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“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one?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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“Effectively, amendment 1 seeks to remove from the Bill any reference to the expulsion of Members of the House of Lords, which means that the Bill would relate only to their suspension. The reason why I wish to circumscribe the Bill in that way is that the main point of the Bill is to make the House of Lords’ powers relating to Members’ suspension more consistent. On that, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young). Where I disagree with him is over the use of the expulsion power. When this Bill was originally put forward, it was said to be very minor and technical, but as one of their lordships said, the expulsion power was certainly not about routine housekeeping.”
“We have yet to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) respond to the debate, but my amendment 20 provides that “nothing in this section shall authorise the expulsion or suspension of members of the House of Lords on the grounds of age, health or length of service”. Does my hon. Friend agree that that safeguard should be the bare minimum?”
“My hon. Friend refers to the Jimmy Savile precedent. Of course, if Jimmy Savile had been alive when the allegations came to light, he would undoubtedly have been prosecuted and sentenced to a period of imprisonment in excess of one year. I am therefore not sure that thinking about Jimmy Savile is as appropriate as thinking about people who, historically, have committed much less serious forms of what might be regarded as bad behaviour.”
“That expression is so easy to interpret in a very broad brush way. That is why I have been trying, so far in vain, to put something more specific in the Bill. In the circumstances, I hope we will be able to test the opinion of the House on amendment 1. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“I do not think he has addressed the specifics of the concerns that have been raised. It is all very well to say, “Let’s leave it to the discretion of their lordships”, but if the past is a guide to the future, when we leave people with power and enormous discretion quite often that power is abused. That is why it is very important to try to put proper safeguards in the Bill. In a sense, my point was made for me very ably by my hon. Friend the Minister in his incredibly short response. It is notable that we have not had any response from the Opposition on either of the two groups of amendments. I do not know whether that means they do not have a view, or that they will be making up their policy later. The Minister said in his peroration that we must allow the Lords to take action against those who bring their House into disrepute.”
“I am sure the Bill will get on the statute book before the end of this Parliament. In answer to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who was saying that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) had been speaking for 20 minutes or so, it is worth putting it on record that the Bill has got to this stage only because a number of us took the view that because it had been discussed properly in the other place it should be given Second Reading “on the nod”, as we say. The other side of that coin was that the Bill would be subject to proper scrutiny. This debate is part of that process of scrutiny. It will not surprise my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) to hear I am disappointed with his response.”
“Is my hon. Friend going to address the part of the motion that calls on the Government to pay full compensation in the next Parliament? The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) did not deal with that point, but our constituents want it to be addressed.”
“7. What public consultation his Department is carrying out in Scotland on the draft clauses published following the recommendations of the Smith commission.”
“The nation would be interested to know that draft clause 1 has been widely condemned as legally vacuous. What is the Secretary of State going to do to ensure that the people of Scotland realise that it is legally vacuous and that if they support it, they will be supporting a meaningless constitutional proposal?”
“T2. May I congratulate and thank my right hon. Friend on having secured a 4.3% increase in public service productivity in the first three years of his watch, by contrast with the zero growth over the previous 13 years? What further measures does he plan to take to increase public sector productivity?”
“If it does not look like that, what will happen? It is clear already that Russia denies it even has troops in eastern Ukraine, and the Speaker of the Duma denied at the recent meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that Russia was even a party to the Minsk agreement and protocol, saying it was a mere bystander. What will happen? Russia could be playing for time, and in the meantime the frozen conflict is increasing. What will my right hon. Friend do to ensure that something happens? For starters, how about expelling Russia from the Council of Europe for being in breach of its statutes?”
“When will my right hon. Friend publish the draft changes to Standing Orders that will be necessary to implement English votes on English issues?”
“There are 47 countries in the Council of Europe, and individual voter registration is a basic minimum safeguard against fraud in every single one of them. Does the right hon. Gentleman not support that as a basic principle?”
“Will my right hon. Friend advise people who are in that position that bail is voluntary, so they do not have to accept it? If they do not accept bail, the police will either have to charge or release them.”
“That just shows that big oak trees can grow from small beginnings. I think that is an important message, because a number of measures that I bring before this House are not necessarily accepted on the first outing, but in due course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood has shown, they can be accepted and they can become Government policy, and even the subject of Government handout Bills. I commend my hon. Friend for bringing this matter forward, and I am delighted to see that it is close to getting on to the statute book. I have never got a private Member’s Bill on to the statute book, but I will feel some joint-ownership of this particular one.”
“As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) generously pointed out, the Bill was first presented to the House during the 2012-13 Session, in the form of one of the private Members’ Bills that I tabled in an attempt to put pressure on the Government to implement all the recommendations in Lord Young of Graffham’s report “Common Sense Common Safety”, which was published in October 2010. On that occasion, the Bill got as far as a Committee stage but made no further progress, apparently because of opposition from the Labour party. I am pleased to note that the Labour party is now taking a more realistic approach. Moreover, this Bill, unlike the one that I drafted myself, is a Government handout, drafted for my hon. Friend with his authority, and with explanatory notes.”
“Again, I am pleased to see him in the Chamber.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. First, let me thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), and my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), for Welling- borough (Mr Bone) and for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) for their support for this Bill. I am pretty certain that, had he been free so to do at the time, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) would also have been sponsoring the Bill, and I am delighted to see him in his place today. I am also sure that if the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) had been on my radar when I was collecting the signatures, I would have been able to recruit him, too.”
“I plead guilty to a serious omission, as I should indeed have mentioned the hon. Gentleman, as Coventry is one of the areas that is probably going to suffer as a result of HS2; not only is it not going to benefit from HS2, but there will be an adverse economic effect on Coventry. We may hear a little more about that later.”
“It was said originally that HS2 would link people from the north directly to the channel tunnel, but that proposal has long since been abandoned, so HS2 will come only into a London terminal. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Conservative party was seduced by the argument that it would be able to avoid having another runway at Heathrow by using HS2 to divert traffic away from it. It was only later that the Government realised that HS2 would actually increase demand for Heathrow airport, meaning that they immediately decided to stop the connectivity between HS2 and Heathrow.”
“If Alex Rukin comes forward at the age of nine with such sound ideas, he has very good prospects politically, as someone who is going to bring common sense to our discussions. Throughout our history people have spent money on vanity projects—follies and white elephants. I have no problem with that, provided the money they are spending is their own, rather than somebody else’s and, in particular, the taxpayer’s. In HS2, we have what is best described as a vanity project. It was conceived by new Labour and promoted by the then Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, on the basis that we needed more high-speed rail than just that between London and the channel tunnel.”
“It is described as that, but I would prefer to put the emphasis on it being a taxpayer-funded project, because, as the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in 1983: “There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.” That point has recently been emphasised by none other than Alex Rukin, aged nine, who gave evidence before the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill Select Committee. He said in his petition that money should be spent on things that we really need and described this as a “stupid” project. I see Alex Rukin in a similar cast to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who made that memorable speech to the Conservative party conference at the age of 16.”
“My right hon. Friend makes a very important point, and the opportunity cost issue really needs to be addressed. I live in hope, because two years ago today my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced a change of Conservative party policy on a referendum on the European Union—he announced that we would have an in/out referendum. Two years to the day, I hope that the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), whom I am pleased to see on the Front Bench, will be able to make a similar announcement to give the people their say on one of the largest ever “publicly funded” infrastructure projects.”
“However, it was clear that the cost-benefit analysis that was carried out overvalued business time on the basis that business men did not spend any of their time on trains working. All the benefits were calculated on the basis of an improvement in speed that would mean that 15 minutes could be knocked off the time it took to get from London to Birmingham. My constituency is about 100 miles from London. This morning I got on the train at Hinton Admiral and arrived here two hours and 10 minutes later. Given the nature of a lot of our rail infrastructure, people expect to spend that sort of time travelling such distances.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to look at proposals on an integrated basis. That is one of the messages that comes out loud and clear from today’s report by the Transport Committee, “Investing in the railway”, which was published just after midnight. The Committee emphasises the importance of planned investment right across the railways to maximise the benefits of that investment. It is critical of the idea of just putting a certain amount of money into the HS2 project on its own. When the Government realised that the project could not be justified on the basis that it would reduce demand at Heathrow airport, they started the line that it would reduce long-distance journey times.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He will be aware that the New Economics Foundation published a report in June 2013 entitled “High Speed 2: The best we can do? Creating more value from £33 billion”. The essence of this debate is that if we are to spend that amount of taxpayers’ money—assuming that that is affordable—are there better ways in which to do so?”
“What my hon. Friend says is not just an assumption, because there is a lot of academic evidence about what happened when high-speed rail was built in other countries. For example, using a high-speed rail to link Paris with an outlying city generated more traffic coming into Paris than leaving Paris to go elsewhere. That highlights another incorrect assumption behind the project.”
“That is where the Bill comes in, because it would allow us to ask the people to express their common-sense view. I am sure that they would be against the project, so when they had spoken in a referendum, the Front Benchers of both main parties, and indeed our Liberal Democrat friends, could get themselves off the hook by saying, “The people have spoken and we got it wrong.” They could then say, without any humiliation, “We will revise our plans and spend the money in a different way.””
“My hon. Friend, who is a strong opponent of HS2, is absolutely right. We cannot oppose HS2 only on the grounds of emotion and prejudice. Instead, we must deploy arguments, but the arguments against HS2 are well established and supported by not only facts, but sound judgments by academics and politicians. I am conscious that several hon. Members wish to speak, but I want to touch quickly on the latest iteration of the HS2 sales pitch: economic regeneration in the north. Again, that heroic claim is not borne out by the evidence, because most of the economic benefits of the project will probably come to the south-east. How can we, as politicians and taxpayers—working together—help our colleagues out of this hole without humiliating them?”
“That money would need to be spent alongside other money, because if something were not done about the interconnection at Old Oak Common, for example, there would be complete chaos in the connectivity into London. There are an enormous number of reasons why people should be given a say on HS2. I commend the Bill to the House.”
“I shall close by referring to the 28th report of the Public Accounts Committee which was published on 16 January this year. The Committee recommends that the Department for Transport should set out a 30-year transport infrastructure strategy and use it to inform decisions about investment priorities. The Committee is sceptical about whether the Department can deliver value for money for the taxpayer on HS2, and it says that the extraordinarily large contingency sums that have been set aside are a way, potentially, of hiding the cost of overruns and increases in price. The report refers to the fact that Crossrail 2, which is likely to be needed as a direct result of this, could cost £20 billion extra, so even with the enormous sums involved—up to £50 billion—HS2 cannot be considered in isolation.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. My constituents live on the Weymouth-Waterloo line. When I held a meeting with representatives from Network Rail’s Wessex route study earlier this week, they confirmed that Waterloo is the busiest station for passenger numbers in the whole of Europe, with Clapham Junction the busiest for rail movements. They said that in 30 years’ time, they will need 60% extra capacity, but how will that be paid for? People in my constituency are therefore worried about spending so much on one particular vanity project that will not help them at all. Network Rail representatives said that if HS2 were built, it might increase demand, ironically, on the already overloaded Weymouth-Waterloo route, so there a number of very serious problems.”
“Is there an analogy with people seeking investment from shareholders? They have to produce a proper, transparent and open prospectus for shareholders. In this situation, taxpayers are in the role of shareholders, and they are not getting a proper prospectus from the Government.”
“I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is in the habit of responding to such e-mails, but one point she might be able to make is that people should challenge candidates in the forthcoming general election on whether they would support such a Bill in the next Parliament, so that there can be a popular vote on whether we should spend this amount of money on HS2.”
“My right hon. Friend surely needs to look at his own situation, because the Government say in respect of local authorities that may, for example, want to spend money on subsidising buses that if the consequence is that they are going to increase their council tax by more than 2%, they must have a local referendum. If it is good for local authorities, where the sums involved might be as little as £28 per household on average—if we take the average council tax—why is he saying that it is essential to have a referendum in that situation, but not in the situation we are addressing today?”
“Are not the EU referendum and the referendum proposed in this Bill a lot closer than my right hon. Friend says? All the leading political parties’ Front Benches support our continued membership of the EU and it is time that the people had a chance to challenge that consensus in a referendum. Similarly with this Bill, the Front Benches all support HS2 funding to the extent of £50 billion-plus, but the people outside do not. Is this not a chance for them to express their own view on this matter?”
“and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) made a very telling speech in which he emphasised the problems in his constituency. We have also had interventions supporting the Bill from the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) is here as well.”
“With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank everybody who has participated in this debate. It will not have escaped the House’s notice that the only speeches against the Bill came from the two Front Benchers. In a sense, that sums it up. The only way we are going to be able to break out of this cosy consensus between those on the Front Benches is to allow the people their say. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) gave the House some fascinating statistics on exactly how unpopular the HS2 project and the associated expenditure of taxpayers’ money are. Established politicians, whether they be with great ambition, like my right hon. Friend the Minister, or not, should listen very carefully to the views of the people on these issues. I am grateful to my right hon.”
“Finally, the £20 billion for Crossrail 2 is an additional cost to that for HS2. Without it, people getting off HS2 would not have anywhere to go because it would be so congested. My right hon. Friend the Minister gave no answer to that and there was no clear answer from the Opposition representative, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I am afraid that typifies what has almost become a dialogue of the deaf on this issue. Ultimately, this is costing the taxpayers money, and the Government need to be brought to account. I look forward to this Bill, or something like it, being reintroduced later in this calendar year and, ultimately, making it to the statute book. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Motion and Bill, by leave, withdrawn.”
“However, this issue is not going to go away. Our country is still running an annual deficit of close to £100 billion a year. The HS2 hybrid Bill is still in Committee and will be there beyond the general election. Come June, after the general election, there will be a fresh ballot for private Members’ Bills and I hope that a successful colleague will promote a Bill along the same lines as mine. We will then be able to drum up the necessary support to give the Bill a Second Reading, take it to Committee and, I hope, get it on the statute book. As the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras has said, it is obscene for such a proposal to waste so much public money when taxpayers’ money is so scarce, and the Front Benchers, in a cosy alliance, are trying to force it through against the will of the people.”
“I also want to thank a lot of people who have helped to raise awareness of this debate, particularly one of my constituents, Penny Gaines, who moved into my constituency relatively recently, having been forced out of the constituency where she lived before but unable to sell her house at a reasonable price because of the blight of HS2. She remains very strongly opposed to the project, as do large numbers of my constituents. The question people ask at this stage of a debate is, “Where next?” I am reliably informed that if we pushed the Bill to a Second Reading, it would not receive the Government’s support for a money resolution and would therefore be unable to make any progress. It would not be able to go into Committee or be dealt with before the end of this Session—the last Session of this Parliament.”
“People would realise that we are not talking about just a handful of potential voters in a constituency, but about hundreds or thousands of people who could influence the outcome of an election. This is a Bill with three straightforward clauses. It provides Ministers with the opportunity, under clause 3, to bring forward regulations to deal with internet voting. I have to admit that my drafting skills did not enable me to produce a detailed regime for overseas internet voting, so I am relying on somebody else to do the donkey work on that. However, it is important that the Bill states, as it does in clause 3(2), that any regulations must “include provisions to prevent identity fraud and to ensure that only those eligible to vote can vote.””
“Just as people can now Skype their friends and relatives who are overseas at practically zero cost, I see no reason why we should not facilitate, through the internet, increased participation among United Kingdom citizens who are resident overseas and who rightly take a close interest in what we do in this legislature. I have said to a number of people who have written to me on this subject that if more British citizens who are resident overseas participated in our elections, it would strengthen the case for reforming things such as the rights of British pensioners overseas to pension increases and there would be a lot more pressure on Parliament to give those overseas pensioners justice.”
“However, with postal voting, it is difficult to ensure that the ballot paper is sent to the person who is resident overseas in sufficient time to enable them to put the ballot paper back in the post and return it to the United Kingdom so that it can be included in the count. That situation has been eased to an extent, because the Government have said that there will be a longer period between the close of nominations and printing of ballot papers and the date of the election. However, we know that a relatively small proportion of those overseas who are registered to vote actually do vote. One reason for that is the difficulty of registering their vote. If we are to go down the road of internet voting—I know that some colleagues are sceptical about it—surely we should allow it for those who are overseas.”
“I am always keen to embrace new technology, as my wife and family will testify, so why should we not embrace new technology in the voting system? Anyone who is resident in the United Kingdom in the run-up to an election can obtain a proxy or a postal vote, or can vote in person at the polling station. That is much more difficult for those who are resident overseas. Obviously, they cannot physically vote at a polling station because we, unlike a lot of other countries, do not set up polling stations in our embassies or in other buildings in foreign countries. People who are resident overseas therefore have to rely on a proxy or a postal vote. It is possible to organise a proxy vote if it is planned in advance and if the person who is overseas knows somebody in this country who can exercise it.”
“Clause 2 of this simple Bill states: “There shall be no restriction placed on the eligibility of a British citizen resident overseas to register to vote or vote in UK Parliamentary elections based solely upon the length of time that such voter has been resident overseas.” That would remove the current 15-year restriction, a subject on which my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) has a ten-minute rule Bill. The proposal has the support of the Conservative party and I understand that it will be a definite part of its manifesto—a pledge to remove the 15-year restriction on an overseas voter’s eligibility to vote if they are a British citizen who would otherwise be eligible to do so. Clause 3 deals with internet voting.”
“That is scandalous, and I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), whom I am pleased to see on the Front Bench, agrees that there needs to be much greater participation among electors who are resident overseas. Clause 1 should, therefore, commend itself to the Government. It would impose a “duty on the Electoral Commission so far as is reasonably practicable to…identify the names and addresses of British citizens resident overseas who would be able to participate in United Kingdom Parliamentary elections if they were registered to vote, and…facilitate the registration of those identified”.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. This is another Bill relating to the forthcoming general election. It would ensure higher participation among those who would be entitled to vote if they registered, notwithstanding the fact that they are overseas. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, on which I have the privilege of serving, has been considering voter participation. Although the focus at the beginning was mainly on the situation within the United Kingdom, during the course of our inquiry a lot more emphasis has been given to the situation of British citizens who are resident overseas and would otherwise be entitled to vote. It is estimated that there may be as many as 5 million such people. How many of them are currently registered? The latest figure is about 16,000 of a potential 5 million or more.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend because there are two schools of thought. The first, which she articulated, is that this proposal would be a good test bed for internet voting. Others say that it would set a dangerous precedent, and that before we realise it we will have internet voting without control for the whole United Kingdom electorate, which will facilitate a lot of fraud. I think that internet voting for those who are resident overseas is a discrete matter, and we could develop a regime for that, and see how it works and whether we are able to introduce systems that prevent identity fraud and ensure that only those who are eligible vote. Based on that knowledge and experience, the House could consider rationally whether we wish to extend the system more widely.”
“Clause 3 would apply only to British citizens who were ordinarily resident overseas, not those who happened to be on holiday. The latter group would be brought in only in the event of our extending internet or online voting to the United Kingdom electorate, and it is important to distinguish between those two groups. It is much more complicated to deal with people voting while on holiday than with those who are resident overseas.”