HC Deb 24 June 1994 vol 245 cc522-5 2.15 pm
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

I beg to move, That this House notes the declining importance of Parliament in the nation's affairs as power moves from national governments to the institutions of the European Union; and calls for a reduction in the number of honourable Members of Parliament, the construction of a new Parliamentary building, the uninterrupted televising of proceedings, the election of a second chamber by regional proportional representation, the determination of the electoral system for the Commons following a referendum, the provision of adequate chamber facilities for honourable Members, and for pm-legislative scrutiny and reinforcement of the Select Committee system. I express my gratitude to the business managers for allowing us to reach motion No. 2 so that I can say a few words.

On Monday this week, when the Liberal Democrats had a motion down about changing parliamentary procedures, the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) spoke about the public contempt for Parliament. In my opinion, he was absolutely wrong: there is no public contempt for Parliament. If there is contempt—and one would accept that there is—it is contempt for politicians.

Many people would say that politicians rank only slightly above journalists and cockroaches in public esteem. I have always thought that that was a little unkind to cockroaches because they are perfectly evolved creatures, which is more than I can say for many Members of Parliament. They would survive a nuclear holocaust, which, fortunately, no Member of Parliament would.

That shows that our standing in the eyes of the electorate is fairly low. There is a worrying degree of mutual contempt; that is what I sense—mutual contempt. If a Government who were elected on a minority of votes push hard with deeply unpopular legislation without regard for public opinion, the electorate get the feeling that the politicians and—although I shall not particularise—the Government do not give a damn about their feelings. If we continue to ignore the wishes of the electorate, obviously we prove them right in that respect. Mutual contempt is therefore created.

We perhaps feel—when I say, "we", I mean all hon. Members—that we can get away with things that are unpopular. That is a way of treating the electorate with contempt, and the electorate simply think that politicians are self-seeking and do not pay very much attention to the wishes and needs of their constituents. In both cases, that is a slightly unfair analysis, but we all sense those feelings that people have about us.

Recently there has rightly been an upsurge in parliamentary navel-gazing. I mentioned the debate that we had at the beginning of the week. On Monday, we shall debate the Select Committee system. We are still waiting to debate the Jopling report in any meaningful and executive measure, although I suspect and trust that we shall do so shortly. I think that it is right that we should examine this institution very critically.

I am pleased to say that in recent years my party, the Labour party, has proposed, through conference resolutions, a range of constitutional changes that the next Labour Government will implement: a Bill of Rights; a second Chamber elected by regional list and proportional representation; the election of British Members of the European Parliament in a similar way; the restoration of independent local government; the scrutiny by Parliament of the prerogative powers of the Executive; and fixed-term Parliaments, which I think are very significant indeed.

The Prime Minister of the day has far too much power to decide when the election will be called. Clearly, a Prime Minister will not choose a time that is inconvenient or embarrassing to his party. It is difficult to see the present Prime Minister finding any window of opportunity between now and 1997—I am sure that he will go all the way to the wire. If we had fixed-term Parliaments as other countries do, it would give a degree of certainty. If Governments start manoeuvring and creating economic booms, we cannot stop them, but the electorate will know what it is all about. The Labour party will be considering Lord Plant's report on proportional representation systems. It is right that we should do so.

Changes are coming whether we like it or not, mainly because of the European dimension. Powers are moving away from this place and from all national Parliaments, as they move towards the institutions of the European Union. There are hon. Members in all parties who find that disagreeable. They believe that the disappearance of parliamentary sovereignty and powers into the institutions of Brussels marks a retrograde step. I do not believe that. I shall not go too deeply into the subject, but I believe in a federal Europe. I have no fears about national sovereignty disappearing into the greater good or the nation state moving away and disappearing as states evolve and we move towards a federal European state. That seems to be natural and I welcome it.

We cannot stand around in this place whingeing about the changes and the way that they affect us; we must try to respond to them. The European Parliament will clearly obtain more powers—Maastricht guaranteed that. The intergovernmental conference in 1996 will undoubtedly move the process forward. It is important that we work within those movements and try to ensure that the European Parliament obtains more power so that it can hold the institutions of the European Union to greater account. We need to democratise those institutions. It is no good whingeing; we must respond to the changes.

We have a thin legislative programme and we can already see how we are making work for ourselves in this place to fill up the available time, which is depressing. We are looking at the possibility of the summer recess starting in the middle of next month and continuing until October. If this place is meant to hold the Executive to account, it cannot do so with a 14 or 15-week summer recess. We should consider ways of phasing the recesses throughout the year so that if it is true that we hold the Executive to account in this place—which I doubt—we can make more of a fist of it by questioning Ministers regularly and not letting them off the hook for an enormously long period in the summer.

I think that we all accept that we work ridiculous hours in this place. The hours and the manner of our work destroy individuals' health and personal relationships. I shall not go too deeply into the issue of the hours we work as the Jopling report is considering that subject. I am sure that we shall have an opportunity before the recess to debate that issue, and, more important, to vote on the report's recommendations.

I mentioned the fact that the Labour party will be considering the Plant report. To his eternal credit, John Smith said that the Labour Government would have a referendum on a change of system if one is proposed, which I suspect it will be. I can see how things are working. It would be better for a proposal to change our electoral system to come from one of the major parties—the Labour party or the Conservative party—than for it to come from the Liberal Democrats, who could be seen to be self-seeking in wanting to change the system. I want our electoral system to reflect the needs and wishes of the electorate. I do not think that the way our system works at the moment has that effect.

If we changed to a system of proportional representation, we could reduce the numbers of Members of Parliament. There are far too many of them, although that might be hard to believe looking around the Benches today. There are 651 and their work loads differ enormously. I know that there are Stakhanovites on both sides of the House; the same people always seem to be around. But if the United States, with a population of 240 million, can get away with a Congress of 535, I should have thought that we, with a much smaller population, could get away with far fewer Members of Parliament.

As the Government are reducing their functions these days by privatising everything, perhaps it is time they started to reduce the number of Ministers too. I note that one group never mooted for privatisation are the Government themselves. They might get some support from us if they proposed to privatise themselves.

If we reduced the numbers of Members of Parliament, we could improve the facilities for them. I am not looking for jacuzzis and sun beds, but we could at least have allocated places in this Chamber. The layout of the Chamber derives from the fact that, in 1547, Edward VI gifted his chapel to the Commons—and we are left with this ridiculous choir stall arrangement and no facilities.

Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham)

I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware that the hemicycle shape of most European legislatures leads to rhetorical interventions by Ministers and none of the give and take that I have enjoyed in my four or five weeks here.

I have worked for the BBC and for a trade union, both extremely parsimonious institutions; but now I come here to find that there are no facilities and no secretarial help. There are free paper clips and there is free stationery. The meanest pizza delivery boy has a fax and a mobile phone, but we have nothing. I want to do a job for Rotherham, and I should like to have the facilities with which to do it.

Mr. Banks

I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) I hope that he has discovered the Fees Office by now. The best bit of advice one can give a new Member is to tell him the way to the Fees Office. We do get secretarial allowances, so people outside tend not to sympathise with us much. But it is difficult to run a constituency office and a Westminster office, as I do, on the £41,000 that we receive—it is clearly not enough. Last year, and the year before that, I had to give the Fees Office a cheque at the end of the year—last year for £7,000 or £8,000—because I had gone over my budget. I had stopped claiming money, because there was none left by November in a financial year that goes through to March. We do not have enough resources to do our jobs properly.

This is a strange place to work in, because no account is taken of our differing work loads. In my constituency, I get problems by the skip load, yet I have exactly the same facilities as does a Member of Parliament who may receive a few dozen letters a week and whose main problem is deciding which garden fete to open on Saturday. Would that I had those sorts of problems!

The answer lies entirely in our own hands. We are in the strange position of being our own bosses—although we seem to have lots of other bosses who are always telling us what to do and what we have done wrong, and how they would do it differently. Every pub contains an alternative Government. It is one of the great tragedies of this life: if only all those taxi drivers and hairdressers would turn to politics, the country might be far better run.

As I say, we could deal with the matter ourselves, but we have consistently failed to do so. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham will add his voice to those arguing, not for luxury for hon. Members, but for decent facilities so that they can do a better constituency job.

I think that the layout of this Chamber should be changed. No great history attaches to it, after all; it only dates from 1951. We could turn it into a hemicycle. If we did not want to do that, we could certainly have allocated desks if, as I have suggested, we reduced the number of hon. Members, and that would enable us to have electronic voting. Why do we have to go through the absurdity of continually breaking off to go into the Division Lobby? I do not want to see all the traditions of this place thrown away, but we must not allow ourselves to be imprisoned by our past.

The Chamber is confrontational. If we took 650 people from the telephone directory and stuck them in this place they would behave in exactly the same way as hon. Members behave at Prime Minister's Question Time. In many respects, the Chamber is like a football pitch with banks of supporters on each side looking down to the pitch, each group cheering on its own side even when it is playing rubbish. That is precisely what it is all about—and unfortunately too many people view Prime Minister's Question Time as the be all and end all of parliamentary activity, which it is not.

It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.