Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I ask you to rule on a different matter, regarding Standing Order No. 118 on how delegated legislation is dealt with in this House, which states at paragraph (6): “The Speaker shall put forthwith the question thereon” after orders have been debated upstairs and brought to the Floor of the House? That has always been thought and understood to mean that these motions are unamendable: “forthwith” means unamendable. Why have you changed your interpretation of that word in this case?”
“I join my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) in supporting my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s determination to be prepared for all eventualities. He has succeeded on aviation services, the transit convention and other things that will ensure that trade keeps flowing. However, what lessons can be learned from this situation? No matter how good this company might be, this is a difficult contracting environment in which things must be done quickly under intense political and public scrutiny. Will my right hon. Friend ask the permanent secretary to conduct a quick lessons-learned exercise so that companies with which the Government are contracting are better prepared than this one for the scale of public scrutiny to which it has been subjected?”
“It was the logical expression of the accumulation of decades of resentment about how this country has become subject to an out-of-touch political elite who have become happy to subjugate national democratic accountability to an unelected, unaccountable group of commissioners and judges in the EU. That is what the referendum was about. Now I hear some Members, like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), openly arguing for remaining in the EU, as though the referendum could somehow be ignored. That way madness lies for our country. It would be a final vindication of those who would argue that votes never count and democracy can change nothing.”
“I will return to one or two of the points raised by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). To overcome the present paralysis, we must all face some truths that perhaps even a majority of the House are finding difficult to face. I would have voted against the withdrawal treaty, because it is the very antithesis of taking back control, but the truth we have to face is that the result of this referendum was not some “exotic spresm,” as expressed by the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), or any other kind of freak accident.”
“Let us now dispose of the dangerous idea that there can be some disingenuous second people’s vote to try to force remain back on to the agenda. Who with any authority suggested in 2016 that the question would be only a dry run?”
“No, he did not. The House of Commons voted by 544 votes to 53 to give a clear choice of remain or leave to the voters. The 2016 referendum was the people’s choice. Before there is a fresh motion, I gently remind the House, as one who campaigned for and voted leave and on behalf of the majority who voted in the referendum, that we voted leave and we want leave. Despite all the false warnings that a leave vote would wreak havoc on the economy, a majority of us voted to leave. We represent at least 400 of the constituencies represented in this House. We also represent a broad cross-section of society.”
“The only alternative is to lie down and submit to the will of the EU, which seems to be the policy of an increasing number of people in this House”
“When we resume the debate, let us share ideas about what kind of relationship the UK might have with the EU after we have left, but leaving the EU means, at the end of it, becoming once again an independent sovereign state. “Leave” does not mean bringing back the same treaty, costing billions for nothing in return, that installs the EU Court of Justice in some superior position over the agreement or that holds the UK hostage to what the EU might decide about our future; or remaining in a single customs territory or subject to an EU rulebook. The prospect of bringing an acceptable withdrawal treaty to this House is also about making it clear that the UK is preparing and will be prepared to leave the EU on 29 March without a withdrawal agreement, to trade on World Trade Organisation terms.”
“Because too many people leading these negotiations do not have sufficient faith in the people, economy and future of this country. Who gave a mandate to this House to set itself above the people? Nothing could be better calculated to sow despair and cynicism about politics and politicians, or about this House, or about the credibility of our democracy, than for this House to fail to understand what the word “leave” means; to argue that leave voters must have their motives dissected and psychoanalysed; or to try to prove that we really did not mean leave, that we were voting about something else or that it was all too complicated for the little minds of the voters. There is no ambiguity in the word “leave” which this House placed on the ballot paper.”
“What this House needs to show is more faith in the people and the way they voted, and more faith in the future of this country. If we sell ourselves short in this House, we are selling the British people short.”
“I am not giving way. Everyone can see that most countries are outside the EU and, do you know what, they are absolutely fine. Our overriding duty should be to work together to implement the decision and to forge a new consensus about the future of this great nation which reflects the way in which the vast majority of the constituencies in this House voted. The UK is a resilient nation, which has faced far greater challenges to our survival, prosperity and independence than the short-term practical and administrative challenges of leaving the EU. This is not an economic crisis like the 1970s oil shock or the 2008 banking crisis. This will not cause rampant inflation or leave people wondering whether the ATM will deliver their cash. This is not a decision to go to war. It is not a terrorist attack.”
“It is the elephant in the room in the debate, and this is not necessarily the best circumstance under which the absolutist device of a Humble Address should have been exercised in the first place.”
“I invite the Leader of the House to consider whether she would accept a little addition to her amendment—that the Committee should be required to report by 10 pm on Monday, so that there is no suggestion that the Committee is being used as a device to knock this into the long grass. I am going to give her my unqualified support for her amendment anyway, but I suggest that she could accept that proposal, or at least invite the Committee to report early next week in time for the debate—not that I think many people will change their minds as a result of what the Government may or may not publish. I think this issue has got caught up in this great dispute about our future relationship with Europe.”
“But of course this Chamber is not behaving like anything we would recognise as a court. I am afraid that this vote is likely to divide on party lines. There is very little that is objective about this finding of contempt, which he invites the House to do in this debate. The Government have made a sensible compromise. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said that the Government seemed to admit that they were in contempt. The amendment is an admission that there may be a contempt, by referring the matter to the Privileges Committee where there might be a slightly less partisan and heated atmosphere and where there might be a more objective atmosphere in which some of the ideas and procedures for sorting this out as quickly as possible could be reached.”
“I invite the House to look at the US and the endless confected rows about matters of supposedly fundamental constitutional importance, which we can see from this distance are really just partisan politics. There is a strong case for reviewing and codifying in some way many of the ancient devices, procedures and powers of this House, but that would not resolve what we should do today. The right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) underlined the real weakness of the justice in his case. Its weakness is a matter of procedure that is in the public interest. He warned the Government that they faced being found in contempt of the House. That supposes we are a high court of Parliament, which we are not, and that we are operating as some kind of judicial authority on this matter.”
“Secondly, as in the US, politics has become extremely polarised, particularly between the two factions of remain and leave. The referendum demonstrated that the balance of opinion is different in the country from what it might be in this House. That presents particular challenges. Thirdly, just as in the US, there is a breakdown of trust: trust in politicians generally, and trust, restraint and respect between the political parties and between factions. We have noticed—have we not?—how deeply embittered some of the political arguments are particularly around the referendum and the European Union question. As in the US, norms of procedure and convention become overshadowed by partisan dispute and political opportunism.”
“They are suffering from exactly the same problems and exactly the same kind of breakdown in the understanding of the norms and conventions that surround their written constitution. Even in the US, it is not unknown for the Executive to ignore new laws passed by Congress. I referred earlier to the normal atmosphere that we usually enjoy in politics and how, until very recently, motions of return had fallen into what our learned Clerks call “desuetude”—that is, they had ceased to be recognised as functioning bits of the constitution. So why are they being revived now? First, we have a minority Parliament. In particular, we have a minority Parliament where the confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist party appears to have broken down.”
“If it was to be used indiscriminately and frequently, if the Opposition were to use the vulnerability of the Government to demand the advice to Ministers as well as legal advice, the minutes of internal meetings, previous drafts of policy or speeches, or matters of national security, it would be impossible to conduct the Government business. That does not happen, because we rely on the self-restraint of Parliament. The credibility of the unwritten powers of this House depends on their responsible exercise. As they cease to have credibility, they will not be respected. Incidentally, the Select Committee has just returned from a visit to the US Congress. The US, of course, has a written constitution. One might think that that would provide all kinds of solutions, but it does not.”
“The point about labouring this little constitutional essay is that if we forget that, there is then confusion and we risk creating more confusion about how the distinct roles and responsibilities of Parliament and Government have to be divided if we use our powers and procedures irresponsibly, unpredictably, in the wrong circumstances, or—dare I say?—as a bit of oppositionism. Where does that leave this Humble Address, a device that until very recently was not used since the 1850s? We find ourselves in a very abnormal political atmosphere. I will come back to that point in a moment. This device is known as a motion of return.”
“This House operates on the basis that it is not the Government. The Government exist as a separate legal entity and function when this House is not sitting, when Parliament is prorogued and even when Parliament is dissolved. Parliament holds Ministers to account and we scrutinise the work of the Government. We make the laws that bind the Government, and this House controls the supply of money to the Government and the Crown. But we do not run the Government. We have parliamentary Government, but not Government by Parliament.”
“I am most grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for letting me speak now. I have been able to listen to the debate before deciding whether to speak. That may be unusual. I rise to speak because the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is in the process of concluding our inquiry into the status of resolutions of this House. We have been looking at the question of what we call “motions of return”: how they should be dealt with and what their legal status is. At the moment, how a Government responds to a Humble Address is merely a matter of precedent and convention. It is not a matter of law. It is not a matter of statute law or of common law. Therefore, this is not a device that should be overused or used irresponsibly. I am not casting aspersions on anybody’s motives. I just make that observation.”
“My right hon. Friend will recall how much we both hoped that I would be able to support whatever she brought back from her negotiations, so can I say how sad I am that I cannot possibly support this deal, which pays £38 billion simply to kick the can down the road? How can we possibly agree to such an arrangement? At the moment, we have the unilateral right to leave the European Union, but we will have no such unilateral right to leave these new arrangements, which will be subject to an EU veto. That is giving up control, not taking back control.”
“The point raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is a very salient one. We spend an awful lot of time looking at processes and procedures, writing down codes and adjusting rules, and very little time thinking about how we change the culture. It is not about the management of this place; it is about every single right hon. and hon. Member in this House. We lead this place, and we set the example and the tone. The question is how we want the governance of this place to change the culture, and that falls on us, not on some obscure committee elsewhere to take that responsibility away from us.”
“This point about training is very contentious. I am afraid that Members of Parliament are not civil servants. It is only recently in the history of the House of Commons that Members of Parliament were considered even to be employed in legal terms. Until the mid ’60s we were self-employed. The idea that we should be treated as civil servants is not right. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is completely right. If training were available and those in leadership positions in this House set the right example, by taking the training themselves and telling junior Members that they are expected to be trained in these matters, training would become part of our culture. It depends on the leadership, not compulsion.”
“The rules, which are enforceable and whose breach will cause punishment, are a relatively ancillary question, yet so much of the debate is about creating new rules and punishments and not about explaining how we live our lives better in this institution. The big question is: how do we hold this conversation? When the House divided on these matters a little while ago, barely 100 colleagues voted and I should not imagine that 100 colleagues took part in the debate either. How do we hold this conversation about the values and principles that we want to demonstrate in our leadership of public life and that should be evident throughout our entire institution?”
“In the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee submission to the review of the House of Commons code of conduct we point out that governance and compliance are not synonymous, and that structures and procedures can embed change and culture but cannot on their own create the right culture. What we need to think and talk far more about is what we mean by our values. When we sit in the Tea Room with our colleagues we do not talk much about values. What do we mean by values? Values are about the way in which we should seek to live and, incidentally, to lead. Our values should be evident in the way in which we lead and in the principles by which we conduct ourselves in this place and in our lives.”
“I have not been part of any campaign to remove the Speaker as a result of the Cox report, because he is but one figure in the House who is accounting for the culture of this place; there are far more people giving permission for the wrong behaviours and wrong attitudes than just one person, and we must keep that perspective in mind. The question we perhaps need to ask about the House of Commons Commission if we are not satisfied with its conduct is that old friend Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Maybe there needs to be some kind of informal, or perhaps formal, oversight body that discusses what the Commission does and that gets it to report more formally than it does, but I do not suppose that that will actually deal with the problems we have got.”
“Friend the Leader of the House for quoting words that I well remember drafting as part of the submission that the Committee I chair made to the Straw Committee on the future governance of the House. The point I was making in those words, which referred to governance, leadership, values, attitudes and behaviour, was not that the changes to the governance structure would fix the problems. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that we need to democratise the governance of the House, and I am certain that we do need to make transparency and accountability more evident, but these things in themselves will not solve the problem. To some extent I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who referred in person to the office of Speaker.”
“I look upon Dame Laura Cox’s report as a very serious piece of work setting out very big challenges, but I do not think it is the first word and I doubt very much that it will be the last word; I gather we are to have another inquiry into a different aspect, concentrating more on the way in which Members treat their staff. It is important that we get above this and think about how we can develop a conversation about what sort of House and institution we want to be, how we are going to develop our personal behaviour—our individual values, our principles—in order to advance that objective, and how we engage all Members in that conversation. I was very grateful to my right hon.”
“I follow the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) who sits on the Commission, and I am grateful for his account of the Commission’s discussions and intentions. He threw into his remarks references to culture, and “culture” is a word that drops into this debate quite easily. I will discuss later in my remarks how we should perhaps be exploring what we mean by the word and how we might address the culture. He said that “deference, hierarchy and the abuse of power” are in the culture and that we all have a role to play, and he went on to discuss what all Members must do, but I look around this Chamber now and do not see all Members here. In fact, I see a rather small minority of Members here, and part of the problem is that the whole of the House of Commons is not engaged.”
“May I join my right hon. Friend in her praise of and best wishes to the retiring Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood? He not only served many Governments, but appeared in front of many Select Committees, including my own, and was as popular among Members of Parliament as he was among his colleagues. He will be missed.”
“I commend my right hon. Friend and the Government for being absolutely determined to avoid any new infrastructure at the Northern Ireland border. Can he explain what the Government’s policy will be if we leave the European Union with no deal, and therefore there is no backstop and we have a customs frontier? Will the Government implement the technical measures to maintain an invisible customs frontier? Will he rule out any new infrastructure at the border between the north and the south?”
“I think the point that my right hon. Friend did not want to take is that there are plenty of businessmen who are in favour of leaving the European Union. The point that I wanted to raise with my right hon. Friend is that her whole argument is passionately based on the fallacy that one cannot have just-in-time supply chains crossing international customs frontiers. In fact, that is the way that most of the rest of the world trades. At Toyota in her own constituency—I met Toyota last week—quite a substantial proportion of its componentry arrives from outside the European Union to be bolted on to its cars. She is putting up these completely false fears that just-in-time supply chains are threatened by trading across customs frontiers.”
“That is not actually correct. It is quite common in a free trade agreement to have what is known as an auto-pact, so that there can be frictionless arrangements, for example for the motor industry. The same could apply for aerospace.”
“Why would any company bother to carry out expensive rules of origin checks if paying the tariff, which might be as little as 2%, would be much cheaper? It is as simple as that.”
“Unlike probably the vast majority of right hon. and hon. Members, I actually used to work in manufacturing industry. I worked for the Ford Motor Company, and I also used to invest in manufacturing businesses. It really is a bit rich when people who know next to nothing about manufacturing lecture those of us who have been in business on the things we know about. Does the right hon. Gentleman dismiss the views of people such as Sir James Dyson and J. C. Bamford and the many other manufacturers who wanted to leave the European Union when we had the referendum?”
“It is still the policy of the Government that we might leave even without a withdrawal agreement, on WTO terms. Under such circumstances, we will not put any infrastructure at the Irish border in Northern Ireland, and we will challenge the Irish Republic and the EU Commission not to do the same in the interests of peace in Northern Ireland. It is perfectly possible to manage an infrastructure-free customs frontier in Northern Ireland, and that is what will happen. It is pure obstinacy on the part of the Commission that it will not negotiate with the United Kingdom a free trade agreement on the basis of making an agreement with the whole United Kingdom, instead of excluding Northern Ireland.”
“We are being asked to believe two extraordinary things. The first is that the Irish Republic itself might put infrastructure at the border of Northern Ireland, when the only reason that the Irish Republic recognises that there is a frontier between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is that it signed the Good Friday agreement—the Belfast agreement. Secondly, when President Juncker appeared in front of the Dáil a few months ago and was pressed to give an assurance that he would not force the Republic to put infrastructure at the border, he more or less gave that assurance. In fact, it was perfectly clear that he was not going to say, “We will force you to put infrastructure at the border,” so it is clear that the EU is not going to force anyone to put infrastructure at the border.”
“I am very pleased to follow the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who has put on the record a great deal of fact and truth about the way in which the Northern Ireland issue has been treated in the negotiations and by the negotiating parties. What he missed out in his remarks was that this was not an issue until the Varadkar Government were elected. The expectation was that there would be an invisible customs frontier in Northern Ireland. That was confirmed by Bertie Ahern when he gave interviews on the subject. It was confirmed by the head of the Irish customs organisation when he gave evidence to the Irish Dáil. It was confirmed by Jon Thompson, the head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, when he initially gave evidence to the Treasury Committee. This was not an issue until it was made an issue.”
“My remarks are directed primarily at amendment 72, which I confess has turned out to be disappointingly uncontroversial. It was the intention of the European Research Group, a group of Conservative Back Benchers, to table four amendments—one or two of them in the light of the Chequers agreement and the White Paper—to test our understanding of the intention of Government policy. Every single one of our amendments, we believe, reflects Government policy. I do not imagine that the Government would have accepted any of them as calmly as they have if they did not reflect Government policy.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just to answer my hon. Friend’s point, I think that we have to be practical. There will be a change in the way in which people treat consignments because they are crossing a customs frontier, but as the technology develops it will be possible to track individual consignments or multiple consignments in trucks across customs frontiers. We have discussed this matter with Revenue and Customs in this country. Ultimately, in future—looking ahead 10 or 20 years—the idea of customs frontiers existing between countries that trade tariff-free will become obsolete. To hinge our entire Brexit policy on the issue of not having customs declarations and customs frontiers is very last century, and we should not be captured by that.”
“No, that is what he said. He said that we will have to rethink Brexit completely if we cannot get a satisfactory arrangement. That is the direction he is going in. I respect his view, but throwing around insults like “useless” is not elevating the debate. My amendment 72 simply removes from the Bill an extraordinarily powerful Henry VIII provision that we should be signed up to a customs union with the European Union simply by order. Following the amendment that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) tabled to clause 9 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, I thought that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I do not suppose that I shall hear him speak against my amendment, because it puts Parliament back in control of the decision to join a customs union with the European Union.”
“I end on this one point, Mr Speaker. We have heard a lot about 40 MPs having an excessive amount of influence in this Chamber. In fact, 17.4 million people voted leave in the referendum, and 70% of Conservative MPs and 60% of Labour MPs represent leave constituencies. It would be bizarre if, in the end, the House of Commons, which was elected predominantly on leave manifestos, put up road blocks against leaving the European Union, and I do not believe that it will.”
“Only two months ago, the NAO found that NHS England “did not know enough about the services it inherited to set achievable…specifications and performance standards” for a primary care support contract. Asylum seekers, primary care patients—these are the people who, for one reason or another, find themselves utterly reliant on the state to provide their accommodation food and for their basic human needs, and when outsourcing goes wrong, these people are on the frontline and they are the ones who suffer. The Cabinet Office did a brilliant job of rescuing the situation after the collapse and of keeping public services going, but it should never have come to that—the Government should not have to bail out private contracts with hundreds of millions of pounds of public money.”
“We uncover a culture focused relentlessly on cost—by which I mean price—whereby companies are pushed beyond the limits of commercial viability and where procedures on transparency are not regularly followed. Most staggeringly of all, the Government cannot accurately assess the capacity of companies to which they are outsourcing to deliver a quality service. During the inquiry, PACAC found several instances where the Government had contracted with the private sector without knowing key data about the services they were asking companies to bid for. For example, in 2014, the NAO reported that the outsourcing company Compass believed that the information provided to it by the relevant Department was inadequate. It was managing facilities for asylum seekers.”
“My understanding—we could not put this in the report because we could not get it in evidence—of the Carillion prisons contract is that the Government originally thought they were transferring about 800 assets, but it turned out that the company was taking over the management of some 8,000 assets. How can such vast errors be made? I am afraid that it underlines how badly public services are run by Departments, but the lesson is not simply to pass that ignorance on as a risk to a private contractor and expect it to cope. We know that the Government are aware of that and have demanded that contractors accept in the contract the risks of their giving them incorrect information. There is no excuse for this carrying on.”
“Its terms of reference included whether the Government made effective decisions on outsourcing the delivery of public services, what lessons could be learned from the collapse and, given that the Government depend on so few public service providers, whether the rules on oversight and accountability of contracts needed to be changed. PACAC’s findings were published this week, and they are stark. We uncover that sometimes the Government have little or no data on the services they wish to outsource or on the facilities they ask companies to manage. In some instances, what Government data there was was actually incorrect.”
“The Committee I chair, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, scrutinises the work of the Cabinet Office and the whole civil service in a way that we hope will improve public confidence in government and public services. We have taken a long interest in public procurement and public contracting, and we saw this crisis as an opportunity to consider the main strategic issues around outsourcing. In fact, we had already—prophetically perhaps—embarked on this inquiry before Carillion collapsed.”
“The reason for Carillion’s importance to the Government and the intense public interest is that its failure was not just due to the spectacular nature of its bankruptcy; before its collapse, Carillion built hospitals, maintained schools, constructed bridges and roads and electrified railways. When it failed, it had approximately 420 public contracts with the Government accounting for 33% of its total global revenue. It was a shattering blow to public confidence in the Government’s ability to deliver public services via private contractors and providers. That was reflected in my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s recent speech at Reform.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). I commend her and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for their joint inquiry, which has shed a great deal of light on the situation. It was obvious when Carillion collapsed earlier this year that there was more than just one issue with the company. In general, companies do not go under for simple reasons, and there is no doubt that Carillion was mismanaged. The firm was paying ever increasing dividends, eventually reaching an annual figure of £80 million, while experiencing declining financial performance and an ever more rickety balance sheet. It took some time for that situation to arise.”