial code that said, “Her Majesty’s Government will take not a jot of notice of Parliament, but will issue statements to whomever they feel like, whenever they feel like it.” If that is what my hon. Friend wants, will he redraft the ministerial code and send it to the Prime Minister?
Nick Boles:
My hon. Friend asks a cunning question, but one I think I can sidestep by saying that, as I discussed with him before the debate began, I think that the ministerial code is a load of nonsense. The truth about the ministerial code is what he said, which is that a Minister can stay in their job while they have the
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confidence of the Prime Minister, but as soon as they lose it, it does not matter what the ministerial code says, they should lose their job.
Thomas Docherty: On the hon. Gentleman’s point about helping the public better understand, is his argument that the Treasury leaked the entire contents of the autumn statement for the benefit of some public good, rather than because it wanted to get its excuse in first?
Nick Boles: First, I have no idea whether it was, in fact, the Treasury that leaked any of the details. Our journalists are cunning ferrets and they have remarkable ways to get information out of the leaky sieve that is a modern Government. However, more importantly—and to take the hon. Gentleman’s concern seriously—I do not know whether that was done for the public benefit, but I am absolutely certain that it was in the public interest. It was to the public’s benefit that there was wide discussion, over several days, on all the leading television programmes and in all the leading newspapers, about proposals that would have received much less attention if they had been left until Parliament heard the autumn statement.
Let us focus, then, on our true duty. Our duty is not to serve ourselves, to puff up our roles as Members of Parliament or to bolster our privileges; it is to serve the public. We do so by holding the Government to account, not by requiring them to leak all their information in this strange room, rather than out there, where people are listening. Nobody in this debate has yet explained why the public are better served by announcements being reserved to Parliament. That is why I will not support the motion.
5.56 pm
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab): I speak as a member of the Procedure Committee. I congratulate the Chairman, who is in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) on their sterling work on the report, alongside the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and other colleagues.
I have been fascinated by many of the contributions, which have again served as an excellent way of spotting who is on the fast track up the ministerial ladder. It is perhaps with some regret that, yet again, the hon. Member for North East Somerset has put his principles ahead of the greasy pole. However, he reminded me of a fellow old Etonian, Mr Hugh Dalton, who is probably the most obvious example of a member of a Government having to resign over this issue, because the contents of his Budget found their way into a newspaper before being read out to the House of Commons. Everyone is familiar with that story. What they are probably not familiar with is the fact that Hugh Dalton’s reasoning for giving that information—apparently as he was passing through Members’ Lobby on the way into the House of Commons—was that he believed that it would be said to the House before appearing in that day’s London newspapers. Even Mr Dalton, who is often held up as an example, as the first great leaker, said that his intention was for the House of Commons to hear the statement before the public at large. Unlike the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), I believe that it
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is to the public’s benefit that this House has an opportunity to scrutinise what the Government are proposing first, a point to which I shall return.
On the earlier point about why the Prime Minister is the wrong person to oversee things, the hon. Member for North East Somerset mentioned a rather good British Broadcasting Corporation programme, “Yes, Prime Minister”, and the famous and funny episode about a leak. For those who can recall it, the Prime Minister’s office was leaking against a member of his Government—something that I am sure the Leader of the House will tell us never happens in this Administration; they use tweets, apparently—if their fingerprints are not found on their iPhones. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman requires no reminder, but the outcome of the episode to which he referred was that the whole farce was brought to an end by a leak inquiry, which, as Sir Humphrey reminded the Prime Minister, would result in no evidence being found, no guilt being established and nobody losing their job. As is too often the case in this place, comedy—in this case, BBC comedy—imitates life. The problem is that, despite some incredibly serious leaks of Government statements, on not a single occasion during the 18 months for which the present Government have been in office has a single civil servant, special adviser, parliamentary private secretary or Minister been found to have breached the rule. I believe that in the last month alone no fewer than three Secretaries of State have been admonished by Mr Speaker for the fact that serious leaks have occurred, but as far as I can tell, their best excuse was, “It wasnae me. I didnae do it. A big boy did it and ran away.” Responsibility was mentioned earlier. It is the responsibility of a Secretary of State to ensure that information is not leaked from his or her Department.
Michael Ellis: Is the hon. Gentleman interested in the principles of natural justice? Does he believe that people ought to be guilty until proved innocent, or that people ought to be innocent until proved guilty unless they are in this Chamber?
Thomas Docherty: I am conscious of the danger that we will slip into the subject of our next debate, but I believe that Members of Parliament, including those who have the privilege of serving on the Treasury Bench, should be held to the highest possible standard, and I regret to say that that has not always happened in the case of a small number of Secretaries of State and their Departments.
The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) cited Neville Chamberlain. Let me first remind him that what Chamberlain said was “peace for our time”, not “peace in our time”. Given the hon. Gentleman’s close association with the Secretary of State for Education, who I understand is very keen on British history, that is the kind of thing that we should expect him to get right. What he did not mention, however—[Interruption.] I hear a mobile telephone ringing. It is probably The Guardian, asking for the latest statements.
What the hon. Member for Poole did not mention was that the then Prime Minister, having left the airport tarmac clutching his piece of paper, went straight to the Chamber of the House of Commons, where he gave a detailed account of events in Munich and responded to
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questions over a substantial period during which he was subjected to considerable heckling from Members on his own side.
Sir Paul Beresford: The hon. Gentleman is giving us a delightful piece of history. However, the reality is that nowadays the Prime Minister would arrive and be flooded with television cameras, microphones and so forth, there would be educated and uneducated guesses, the Prime Minister would be trapped into having to respond—and he might indeed use the words “in our time”.
Thomas Docherty: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has such a low opinion of his party’s Prime Minister that he does not consider him to be sufficiently fleet of foot to outfox a handful of Fleet street’s finest, but we are discussing something more substantive than a Prime Minister’s arrival from the tarmac to make a major policy announcement. We are discussing the habit that the Government have fallen into, after just 18 months, of considering no announcement too big or too small to be given to the media before they can be bothered to get around to giving it to the House.
We saw an example of that only a few days ago. The Department for Energy and Climate Change contacted The Guardian ’s twitter feed more than half an hour before it was known that a statement was to be made, let alone what the contents of that statement were to be. It is a matter of great regret to many Members on both sides of the House that the Secretary of State and his cohorts have such a low regard for this place that they cannot even be bothered to tell Mr Speaker or the Opposition that a statement is to be made before they tell the media.
Bob Stewart: What worries me is that Ministers are supposed to govern, that “governing” sometimes means making decisions, and that there are a heck of a lot of decisions that Ministers must make. Given the flood of decisions that would end up in the House if every single matter had to be referred to it, we should never be able to do anything. Ministers should be allowed to get on with things, and then come to the House to announce particularly important decisions. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is proper for a Minister to be allowed to make a quick statement and come to the House as fast as possible in such instances.
Thomas Docherty: I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful contributions. I know that he has had some experience of the perils of leaks in recent days, and that he shares my concern about leaking. However, there are two types of statement.
The hon. Gentleman will not need to be reminded that today’s Order Paper lists no fewer than eight written ministerial statements. We are not talking about the need for every statement to be made orally on the Floor of the House; it is perfectly legitimate to place written statements in the Library of the House of Commons. Some of them are quite important. For instance, the third on today’s list is a statement from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the single payment scheme, a vital subject that is of great concern to many farmers throughout the country. As a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I know that the Government have repeatedly
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failed to meet their obligation to ensure that our farmers receive the money that they should receive, and that is a subject to which the Opposition may choose to return. The key point is, however, that such statements should be made to the House—in either oral or written form—before being punted not just to the “Today” programme, not just to “Daybreak” or the programme that follows it, and not just to “BBC Breakfast”, but to the new media. The constant leaking suggests that it is almost a case of “Anywhere but the House of Commons”.
I believe that the reason is quite straightforward. Let me return to a point made a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford. This is actually about softening bad news—about trying to get the Government’s version out there. As was rightly pointed out by the hon. Member for North East Somerset, there are hundreds of press officers, employed at taxpayers’ expense, whose job is to try to soften that bad news. Unfortunately the country will be given a great deal more bad news over the next three and a half years as the Chancellor’s economic policies continue to fail, as the economy continues to flatline, as the Government refuse to accept the need for a plan B, and as week after week the Chancellor is forced to come back and downgrade his growth forecast. That is why the Government do not wish to come to the House: they do not wish to scrutinise themselves.
Those of us who are historians, or history buffs, often enjoy taking our constituents around the Chambers of both Houses. One of our great pleasures, which I am sure you have experienced, Mr Deputy Speaker, is taking our constituents to the Chamber in the other place and showing them the table at which Winston Churchill stood during the years when the House of Commons Chamber was unavoidably out of action following the bombing in May 1941. We can see the mark on that table that was made when Winston Churchill, who I would argue had more on his plate than any other Prime Minister—not just his Sunday lunch, but all the matters with which he was dealing—banged his hand on it. He came to the House, made himself available for scrutiny and answered questions for hour after hour, because it was important for the country to feel confident that the House of Commons had exercised due diligence and scrutiny.
The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford—in one of the most creative speeches that I have heard for some time, during which he tried to justify his former flatmate’s leaking of the whole autumn statement the previous weekend—claimed that this was about the public interest.
Nick Boles: I am forced to intervene because the hon. Gentleman has accused me of two things in the last 10 minutes: of being an old Etonian, which I am not, and of having been the flatmate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I never was.
Thomas Docherty:
I apologise on the second count, although I suspect that it was the Chancellor’s loss rather than the hon. Gentleman’s. As for the first, I was referring to the hon. Member for North East Somerset, who is sitting next to him, and whom I know to be the
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finest old Etonian currently serving in the House—bar one, obviously. I am sure that he will have an equally long career.
A fundamental point was made earlier about the public good and about debates. As the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford will know, every Budget is followed by a Finance Bill, which requires the exercise of due diligence and is debated at some length. I am sure that if he has not had the privilege and pleasure of serving on a Finance Bill Committee, the Government Whips, who are doubtless paying attention, will be more than happy to introduce him to the process, which allows outside stakeholders, representing the interests of his City friends and those of the country at large, to make their cases to Members.
Nick Boles: Would the hon. Gentleman care to enlighten us as to how many members of the public attend sittings of the Finance Bill Committee?
Thomas Docherty: I have served on only one Finance Bill Committee, as a researcher many years ago, and the public gallery was packed. Of course, there is a wider debate about how we can further open up our Bill Committees to the wider public, but it is not just about the debate itself; it is also about the process post-Budget, pre-Bill Committee, when all interested groups can make representations. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and hon. Members on both sides of the House received many representations on the Budget from constituents. That is the correct forum for having a good discussion about the merits of the Budget, not the Sunday papers and the Sunday programmes beforehand.
That is the problem with the Government: they have no regard for the House, the public at large or the many interested groups. They have got it back to front. The first thing they should do is lay their policy before Parliament; then they should allow the House to have scrutiny; and then they should welcome proper consultation on their policies—three things that they have repeatedly failed to do.
I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and the Leader of the House need to respond to the debate. This is not a light matter. It is genuinely about whether we want a Government, regardless of their political hue or whether they are a rainbow coalition, who believe that they are accountable to the people through the House, or a Government who continue to be accountable to a handful of editors of newspapers and TV programmes. It is genuinely about whether the House remains the primary point at which the Government will be held accountable.
6.11 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab):
We have had an interesting debate, which has sought to address the continuing tension between the Government's desire to get what they see as favourable coverage in the media for their announcements, and Parliament's requirement that it, and not the media, should be told first of any important new announcements, so that it may do its job in holding the Government to account. Some of the tension between the different approaches to that particular job has been expressed in the speeches that we have heard tonight, not least those by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is a
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pro-House of Commons man to his very core and made that clear in his contribution, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who is not, if I could put it that way, because he seemed to spend most of his contribution questioning whether the ministerial code should exist in its current form at all, which is probably one of the more radical suggestions in the debate.
I do not think tension between those two issues—the Government's desire to get favourable news coverage and Parliament's understandable desire to be at the centre of national debate—is anything new. Many previous Governments, of all political hues, have been found wanting when it comes to ensuring that their announcements of important policy decisions happen first in Parliament. Many right hon. and hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in what was an extremely wise speech, have pointed out, not only in our debate today but in previous debates, that the situation has been exacerbated by the advent of 24-hour news.
We have also seen the explosion of new platforms for the dissemination of information, which simply were not envisaged when our Parliament first formulated its now rather antiquated procedures and Standing Orders. The increasingly cut-throat competition between print and broadcasting media has not been mentioned, but it is relevant to the issues that we are struggling to resolve appropriately in the Chamber. There is a battle to obtain “breaking news” first, and the cavalier approach to rules and standards of behaviour in the media, now being highlighted in evidence to the Leveson inquiry, does not provide an easy backdrop against which to expect improvements in that state of affairs. Thus the trade in exclusive first access to important Government announcements in exchange for favourable and uncritical coverage of the good bits appears to benefit Ministers and the media outlets alike. Whenever that potential exists, there will be a difficulty that we as a Parliament have to struggle with if we are going to ensure that this Chamber gets a look-in. Unfortunately, that trade is flourishing as never before.
The lack of any real sanctions on Ministers when such leaks occur does not help Parliament to achieve its proper aim: to ensure that it is elected Members of the House, who are here to represent the views of their constituents, who are first to question Ministers on their policy announcements and thereby hold them directly to account. That is despite the clear instructions in paragraph 9.1 of the ministerial code 2010, which has been quoted in our debate:
“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”
The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford had a separate argument that that should be expunged from the ministerial code. It is a point of view. It is not a point of view that I feel would get a majority in the House, but at least he has been open and up-front enough to advance that argument. However, I think that the vast majority of us here want, in considering these difficult issues, to find a way of making the ministerial code work properly, so that this Chamber can be what it was always meant to be: the place where the most important debates about Government direction happen.
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It is clear that that statement of intent is a good thing but is far from being achieved in reality. Indeed, I think that it is flouted regularly by senior members of the Government, from the Prime Minister down. The ministerial code itself now appears to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, as I pointed out last week on a point of order. My observation followed the systematic and premeditated leaking of every piece of good news in Thursday's autumn statement to the media in advance, usually accompanied by photo calls with Ministers in high-vis jackets.
I was unaware at the time, although we have been informed of this today, of the Humber bridge coincidence, if I may put it that way. There was an announcement of the decrease in tolls on the Humber bridge and some hon. Members, just by coincidence, happened to be available on the Humber bridge. Obviously they had no idea that the media might be on the Humber bridge with their cameras waiting for an instant reaction to something that, clearly, the Members in question had no idea was about to be announced in the autumn statement. Perhaps there are people who believe that that is indeed what happened on the day, but many of us have some suspicions that there may have been something slightly improper going on with the autumn statement. The fact that the autumn statement was in essence a mini-Budget simply made the offence all the more blatant. In my view, it showed a cynical and total contempt of this House and a complete disregard of the ministerial code itself.
While I am on that subject, another important part of the ministerial code was also ignored ahead of the Chancellor delivering his autumn statement to the House last Tuesday. That was the requirement in paragraph 9.5 that the text of the oral statement should be shown to the Opposition “shortly” before it is made. Although no precise time is specified, the paragraph requires copies of the statement and associated documents to be sent to the Chief Whip and his office 45 minutes in advance. I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Leader of the House whether he had the documentation in his office 45 minutes in advance. His answer is important because, in the event, my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor got barely 10-minutes’ notice and a heavily redacted copy of the statement. This puts all opposition parties in difficulty when trying to reply to complex announcements. Like everyone else however, my right hon. Friend had been able to piece together what all the positive Government announcements were likely to be from watching the news, but that is not what is intended by the requirements for oral statements under paragraph 9.5 of the ministerial code. I would be interested to hear what the Leader of the House has to say about that.
There have been further worrying signs of escalating ministerial disregard for Parliament. Notable among them was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change’s astonishing discourtesy to the House two weeks ago. His intention to come to the House to make an energy statement—laudable in itself—was somehow tweeted to the world 30 minutes before his Opposition shadow was told by an environment journalist at The Guardian. An hour later the statement’s contents were leaked to the same journalist and were up on the website hours before the Secretary of State was due to deliver the statement in this place. As far as I can tell, absolutely no action has been taken by the Government
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to reassure us that this will not happen again, and the Secretary of State has offered neither an explanation nor an apology to the House for this strange coincidence.
As the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) set out in his speech moving the motion, and as was also pointed out by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chair of the Procedure Committee—which has done an extremely good job—the Procedure Committee produced its February 2011 report on ministerial statements at the request of this House, which is an unusual way of doing things. That followed the first ever debate initiated by the Backbench Business Committee, which took place last July. At that time, the Leader of the House supported the Procedure Committee’s inquiry into how Parliament’s understandable determination not to be the last to know about ministerial intentions could be translated into a workable system that would improve the current sorry state of affairs. In that first debate, the Leader of the House said:
“We devalue ourselves if the news is being made elsewhere. We therefore risk losing our position as the centre of British national debate. That is surely why the principle that we are debating today is important…We are elected here to scrutinise the Executive and to hold Ministers to account on behalf of our constituents. It is therefore crucial that Ministers explain and justify their policies in the Chamber in the first instance.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 263.]
That provides the most eloquent response to the comments of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford.
We had to wait until May for the Government’s response. When it finally arrived, it was disappointingly dismissive—as the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire hinted—and since then an uneasy stand-off between the Executive and the House of Commons has prevailed. No action on the recommendations in the report has been taken. In his speech, the right hon. Gentleman described the Government response as “highly unsatisfactory”, and I agree.
Throughout this period, there have been ongoing briefings and announcements of Government policy to the media rather than Parliament. The large number of urgent questions that Mr Speaker has seen fit to grant during this time is a good measure of the extent of the Government’s current disregard for the rules on ministerial statements. Never have the high ideals proclaimed by a new Government at the beginning of a Parliament so swiftly turned to dust. Their laudable early determination to put Parliament back at the centre of national debate has been throttled by the cynical opportunism of myriad SpAds—special advisers—and spin doctors. Their headline-chasing, public relations-fixated masters have meanwhile been busy driving a coach and horses through the ministerial code. So much for hoping that the Government would be capable of resisting the temptation to trade with the media in early announcements to the detriment of Parliament’s right to know first. So much for hoping that the Government would be content to allow the recommendations in the Procedure Committee’s report to be put into effect, or at least that some progress might be made on this issue.
What is to be done? It appears that the Backbench Business Committee has grown impatient waiting for the Government to deal with the recommendations in the report on ministerial statements, and I cannot say
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I blame it. It has decided to try to force the issue, and the motion before us seeks to put into effect just one of the recommendations contained in its report: the recommendation specifying a new procedure for complaining to the Speaker about a breach of the protocol that statements should be made first to Parliament. It would allow the Speaker to judge whether a minor, or more serious, breach had occurred. It would empower him to take appropriate steps in the event of minor breaches, and to refer more serious cases to the Standards and Privileges Committee for further investigation. In essence, this gives the Speaker—and therefore, by definition, this House—the power to begin to enforce the protocols that exist to guide Ministers’ conduct on announcements. Perhaps this is the only way progress can now be made, given that the Government’s enthusiasm for making improvements in this area seems to have evaporated completely.
In the Government’s response to the report, on the suggestion that the Speaker should be empowered to enforce the protocol, they consider that an adequate range of “sanctions” for such misbehaviour by Ministers is already available. In what is one of the weakest sections of their response, the Government list the granting of an urgent question, an investigation by the relevant Select Committee, or raising the breach at business questions or Prime Minister’s questions as adequate sanctions to prevent ministerial disregard for the rules. I have raised various breaches of the protocol either as points of order or in business questions during my short time as shadow Leader of the House, and I cannot say that I have seen Ministers either worried or apologetic about any breach. A complacent smirk seems to be the most usual response. The Government’s claim that adequate sanctions already exist cannot be true, or there would have been evidence that ministerial behaviour had changed and that Parliament was being bypassed in favour of announcement by media on fewer occasions. If anything, the opposite is true.
Given the Government’s obvious reluctance to embrace the recommendations in the Procedure Committee report and the evidence of ongoing and serious breaches of the protocol about Ministers making important statements to Parliament first, the Opposition will vote for this motion tonight. I also want further consideration to be given to how other recommendations in the report can be put into action in the future, and I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to ensure that we can take these important matters forward to a sensible conclusion.
6.27 pm
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young): I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, which is being held only because this coalition Government established the Backbench Business Committee, giving it the opportunity to set the debate and allow a vote. The shadow Leader of the House raised the availability of the autumn statement. We always use our best endeavours to get the documents to the Opposition Whips office within 45 minutes, and we will continue to do so.
Let me set out the Government’s position on the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). As he said, it arises from, and refers to, the Procedure Committee report on ministerial
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statements published in February. The Committee was asked to prepare its report as a result of the debate on the first Backbench Business Committee day on 20 July last year and the motion, also moved by my hon. Friend, that was agreed that day.
The Chair of the Procedure Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), sought a debate on a motion taking note of that report, which would have covered more issues than are under discussion today, but the motion was never debated. The Backbench Business Committee has now chosen to introduce its own motion on the subject, drawing on parts of certain Procedure Committee recommendations —although, as my right hon. Friend implied, it is unclear why we are not debating the whole report. As the shadow Leader of the House said, we responded in full to the Procedure Committee’s report and our views on its recommendations have been available to hon. Members since May. We made it clear in our response that we did not support the relevant recommendations of the Procedure Committee and so it should come as no surprise to the House that we are not able to accept today’s motion.
Let me begin by setting out where the Government are at one with the Procedure Committee and, indeed, with the majority of those who have spoken in the debate, before setting out where we disagree. The ministerial code states:
“When Parliament is in session the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, to Parliament.”
My Cabinet colleagues are very mindful of that requirement, and I do not hesitate to remind them of it. But there is clearly a “tension”—that word was used by the shadow Leader of the House—between the realities of the 24-hour news cycle and the requirement of the ministerial code. As the Government said in their response to the Procedure Committee in the spring:
“Ministers’ obligations to Parliament are paramount, but the Government also has a duty to communicate its policies and programme effectively to the wider public, including through the platform of a 24-hour news media. These dual pressures have been a reality under all recent governments”.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) made that point in his effective contribution.
I looked through the evidence to the Procedure Committee and read that a former Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), said in his:
“I don’t think we should complain about Government trying to maximise the positive media for its policy. Any Government is going to do that.”
Ministers must adhere to the responsibilities of the code, but we also need to bear in mind the need to address the public’s desire for timely, accurate information, especially when fast-moving events have a capacity to distort or misrepresent the Government’s policy. The public’s appetite for that does not start and end with the day’s sitting hours—again, that point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole.
Of course the House has legitimate expectations in this area, and this Government are making many more statements than their predecessor. We have so far made 163 oral statements this Session, and compared with the last two Sessions of the previous Government, this Government are making 40% more oral statements than Labour Ministers—a point made by my hon.
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Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). We have only to look at the record of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to see how importantly the Government view the House’s role in scrutinising policy. My right hon. Friend has spent almost 30 hours at the Dispatch Box, making 24 oral statements so far this Session, which is a considerably better record than his predecessor.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): Will the Leader of the House state how many of that increased number of statements were forced on the Government by the increase in urgent questions?
Sir George Young: None is the answer; urgent questions are in addition to the statements to which I have just referred.
I do not believe that the motion either sets realistic standards or proposes an appropriate path for what might follow from a departure from the standards. I say in passing that it also threatens to undermine the basis that all Ministers are equal under the ministerial code, because the motion applies only to Commons Ministers.
Chris Bryant: The Leader of the House is being slightly unfair. Often what happens—indeed, it happened today—is that a Member applies for an urgent question and the Minister, by some miracle, immediately decides that it would be a good idea to ask to make a statement. In those circumstances, would it not be a good idea if the Minister just started his statement with an apology?
Sir George Young: However one looks at the statistics, there has been a marked increase in the willingness of this Government to come to the House to make statements; the figures speak for themselves.
I turn to the question on which we disagree: whether or not the standards set out in the motion are the right ones. The Cabinet manual is clear that
“When Parliament is in session the most important announcements of government policy should, in the first instance, be made to Parliament”.
The words in the Cabinet manual were used in terms in the resolution of this House on 20 July, which again referred to “the most important announcements”. However, the motion before us today broadens the requirement massively, and in an open-ended manner, to “all important announcements”. At a stroke, the motion seeks to sweep away the intention of the Cabinet manual to draw a distinction between those matters that are properly for Parliament first and those matters that can be announced in other ways. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) said, almost all announcements made by the Government are important to someone. I commend the way in which he managed to get into his speech the names of a number of large villages in his constituency, and I am sure that the people in all those were delighted to hear of his commitment to them. If the House were to agree to this motion, it would replace a text that acknowledges the need for a sensible judgment about relative importance with a text that invites consideration of importance wholly in isolation.
The motion seeks to lay down a blanket requirement for statements to be made to the House first “on all occasions”, without any exceptions or qualifications. Let us consider a recent example. Does the House
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seriously imagine that the Government’s policy on the advice to be given to British nationals on travel to Iran should not have been announced before the House sat? Equally, the motion contains no recognition that certain market-sensitive announcements must be made when financial markets are closed. For example, a whole series of announcements by the previous Administration about Government support for the banks were made at 7 am. As the then official Opposition, we understood why Parliament could not be told first. If this motion is passed, any Minister making a similar announcement would face an inherent conflict between their obligations in relation to the financial markets and their obligations to this House.
Thomas Docherty: For the sake of clarity, will the Leader of the House therefore confirm that if the motion had specifically excluded financially sensitive information and matters of state security, he would have supported it? Or is this simply a smokescreen?
Sir George Young: First, the motion did not do that and the hon. Gentleman did not table such an amendment. Secondly, if he listens to the rest of what I have to say, he will understand that the Government have other difficulties with the motion.
Similarly, the motion contains no acknowledgement that announcements of policy that are the subject of international agreement must often be made simultaneously and on terms acceptable to the other parties to such agreement. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister successfully negotiated an agreement among the 16 realms at Canberra about the royal succession, and being able to announce that decision together with other Heads of Government at Canberra was part and parcel of the negotiation. The motion, if agreed to, would limit the Government’s ability to reach and announce joint or multilateral agreements—my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) also made the relevant point about military intervention.
The motion also seeks to establish as a protocol the requirement that any information that forms all or part of an announcement to Parliament should not be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament. That would be very difficult to interpret where the development of a policy has gone through several stages, some of them in the public domain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham pointed out, the inevitable increase in statements, both written and oral, that would result from a blanket interpretation would risk squeezing the House’s other business, including Opposition day debates and Back-Bench debates, as well as putting at risk the effective scrutiny of Government legislation. That is one of the central tasks of the House; it is not an optional extra.
Michael Ellis: The ministerial code of conduct makes it clear that all Ministers are equal, even those in the other place, so is the Leader of the House not concerned that this motion is particularly in error because it is silent about the Ministers in the other place?
Sir George Young: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct and I believe that I touched on that a moment or two ago.
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The motion would create new, enforceable rules of the House, and that is a novel step. In 1995, the House passed a resolution setting out the principles that should govern the conduct of Ministers of the Crown in relation to Parliament. The resolution referred to broad principles of accountability, and the duty not to mislead Parliament and to be as open as possible. It made no mention whatsoever of a duty to make statements in the House first.
I shall now deal briefly with the process outlined in the motion, which my hon. Friends did not touch on. The first step in any case where a Member believes the standards had been breached—
Sir Paul Beresford: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sir George Young: If I may, I will make some progress and then give way.
The first step in those circumstances would be to refer the matter to Mr Speaker. The relevant recommendation of the Procedure Committee says the following about what happens next:
“If he determined that the complaint was without basis or trivial, it would be open to him to dismiss it.”
The motion makes no mention of that. Where a minor breach has occurred, the motion, like the recommendation, refers to Mr Speaker taking steps. But Mr Speaker already has the power to summon Ministers to the House to answer urgent questions—a power used more extensively by this Speaker than by any of his predecessors. One should not underestimate the value of that tool. The former shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), told the Procedure Committee that Ministers take urgent questions very seriously indeed.
A range of other options are already available to the House to hold Ministers to account and can be used as sanctions. Ministers can be cross-examined by departmental Committees, they can be called to account through debate in the House—more so than ever before as a result of the Backbench Business Committee—and there can be a debate, in extreme circumstances, on a motion of censure. Indeed, I recall answering a debate in which it was proposed that my salary as a Minister should be reduced—a motion that, in its wisdom, the House did not carry.
In those circumstances, we oppose the suggestion that it would be a useful addition to give Mr Speaker the power to refer a more serious or complex breach to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That proposal was made by the Procedure Committee, although I note that the Committee has not published any written or oral evidence to show the views of the Standards and Privileges Committee on the proposal, a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). Given that there is no proposal to change the terms of reference of that Committee, I assume that a referral would be treated as a matter of conduct. The code of conduct, which applies to all Members, contains no reference to the conduct of Ministers. Indeed, this subject was not raised in the recent consultation on the code. Out of the blue, the motion seeks unilaterally to change the principles behind the code before the House has even had an opportunity to review them.
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As a former Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I think that those proposals could conflict with the fundamental role of that Committee, which is to regulate the conduct of individual hon. Members. It is not the function of the Standards and Privileges Committee to enforce the ministerial code and there is a real risk of double jeopardy if two institutions—the Prime Minister and the Standards and Privileges Committee—police the same code.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, who chairs the Procedure Committee, said that the Government preferred the status quo. That is not quite the case. We proposed a number of reforms to his Committee. First, we suggested that there should be time limits on certain oral statements, so more could be made. That was rejected. Secondly, together with the then Shadow Leader of the House, I expressed an open mind on the proposition that oral statements could be made in Westminster Hall, but the Procedure Committee made no recommendation on that. Thirdly, I proposed that the earliest time for the release of written ministerial statements should be brought forward from 9.30 am to 7 am, which could be coupled with arrangements that the House already has to ensure the prompt availability of such statements on the parliamentary website. The Procedure Committee rejected that suggestion.
The Government are keen to pursue proposals that enable the House and its Members to be informed first of the most important announcements of Government policy in helpful and innovative ways. In the light of recent events, I will remind all Cabinet colleagues of the terms of the code and the strong views of the House in the debate this evening. However, the proposal before us does not take matters forward constructively. It seeks unrealistically to change the standards expected of Ministers and then seeks to subject them to additional policing that muddies the waters surrounding the role of the Standards and Privileges Committee. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject the motion.
6.42 pm
Mr Hollobone: With the leave of the House, and on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, I want to thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have attended and contributed to this afternoon’s debate over the past two and a half hours. In addition to the speeches made by me, the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House, there were nine Back-Bench speeches and some 47 interventions. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) reminded us that we live in a world with the insatiable beast of 24-hour rolling news and that Government announcements often were not sensitive, but he was worried that Mr Speaker might be drawn into party political warfare.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) said that the Government’s response to the Procedure Committee’s report was highly unsatisfactory, but pointed out quite fairly that there were further recommendations in the report that we are not debating tonight. He also stressed that one of the problems with the ministerial code is that it is up to the judgment of the Prime Minister and that Parliament has no role in enforcing it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) accused me of harking back to a mythical golden age and quoted Neville Chamberlain on his return from Germany, saying “Peace for our time.” My hon. Friend
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also said that we need “to live in the real world—a world with 24-hour news”. He was worried that the protocol would not work.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who has the privilege of serving on both the Backbench Business Committee and the Procedure Committee, urged Ministers to toe the line while visibly crossing the line himself.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who is a member of the Standards and Privileges Committee, was unhappy that the Committee had not been involved in the preparation of this motion and said that the debate was too early. He was also worried that the Chamber would get clogged up with lots of minor Government statements on all sorts of different subjects.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), who, I believe, is a Government Parliamentary Private Secretary, said that it was difficult to decide what would be and would not be important as far as Government statements were concerned. He accused those who tabled the motion of not recognising the realities of the present-day news media.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who serves on the Procedure Committee, placed the debate into an historical context, going back to Queen Elizabeth I. He reminded us that the ministerial code says that the Government have a duty to restore trust in politics, but he also said that a resolution of this House is substantial, solid and dignified, in contrast to the ministerial code, which is merely a lot of waffle around the main theme that Ministers remain Ministers almost whatever they do so long as they enjoy the confidence of the Prime Minister.
In complete contrast, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) accused me and the House of being suffused with self-serving piety. I commend him for his forthright honesty in saying that the ministerial code, in his view, was a complete load of rubbish that ought to be torn up and that the Government should be quite open in making their news announcements to the public first without coming to this Chamber. I commend my hon. Friend for his honest approach; I condemn those Members of this House who pretend that this Chamber is where important news ought to be announced while routinely leaking that information to the press.
Finally, we had a contribution from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who reminded us of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, who resigned for leaking details of his Budget statement. The hon. Gentleman also made a very good point in answer to those who are worried that the Chamber will be clogged up with large number of oral statements about policy announcements: written ministerial statements are perfectly acceptable.
This has been a very well-informed, enthusiastic and interesting debate. For my part, this is not about Conservative versus Labour or Government versus Opposition. It is about this House of Commons, as one part of the Houses of Parliament, holding Her Majesty’s Government to account for their decisions and announcements. I leave hon. Members with one thought before we divide: do we want this Chamber to be the centre of the political life of the nation, or should we surrender to the 24-hour news media?
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The House divided:
Ayes 119, Noes 228.
[6.48 pm
AYES
Anderson, Mr David
Ashworth, Jonathan
Bailey, Mr Adrian
Bain, Mr William
Baker, Steve
Beckett, rh Margaret
Begg, Dame Anne
Benn, rh Hilary
Berger, Luciana
Blenkinsop, Tom
Blomfield, Paul
Blunkett, rh Mr David
Brennan, Kevin
Brown, Lyn
Brown, Mr Russell
Bryant, Chris
Campbell, Mr Alan
Campbell, Mr Ronnie
Carswell, Mr Douglas
Chapman, Mrs Jenny
Chope, Mr Christopher
Clarke, rh Mr Tom
Clwyd, rh Ann
Coaker, Vernon
Corbyn, Jeremy
Creagh, Mary
Creasy, Stella
Cryer, John
Cunningham, Mr Jim
Cunningham, Tony
Dakin, Nic
Danczuk, Simon
David, Mr Wayne
Davies, Geraint
Davies, Philip
Docherty, Thomas
Donohoe, Mr Brian H.
Doran, Mr Frank
Dorries, Nadine
Drax, Richard
Durkan, Mark
Eagle, Ms Angela
Eagle, Maria
Elliott, Julie
Engel, Natascha
Fitzpatrick, Jim
Flynn, Paul
Fovargue, Yvonne
Francis, Dr Hywel
Gapes, Mike
Glass, Pat
Glindon, Mrs Mary
Goldsmith, Zac
Greenwood, Lilian
Griffith, Nia
Hamilton, Mr David
Hanson, rh Mr David
Hemming, John
Hilling, Julie
Hodgson, Mrs Sharon
Hosie, Stewart
Hunt, Tristram
Jackson, Mr Stewart
Jamieson, Cathy
Jarvis, Dan
Jenkin, Mr Bernard
Jones, Graham
Jones, Susan Elan
Joyce, Eric
Kaufman, rh Sir Gerald
Lavery, Ian
Lewis, Dr Julian
Llwyd, rh Mr Elfyn
Lucas, Caroline
McCabe, Steve
McFadden, rh Mr Pat
McKechin, Ann
McKinnell, Catherine
Mearns, Ian
Miliband, rh David
Miller, Andrew
Mitchell, Austin
Nash, Pamela
Nuttall, Mr David
Onwurah, Chi
Perkins, Toby
Raynsford, rh Mr Nick
Redwood, rh Mr John
Rees-Mogg, Jacob
Reeves, Rachel
Reynolds, Emma
Reynolds, Jonathan
Riordan, Mrs Linda
Robertson, John
Ruane, Chris
Seabeck, Alison
Shuker, Gavin
Skinner, Mr Dennis
Smith, rh Mr Andrew
Smith, Angela
Smith, Nick
Spellar, rh Mr John
Stanley, rh Sir John
Straw, rh Mr Jack
Stuart, Ms Gisela
Tami, Mark
Thomas, Mr Gareth
Timms, rh Stephen
Umunna, Mr Chuka
Whitehead, Dr Alan
Williams, Hywel
Williamson, Chris
Wilson, Phil
Winterton, rh Ms Rosie
Wishart, Pete
Wollaston, Dr Sarah
Wood, Mike
Wright, David
Wright, Mr Iain
Tellers for the Ayes:
Mr James Gray and
Mr Philip Hollobone
NOES
Adams, Nigel
Aldous, Peter
Alexander, rh Danny
Andrew, Stuart
Bacon, Mr Richard
Baker, Norman
Baldwin, Harriett
Barclay, Stephen
Barwell, Gavin
Bebb, Guto
Bellingham, Mr Henry
Beresford, Sir Paul
Berry, Jake
Bingham, Andrew
Blackwood, Nicola
Blunt, Mr Crispin
Boles, Nick
Bradley, Karen
Brake, rh Tom
Bray, Angie
Brazier, Mr Julian
Bridgen, Andrew
Brokenshire, James
Bruce, Fiona
Burley, Mr Aidan
Burns, Conor
Burns, rh Mr Simon
Burrowes, Mr David
Burstow, Paul
Byles, Dan
Cable, rh Vince
Cameron, rh Mr David
Carmichael, rh Mr Alistair
Carmichael, Neil
Clark, rh Greg
Clarke, rh Mr Kenneth
Clegg, rh Mr Nick
Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
Coffey, Dr Thérèse
Crabb, Stephen
Crockart, Mike
Davey, Mr Edward
Davies, David T. C.
(Monmouth)
Davies, Glyn
de Bois, Nick
Djanogly, Mr Jonathan
Doyle-Price, Jackie
Duddridge, James
Duncan Smith, rh Mr Iain
Dunne, Mr Philip
Ellis, Michael
Ellwood, Mr Tobias
Elphicke, Charlie
Eustice, George
Evans, Graham
Evans, Jonathan
Evennett, Mr David
Fabricant, Michael
Fallon, Michael
Featherstone, Lynne
Foster, rh Mr Don
Fox, rh Dr Liam
Francois, rh Mr Mark
Freer, Mike
Fuller, Richard
Garnier, Mr Edward
Garnier, Mark
Gauke, Mr David
Gibb, Mr Nick
Gilbert, Stephen
Gillan, rh Mrs Cheryl
Glen, John
Goodwill, Mr Robert
Gove, rh Michael
Graham, Richard
Grayling, rh Chris
Green, Damian
Greening, rh Justine
Grieve, rh Mr Dominic
Griffiths, Andrew
Gummer, Ben
Gyimah, Mr Sam
Hames, Duncan
Hammond, rh Mr Philip
Hammond, Stephen
Hancock, Matthew
Hands, Greg
Harper, Mr Mark
Harris, Rebecca
Hart, Simon
Harvey, Nick
Haselhurst, rh Sir Alan
Heath, Mr David
Heaton-Harris, Chris
Hendry, Charles
Herbert, rh Nick
Hinds, Damian
Hoban, Mr Mark
Hollingbery, George
Hopkins, Kris
Howell, John
Hughes, rh Simon
Hunt, rh Mr Jeremy
Hunter, Mark
Huppert, Dr Julian
Hurd, Mr Nick
James, Margot
Javid, Sajid
Johnson, Gareth
Johnson, Joseph
Jones, Andrew
Jones, Mr David
Kirby, Simon
Kwarteng, Kwasi
Laing, Mrs Eleanor
Lamb, Norman
Lancaster, Mark
Lansley, rh Mr Andrew
Laws, rh Mr David
Leadsom, Andrea
Lee, Jessica
Lee, Dr Phillip
Leech, Mr John
Leslie, Charlotte
Letwin, rh Mr Oliver
Lewis, Brandon
Lloyd, Stephen
Lopresti, Jack
Lord, Jonathan
Loughton, Tim
Luff, Peter
Lumley, Karen
Macleod, Mary
Main, Mrs Anne
Maude, rh Mr Francis
May, rh Mrs Theresa
Maynard, Paul
McLoughlin, rh Mr Patrick
McPartland, Stephen
McVey, Esther
Menzies, Mark
Metcalfe, Stephen
Miller, Maria
Mills, Nigel
Milton, Anne
Mitchell, rh Mr Andrew
Moore, rh Michael
Morgan, Nicky
Mosley, Stephen
Mulholland, Greg
Mundell, rh David
Munt, Tessa
Murrison, Dr Andrew
Neill, Robert
Newton, Sarah
Norman, Jesse
O'Brien, Mr Stephen
Ollerenshaw, Eric
Osborne, rh Mr George
Ottaway, Richard
Paice, rh Mr James
Parish, Neil
Patel, Priti
Penning, Mike
Penrose, John
Perry, Claire
Phillips, Stephen
Pickles, rh Mr Eric
Pincher, Christopher
Poulter, Dr Daniel
Prisk, Mr Mark
Randall, rh Mr John
Reevell, Simon
Robathan, rh Mr Andrew
Robertson, Hugh
Rogerson, Dan
Rudd, Amber
Ruffley, Mr David
Rutley, David
Sanders, Mr Adrian
Scott, Mr Lee
Selous, Andrew
Shapps, rh Grant
Sharma, Alok
Shelbrooke, Alec
Simmonds, Mark
Simpson, Mr Keith
Skidmore, Chris
Smith, Miss Chloe
Smith, Henry
Smith, Julian
Soames, rh Nicholas
Soubry, Anna
Spencer, Mr Mark
Stephenson, Andrew
Stevenson, John
Stewart, Bob
Stewart, Iain
Streeter, Mr Gary
Stride, Mel
Stunell, Andrew
Swayne, rh Mr Desmond
Swire, rh Mr Hugo
Syms, Mr Robert
Teather, Sarah
Thurso, John
Timpson, Mr Edward
Truss, Elizabeth
Uppal, Paul
Vaizey, Mr Edward
Vara, Mr Shailesh
Villiers, rh Mrs Theresa
Walker, Mr Robin
Wallace, Mr Ben
Ward, Mr David
Watkinson, Angela
Weatherley, Mike
Webb, Steve
Wharton, James
Wheeler, Heather
Whittingdale, Mr John
Wiggin, Bill
Willetts, rh Mr David
Williamson, Gavin
Wilson, Mr Rob
Wright, Jeremy
Wright, Simon
Young, rh Sir George
Tellers for the Noes:
Oliver Colvile and
Penny Mordaunt
Question accordingly negatived.
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5 Dec 2011 : Column 81
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UK Extradition Arrangements
[Relevant document : The Fifteenth Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, The Human Rights Implications of UK Extradition Policy, HC 767.]
7.1 pm
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con): I beg to move,
That this House calls upon the Government to reform the UK’s extradition arrangements to strengthen the protection of British citizens by introducing as a matter of urgency a Bill to enact the safeguards recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its Fifteenth Report, HC 767, and by pursuing such amendments to the UK-US Extradition Treaty 2003 and the EU Council Framework Decision 2002 on the European Arrest Warrant as are necessary in order to give effect to such recommendations.
First, may I thank the Backbench Business Committee chaired by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) for granting this debate? Her Committee is proving to be a shot in the arm for Parliament and our democracy. I also wish to thank the cross-party sponsors of the motion, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), the Chairs of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Home Affairs Committee, and the many, many MPs on all sides of the House who signed and support the motion.
The debate was scheduled at relatively short notice, so the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee are not here. The right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife is leading a parliamentary delegation in Washington. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee is also engaged but will join the debate later. Both spoke passionately in the Westminster Hall debate on 24 November. Both asked that I reiterate their firm support for the motion this evening.
The issue before us is technical and legalistic but, at its core, it is about the price we place on the liberty of our citizens, and the value we ascribe to that cornerstone of British justice, innocent until proven guilty. It is not about abolishing extradition, which is vital to international efforts in relation to law enforcement. It is about whether, in taking the fight to the terrorists and the serious criminals after 9/11, the pendulum swung too far the other way. I want to praise the Minister and the coalition for their efforts to defend our freedoms and their achievements to date, and for taking seriously the case for extradition reform. My purpose today is to encourage their best instincts and inject a dose of common sense into the blunt extradition regime that we now have in place.
What went wrong? Let us take, first, the UK-US treaty of 2003. Much has been made of the different evidential thresholds. The review by Sir Scott Baker concluded that there was “no significant difference” between the two tests, probable cause and reasonable suspicion. For my part, I do not believe there is a massive difference between the paper legal tests, but that does not mean that their operation is symmetrical. As Alun Jones QC, who represented the Spanish Government during the Pinochet case, argued and points out in The Daily Telegraph today, an American citizen who is subject to an extradition warrant in the US has the constitutional safeguard that a judge must examine
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the evidence. In this country, a short recitation of the allegations suffices. That is a very real and important imbalance.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He says that he believes the evidential test to be higher in the USA than it is in the United Kingdom. Will he acknowledge, however, that the United States has not refused a single request since the treaty was introduced?
Mr Raab: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will take his word on that data, but the key distinction that I am making is between the paper legal test and how it actually works. We are not going to be ivory tower academic lawyers about this. Let us understand the impact on the people affected.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): Let me correct the record. The Americans may not have refused any British applications for extradition, but they have refused to provide witnesses in other countries’ cases, which has led to broken trials.
Mr Raab: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification.
In practical terms the arrangements are unbalanced too. On the latest data available—I thank the Immigration Minister for his letter correcting earlier replies to parliamentary questions—29 UK nationals or dual nationals were extradited from Britain to the US since 2004. Five Americans were extradited from the US to Britain.
Obviously, states extradite their own nationals and third parties as well, but we in the House are rightly concerned about the treatment of those removed from the home country. In front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the US ambassador disputed some of the earlier data that I spoke to in the Westminster Hall debate, complaining about untrue accusations being made by MPs and adding:
“The constant use of skewed arguments and wilful distortion of the facts by some to advance their own agendas remains of great concern to the United States”.
If there is any dispute about the facts it is not with me or any Member of this House, but with Ministers from the previous Government who failed to record consistently data on the issue between 2004 and 2007. I emphasise that all the figures cited today and in the previous debate were from Government replies to parliamentary questions. Neither the ambassador nor the US embassy, when I later followed up, were able to correct the figures with data based on their own records, so I find it regrettable that the charge of
“wilful distortion of the facts”
is being bandied around without His Excellency being in command of a few of his own.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con):
I am greatly enjoying what my hon. Friend is saying. I am a thorough supporter of the idea that the extradition rules should be reviewed, but I am still
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grappling, in the American case, with the difference between the two tests. Will he give us a sense of how they might come apart?
Mr Raab: The fundamental question is the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. As paper tests, I do not think there is an enormous amount of difference between them, but as Alun Jones QC, whose article in The Daily TelegraphI commend, has spelled out, the practical operation—the judicial scrutiny that is available in the US because of the US constitutional guarantees—is higher. That is the key difference.
For all the talk of the evidential burden and the question of reciprocity, in my view, the critical issue in the US arrangements is forum. That is the label for how one decides where, in cross-border cases, the appropriate jurisdiction lies. The Gary McKinnon case is the leading case attracting great controversy at present. At root it is about the injustice in dispatching someone with Asperger’s syndrome hundreds of miles from home on allegations of computer hacking when he was apparently searching for unidentified flying objects. Gary McKinnon should not be treated like some gangland mobster or al-Qaeda mastermind.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his efforts to secure the debate. Does he agree that whatever the outcome of the debate tonight, it would be helpful if the Government Front-Bench team gave us an update on the Gary McKinnon and Babar Ahmad cases, given that they have been so closely involved in them in the past?
Mr Raab: I thank the hon. Gentleman. It would certainly be useful to have an update on the cases that have attracted so much limelight and controversy.
More generally, we ought to have some discretion in this country to prosecute such cross-border cases here. Jurisdiction ought to be decided transparently, by independent courts, according to clear legal rules, not by prosecutors haggling behind closed doors. That is why the idea of guidelines for prosecutors does not go far enough. Of course, the legislation is already in place under the Police and Justice Act 2006. Let us bring it into force and take the political heat out of these cases, which I respectfully suggest would be in the interests of both countries. The previous Government enacted that legislation, so it is difficult to understand why Labour Front Benchers might seek to block it by opposing the motion.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab): Many constituents have raised with me the Babar Ahmad case, which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) mentioned. Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what effect he understands his motion, if agreed to, will have on pending cases, as opposed to future cases?
Mr Raab: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. The short answer is that it is not clear. There has been talk about whether it might have some impact on the Babar Ahmad case, and indeed the Gary McKinnon case, but the truth is that it is not clear, and from this position I cannot give legal advice on individual cases.
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Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con): My hon. Friend makes his case with great erudition and I have every admiration for him, but I would like to return to something he said earlier about the practical import of the matter. Does he agree that, whatever the measure’s impact, it is essential that never again must anyone spend seven years in prison awaiting extradition?
Mr Raab: My hon. Friend is of course right. That must be a point of principle, even when serious allegations have been laid.
The proposed change in the law might not even necessitate amendment of the treaty. Nevertheless, given its disproportionate value to our American friends, it is inconceivable that they would refuse if pressed to change the treaty. I also note that in the US’s extradition treaties with Brazil, Mexico and Australia, to name a few, those countries retain the right to decline extradition in those and far wider circumstances as it affects their nationals. Is it so unreasonable for Britain, a stalwart ally, to ask for that rather modest adjustment?
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green): With regard to an earlier intervention, it might be helpful to the House if I explained that the legal advice I have received—I know that there is plenty of legal advice on all sides—indicates that if it can be demonstrated that there were original flaws in the Babar Ahmad case, as I believe it can, the outcome of the vote could be particularly relevant to that case.
Mr Raab: I thank the hon. Lady for shedding light on some of the legal advice on that.
In my view, the regime in place under the European arrest warrant suffers from far more serious and widespread flaws than the UK-US arrangements, despite the important concerns that have been raised in that regard. If we consider the appalling treatment of Andrew Symeou, we will see the egregious nature of the flaws in the system. Greek police beat identical statements out of witnesses, which were later retracted, and Andrew spent practically a year in appalling prison conditions. He was left with a flea-ridden blanket in a baking-hot cell crawling with cockroaches and was abused by guards. He witnessed a prisoner being beaten to death for drug money. The trial proceeded at a crawl, with translators who spoke little English. Eventually he was cleared after a two-year ordeal.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con): My hon. Friend is making an excellent argument. He refers to my constituent, Andrew Symeou. Not only did Andrew go through all that before eventually being freed, but the human price his family paid was shocking. They had to put their lives on hold for up to four years, including two years in Greece.
Mr Raab: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Andrew’s father, Frank, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I am sure that we will hear from the Chair of the Committee later. The damage done and the human suffering not only to the direct victims, but to their families, are very clear. One of the major flaws of the Baker review is that it did not talk to or take evidence from the victims or their representatives.
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Jesse Norman: Further to the point about the case of Andrew Symeou, when the European arrest warrant was introduced, did the introducing authorities look at the standards of law, order and punishment across the European countries in order to assure themselves that such conditions could not occur?
Mr Raab: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will move on to the level of scrutiny later, but the short answer is that the level in that case was not nearly high enough. The question today is whether we in this House have the will to stand up and ensure that the trauma of the Symeou case and many others is not inflicted on other innocent people. Let us be very clear that Symeou was innocent, as are many of the victims under the European arrest warrant.
The Symeou case exposes the fatal flaw in the European arrest warrant. Fast-track extradition in the EU—I think this will answer my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—is based on a leap of faith and an assumption that all European justice systems are of a decent standard. That assumption is a sham. The justice systems in many European countries are well below any acceptable minimum standard. The Baker review proposed no safeguards to prevent a repeat of such miscarriages of justice. The report expressed the aspiration that penal conditions and justice systems across Europe will get better in time. In fact, standards of justice in some of the countries concerned are getting worse. According to Transparency International’s corruption perception index—just one benchmark, but an important one—corruption is getting worse in Greece, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria. Even if standards of justice improve across Europe, as we all hope they will, our duty is to protect our citizens today, not in five or 10 years’ time. That is why it is important to take action now and not accept the “hit and hope” counsel of the Baker review.
The Baker review failed to take evidence directly from the victims and hear about the trauma that innocent people and their families have been through. In contrast, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), took evidence from a range of victims, including Frank Symeou, Deborah Dark, Michael Turner and Edmond Arapi.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con): I am very much in sympathy with what my hon. Friend is saying. What is the balance between the number of Europeans who are extradited to the UK and the number of British citizens who are extradited to other European countries?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo): Order. The hon. Gentleman has been very generous in giving way, but before he replies I gently remind him of the time limit that will apply in the debate and that his introductory remarks were supposed to take about 10 to 15 minutes.
Mr Raab: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will make progress. The short answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) is that I am moving on to that point.