Sir Christopher Chope
MP for Christchurch · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one? I was looking at my calendar of business, otherwise known as the Order Paper, and it says that “The selection of the matters to be debated will be made by the Leader of the Opposition (Standing Order No.”
“The Climate Change Committee has condemned the Government for failing and falling short of adapting to climate change and accepting the reality as it is, which is that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have increased to between 3.5° and 4.5° above pre-industrial levels.”
“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon.”
“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”
“That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply.”
“Next week, can the Leader of the House produce a Government statement in response to the Hallett review on covid-19 vaccines? Lady Hallett recommended major reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme.”
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Every one of 5,444 lines we hold for Sir Christopher Chope, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 63 of 109.
“I am very much in favour of engagement, but only with those who want to engage on the same page, if I may put it in such a way. My concern is that the Russians are not showing any willingness to do so. If we believe that there has been a fundamental breach of the statute, as I have set out, and if that is allowed to happen with impunity, it brings into question the whole purpose of this international organisation. What is the point of belonging to it? That is the question to which I hope we will get an answer from the Minister.”
“I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister, in his response to the debate, will say that we are taking a lead and explain what we will do.”
“The Council of Europe is different from the United Nations, and the statute spells out that it is separate from the United Nations. The Council of Europe covers only Europe—European values and principles. I would be concerned if the right hon. Gentleman wanted to be an apologist for the Russian Federation, although I do not believe that he does. Until now, cross-party concern has been expressed in the House about the behaviour of the Russian Federation. If we are prepared to take economic sanctions against the Russian Federation, why should we not take the sanctions that are available to us under the Council of Europe statute? The answer may be because certain other members of the Council of Europe are too frightened to want to join in, but my answer to them is that the United Kingdom has traditionally taken a lead in such things.”
“Just as public opinion in this country is influenced by international events, if we took a firmer line against Russia on its human rights record and its breaches of the rules of the Council of Europe, we would support those in Russia who are trying to fight against the system. I know from having had the privilege of talking to Bill Browder that he also believes that it is better to try to sanction the regime in Russia than to continue to indulge it.”
“I agree, but how best can we do that? That is a question of judgment. I have heard it said, for example, that we must keep Russia in the Council of Europe because if we do not, it will reinstate the death penalty. In fact, however, we can see from recent events that the Russian Government exercise an extrajudicial death penalty by murdering enemies of the state in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Do we tolerate such behaviour because we are fearful that Russia might reintroduce a judicial death penalty instead of the extrajudicial death penalty that is currently handed out by the President? The extent to which we should impose sanctions is an eternal dilemma.”
“Article 8 outlines a two-stage process. The first stage states: “Any member of the Council of Europe which has seriously violated Article 3 may be suspended from its rights of representation”. That is what I am suggesting as a first stage. Article 8 goes on to say what can happen afterwards. My hon. Friend says that expulsion would be a very strong sanction, but my suggestion is that we should start off with suspension, using the powers under article 8.”
“There are two separate issues: the Russian delegation’s membership of the Parliamentary Assembly and Russia’s membership of the Council of Europe as a country. I am saying that article 8 should be applied on that latter point. I am not talking about the situation within the Parliamentary Assembly, which has already been well rehearsed. I am talking about the Government’s responsibility to do something under article 8.”
“I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that people can be in a parliamentary assembly and have their rights suspended while they still remain members of the Council of Europe itself, because if someone’s country is still in the Council of Europe there is an argument for saying that their parliamentarians should be in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. That is why I am arguing that Russia should be suspended from the Council of Europe itself.”
“My hon. Friend is making a thoughtful contribution, but where does that leave us in relation to the enforcement of judgments? For example, it is clear that the Russian Federation is not going to comply with the Yukos judgment against it. What sanction will there be when it does not?”
“I am surprised to hear about the extent of the U-turn. Can my hon. Friend explain why there has been such a U-turn? Surely the Government are normally consistent—or try to be consistent—from one week to the next.”
“On trying to reduce dependency on Russia, how does President Juncker’s recent proposal for a European army to stop President Putin in his tracks fit into the work programme?”
“Is this not all pie in the sky? There is no way in which the Commission or other member states will agree to these fundamental changes. Is that not why we need to go back to basics and have a free trade organisation without the free movement of people, just as we have free trade agreements with other countries without having to take in all their people as a right, without any control over them? Would it not be better to work towards, for example, visa waiver systems?”
“Having originally not been open with him about whether they were for it or against it, we forced them to come clean in the end and say that they were against it in principle, which they could have said many months earlier. That is typical of the problems that we have with Friday business, but I am sure that, as my hon. Friend said, that Bill of his will reach the statute book in due course.”
“We have a large umbrella over us, and if we try to reduce the scope of that umbrella, the likelihood is that alternative parties will try to get into the space that is vacated. That mistake has been made in Germany by the Christian Democrats. They have in a sense given space for the Alternative für Deutschland to enter the fray, and I hope that something similar does not happen in this country and that we continue to maintain a broad church in our party. I congratulate my hon. Friend on successfully steering the Bill through the House. I helped in every way that I could to try to ensure that his balloted Bill—the Off-patient Drugs Bill—got on to the statute book, but it was blocked in a rather unfortunate manner by the Government.”
“(Christchurch) (Con): I had not intended to speak in this short debate, but having listened with embarrassment to the kind words of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), the least I can do is thank him very much for his service to the House and to the Conservative party. I hope that his wisdom and experience will continue to be used by and available to our great party. As he says, our party is at its best when it embraces all strands of Conservative thinking. My hon. Friend is still the chairman of the party in Wales, and I hope that in that capacity and as a member of the board of the Conservative party, he will continue to have a significant influence on the party’s affairs and ensure that our leadership is always mindful of the fact that we are a broad church.”
“I assume that the Bill being steered through the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire does have the support of the Liberal Democrats and that they support the principle that we should not legislate retrospectively in relation to conduct that could give rise to expulsion or suspension from the House. On that basis, I have talked myself into quite an optimistic frame of mind, thinking that the amendment is so compelling that it is likely to be accepted not only by my right hon. Friend, but by my hon. Friend the Minister on behalf of the Government.”
“Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) will accept that amendment 6 would be a valuable addition to the Bill, rather than detract from it. If he has not had the chance to clear it with the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, I am sure he should not feel inhibited by that and he should feel able to express his view on behalf of the Government today. The Medical Innovation Bill is also on today’s Order Paper. It was promoted in the House of Lords by my noble friend Lord Saatchi, who was led to believe, as the Bill was going through the other place, that it had the support of the whole Government, but then we read in the Sunday papers that apparently at no stage did it have the support of the Liberal Democrats, although they were not prepared to say so openly.”
“Before people are accused of breaking the rules, they should know what those rules are, and the rules should not be changed after the conduct takes place just so the person can be brought to book for something embarrassing. That is the brief but fundamental point. It is clear from the discussions I have had with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire that he has sympathy for the amendment, but he may feel inhibited in accepting it, because the Bill is not his Bill. It does not even belong to its promoter in the other place; it is, essentially, like every Bill that comes here on a Friday, a proxy Bill for the Government, who have a veto over all such Bills. I hope that the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my hon.”
“The commissioner interpreted it as meaning that it could apply to anybody—the person on the Clapham omnibus—such that if they heard somebody talk about a particular subject, even though that person did not have an interest that should be declared, it might seem as though they ought to have one, and that if the other person thought they might have an interest, there was a need to declare that. That is now being incorporated into the new code of conduct, but we took the view that it should not be incorporated with retrospective effect. That is why amendment 6 is not a mere academic exercise; it goes to the heart of what is fair and reasonable in a rules-based organisation.”
“Friends who was being sanctioned by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on the basis of a fresh interpretation of the rule book which, prior to that, had never been thought to be fair or reasonable. The Standards Committee said that if there was to be a reinterpretation of our code of conduct, it should be prospective rather than retrospective, and that we could not start condemning people for acts that they had had no reason to believe were in breach of the code. The issue was whether someone should make a declaration of interest to the House—to a Committee—when they did not have an interest but might be thought by somebody to have an interest. Until now, it has always been thought that that referred to other knowledgeable people sitting in the Chamber or in a Committee.”
“I therefore hope that they can be put into the Bill and that he will accept, in particular, amendment 6. I look forward to hearing from him all the reasons why the amendment is technically defective or in some other way falls short of the high standards that he has brought to legislation in this place throughout his very long career. Unless or until I hear what those technical objections are, it would be much better for us to insist that the other place deals with issues relating to discipline on a prospective basis rather than a retrospective basis. We have had similar issues in our own House. The Standards Committee, on which I have the privilege of serving, dealt with the case of one of our right hon.”
“In fairness to my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is promoting the Bill in this place, he said, when I raised this issue in the Public Bill Committee: “Serious issues have been raised. I will take advice on the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch raised about the issue of retrospectivity between the time that the Act comes into force and the Standing Orders being changed. I cannot promise any amendments, but I will see whether I can get some assurances that shed some light on that.” –– [ Official Report, House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Public Bill Committee, 4 February 2015; c. 13.] The amendments are designed to ensure that we have the opportunity to put into the Bill the safeguards that my right hon. Friend, in fairness, accepted were reasonable.”
“A Member of the other House could behave in a way that people found embarrassing, although their conduct was not in breach of the relevant Standing Orders and code of conduct of the House, but the code of conduct and the Standing Orders were subsequently changed in order to cover that scenario. In other words, without the safeguards set out in amendment 6 and/or amendment 19, it would be possible for the conduct giving rise to the expulsion or suspension to be conduct which, prior to the change in Standing Orders, would not have been in breach of them. This is a straightforward issue of whether we support the principles of prospective rather than retrospective legislation. In the 800th anniversary year of Magna Carta, I would have thought that we would be very much against introducing more scope for retrospection in our legislation.”
“That is a proviso to ensure that the legislation cannot be retrospective and is limited by clause 1(4)(b), which says: “or (b) occurred before the coming into force of this Act and was not public knowledge before that time.” We had some discussion of that last week. The issue is addressed in some of the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). After the words “occurred after the coming into force of this Act”, my amendment 6 would add the words “and any Standing Orders made under subsection(1)”. Without the amendment the following could happen.”
“The precedent for my approach is none other than the contents of the 2012 House of Lords Reform Bill, which did not make progress because the Government were unwilling to allow the Bill to proceed to a full debate and wanted to control it by a guillotine process. That Government Bill specifically linked the code of conduct in the other place and powers to suspend or expel. Last week, in the interests of brevity, I did not address amendments 6 and 19. To freshen our proceedings, it might be worth referring to those. They amount to the same thing. How do those two amendments fit into the Bill? The Bill provides in clause 1(4) that “A resolution passed by virtue of subsection (1) must state that, in the opinion of the House of Lords, the conduct giving rise to the resolution— (a) occurred after the coming into force of this Act”.”
“We were discussing these amendments last Friday. There was a Division and, because the House was not quorate, under the relevant Standing Order we have, in effect, gone back to the start. That does not mean that it is necessary for me to repeat everything that I said last week, because that is on the record. However, I will repeat the point that the Bill is a very serious piece of legislation, because it provides not only for the suspension from service of Members of the other place, but for their expulsion on the basis of breaches of conduct. My amendments are designed to ensure that the code of conduct in the House of Lords is linked specifically with the Bill, so that expulsions and suspensions can take place only for breaches of the code of conduct, rather than just for conduct, as currently set out in the Bill.”
“Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendment proposed : 6, page 1, line 17, after “Act”, insert “and any Standing Orders made under subsection (1)”— (Mr Chope.) Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“In my view that represents a danger of retrospection, and I cannot understand why the Government are against this measure. They may say that it is unnecessary in the light of assurances that have been given, but it would not be the first piece of Government legislation that was duplication and unnecessary, so that in itself cannot be a convincing and decisive argument against it. Because of the obiter dicta of people such as Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who seems to have a rather different agenda from that discussed by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire, we should make a final attempt to get one safeguard against retrospection into the Bill. I will therefore withdraw amendment 1, on which we tried to vote last week, and instead I will test the will of the House on amendment 6. I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 1.”
“However, that is a question that we need not have in the Bill itself, but it is certainly a question that the Committee for Privileges and Conduct and others will need to consider at a later stage.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2014; Vol. 757, c. 650-651.] When I read out that quote last week, I did not get any assurance from my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire that conduct would be confined to what is in the current code of conduct or in any changed code of conduct. As I have said, the code of conduct is not specifically linked to the Bill. What is in the Bill is “conduct”. Unless we have that safeguard, the Standing Orders of the other place could be amended to impact on conduct that took place prior to the amendment of those Standing Orders, but subsequent to the enactment of the Bill.”
“If repeat offences are to give rise to expulsion, rather than just a reprimand, that should only be prospective and not retrospective. If the House had accepted the amendments in the first group, which we debated last Friday, I do not think that I would be so concerned, because those amendments would have linked the code of conduct much more closely to the provisions of the Bill. However, those amendments were not accepted. I remind the House what Lord Wallace of Saltaire said: “I read the latest Code of Conduct again this morning, thinking that we need to be sure what we are on about. One of the issues that perhaps we need to discuss informally off the Floor is how far this measure is intended to refer only to conduct that is mentioned in the Code of Conduct or to egregious conduct of other sorts conducted by Members of this House.”
“What a short but fascinating debate this has been. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Minister had a chance to stand at the Dispatch Box and participate. During the latter part of his comments, I became more concerned because he made the case for retrospection in relation to misconduct that would give rise to expulsion. That is exactly the concern that I have. We heard last week from my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) that one course of conduct that their lordships are keen to ensure results in expulsion is repeated breaches of offences. That means that if one was guilty of repeated misdemeanours, there would be the possibility of expulsion. There is therefore all the more reason why none of this should be retrospective.”
“If we had a House of Lords that was reformed in terms of numbers, many of the problems would be solved, but I know that some people, who would like a complete change in the other place, see the lack of ability to suspend Members as a reason to attack it. I think that we should leave it as it is at the moment, as an appointed Chamber. We should reduce the number of peers, but we should not interfere in a part of our democracy that seems to be working well. I am assured by many of my noble Friends that the Bill will give more power to the elbow of those who want to maintain the status quo in the other place. If the Bill will deliver that, it deserves a Third Reading.”
“I am concerned that the numbers are so large that they will try to find any excuse to reduce them. I fear that the Bill could be a Trojan horse for reducing the numbers, whereas a much better way forward would be to adopt, for example, the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, which is on the Order Paper for later today, but which I am sure will be blocked by the Government, as it has been on so many previous occasions. Let us hope that the Bill will make the House of Lords concentrate on how it can possibly limit its numbers, not by expulsions or suspensions, but by genuinely recognising that we cannot have the second Chamber of this country being the second largest legislature in the world, after that of the People’s Republic of China.”
“The Liberal Democrats seem to have a veto on everything and are rarely represented in the Chamber on a Friday, and they often say one thing to one group of people while doing something completely different. I am sure they will be here to defend themselves when the House is no longer sitting. One good thing about the Bill is that it will enable a period of suspension to go beyond the end of one Parliament. I made it clear at the outset that that is a good idea. In answer to my intervention, my right hon. Friend said that 1954 was the last time we expelled anybody from the Commons. I hope that it will be 60 or 70 years before the other place has to expel anybody. The other place has not been able to sort itself out in terms of numbers, largely because of the patronage of the party leaders.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who, with typical modesty, suggests that he has been unable to handle the Bill effectively in the Commons. He has handled it highly effectively, as one would expect from somebody with such distinguished service in the House and such an expert knowledge of the procedures. In the discussion on the Bill, we have shown that we need to ask questions of private Member’s Bills, and particularly constitutional ones. He has been eager to answer those questions. The Bill would have taken a slightly different form if there had been more flexibility on the Government’s part, and if they were willing to accept amendments. That is the nature of the problems we have at the moment, with a Government of two parts.”
“My right hon. Friend talks about the importance of honouring existing commitments. How does that fit in with what we read in the press about the Government now insisting on having a golden share in the nuclear plant at Hinkley Point?”
“The Minister is drifting on to offshore wind but this Bill deals with onshore wind. In so doing, he is alarming me: is he saying that because the subsidies are being withdrawn from onshore wind we are going to carry on with the subsidy bonanza to all the subsidy junkies who are engaged in the offshore wind business?”
“My hon. Friend will have seen page 25 of yesterday’s Daily Mail , which had a full-page article headed “Europe’s most wanted”, saying that they are here in the United Kingdom. It has pictures of 16 foreign criminals, mainly from eastern Europe, many of whom have been convicted in their own countries, who are on the run in this country. What is being done about this? It seems as though nothing much is being done about it.”
“I agree with absolutely everything my right hon. Friend is saying. Does he recall that there was no commitment to anything like this in the Conservative party manifesto before the last general election? Indeed, the only proposal was that, should there be a change of Prime Minister, it should trigger a general election within six months.”
“If those words mean what the Minister thinks they mean, how can they be consistent with the specific pledge in the Conservative party manifesto that within six months of a change of Prime Minister there should be a general election?”
“But that is not correct. Parliament can do that only if there is a two-thirds majority, and even then it cannot force a general election because, following the vote of no confidence, it would still be open to the Executive and the Opposition to put together some sort of deal. We effectively have a five-year Government dressed up as a five-year Parliament.”
“The intransigence of the Russians is exemplified by the fact that they still hold in custody two Members of the Ukrainian Parliament, both of whom are members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. When will my right hon. Friend get tough and insist on expelling Russia from the Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe itself?”
“Does that show that new clause 1 is ill conceived? It states that before people make a complaint they must get an estimate of how long it is likely to take to resolve it. However, the bigger issue for people before they make a complaint is what the chances are of it being accepted for investigation.”
“When my right hon. Friend discussed the Bill in Committee, he contemplated the prospect of introducing amendments at this stage to reflect the outcome of the deliberations taking place in government and elsewhere. In the light of the Government’s failure to deliver a timely response, how much confidence does he have that they have the will to do this?”
“If it looked as though a complaint was being dealt with slowly, the health service ombudsman would be able to say, “You’ve got to get a move on because we’ve got a statutory duty to resolve this within one year.””
“The new clause would simplify the Bill enormously. It would require the health service ombudsman to resolve any complaint within 12 months of the date on which it was received. As we are paying tribute to my late friend Eric Forth, may I say that the new clause would have commended itself enormously to dear Eric, because it puts on the tin what people say we want to put on the tin. With the greatest of respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), I think he has been timid in his Bill. We know that 99% of these cases are dealt with within one year. The new clause would require that 100% of them be dealt with within one year, and there would also be a sanction, because a breach of a statutory duty can be justiciable. That would concentrate minds.”
“With the greatest of respect to the hon. Gentleman, I do not accept that, which is why I tabled the new clause. As he says, the Minister was addressing new clauses 1 and 2, and I would not at this stage anticipate her response to the debate we are now having on new clause 3. If a statutory duty is in place, minds will be concentrated. That means that the ombudsman would, for example, be able to explain to a complainant who it was who was not providing the information that was necessary in a timely fashion and say, “If we don’t get a move on, your complaint will be time-barred because we will dismiss it on the basis that we have a lack of evidence.””
“I agree with my hon. Friend. It is a pity that he did not put down an amendment to my new clause to replace the limit of 12 months with one of six months. We know that the Bills that we debate on Fridays involve an iterative process. If the new clause were accepted today by my right hon. Friend, we would start off with a 12-month limit, which might in due course move to six months. That deadline, which will have the effect of concentrating minds, makes the measure legally meaningful, whereas, at the moment, everything in the Bill is legally meaningless. The Bill is, as someone has said in relation to the draft clauses of the Scotland Bill, “legally vacuous”.”
“In my view, they are entitled to have a decision on that complaint within 12 months, which is why I put in this statutory duty.”
“Unlike quite a lot of organisations, the ombudsman is accountable to this House. If the ombudsman were experiencing the difficulty to which my right hon. Friend refers, I would expect the ombudsman, the chief executive or chairman to contact my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and say that they wished the Public Administration Committee to look into the matter and put pressure on the recalcitrant Department. In a sense, my right hon. Friend is saying that, because we may have customers—if that is the right expression—who are minded to delay things, we should facilitate enabling them to delay things beyond a year. We need to focus on who the real customer is. The customer is the person who has made a complaint, and whose complaint has been accepted for investigation by the ombudsman.”