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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“In the last Parliament, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee took evidence on this matter from the same academic who advised the Scottish Parliament, and he was very clear that the powers being reserved under these proposals were only ever notionally devolved, because they were of course reserved by virtue of our membership of the European Union. This is not a power grab; the Government’s objective is to make sure that the devolved Administrations finish up with more powers than they had before.”
“May I add my congratulations to my colleague on his appointment to the Front Bench? It is very well deserved. Is not the right way for the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) to secure the rights of workers, and to secure the environmental protections that he wants, to vote for the EU (Withdrawal) Bill? If the Labour party succeeds in blocking the Bill, those protections will no longer exist.”
“May I ask my right hon. Friend to confirm that it was Michel Barnier who described the idea of a transition period without a clear agreement at the end as a bridge to nowhere, so will he dismiss some of the advice that he has received on transition periods? May I also invite him to dismiss the idea that September will be the great progress point against which the Government should be tested? Should we not wait until after the German elections when the German Chancellor will be much more fully involved in the discussions before we become really impatient for progress?”
“I commend the hon. Gentleman not just on obtaining the debate but on his constructive tone, but why should the case for staying in Euratom not apply to every other agency that we will leave when we leave the European Union? As we leave those other agencies and regulatory bodies, we will set up our own, under international standards. Why can that not also be done with Euratom? Who would want to frustrate that?”
“Could the Government make it clearer that we want an open trading relationship with our European partners and that it is up to the European Union to decide whether they want that or not? Will the Secretary of State also ask who is arguing for protectionist measures against an independent United Kingdom? I do not hear many voices in the EU arguing for that, and I think that that is just a fear put about by people who want us to stay in the European Union.”
“I remind my hon. Friend and the House that the reason it is a ports regulation is that when it was a directive it was blocked by the European Parliament. So undemocratic is the EU’s legislative system that the Commission can force it through as a regulation, so even the European Parliament cannot block it. What kind of democracy is that, and is it not a good thing that we are getting back control over our laws?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the comprehensive offer that she has made to secure the rights of EU citizens in our country, in a bid also to secure the rights of UK citizens in the EU. The next time she meets the Heads of Government in the European Union, can she explain to them that there are rather a lot of remainers in this country who would prefer the Leader of the Opposition to become Prime Minister, but that he says that he would scrap our nuclear weapons in six months, removing part of Europe’s vital defensive shield provided through NATO? Will she make clear the danger of that to them?”
“It is realistic to imagine that we will not get a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU when we leave and that interim arrangements will persist under WTO rules, which may well be zero-tariff rules, but we would have to believe the EU was seriously insane if it wanted to ground all flights between the UK and the EU, if it refused to offer the products and standards arrangements it has with 100 or more other countries—whether or not it has a free trade deal with those countries—or if it wanted to check every Mini exported to the EU to see whether it fits the EU’s definition of a car. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman really think the EU is so insane that it would want to do that?”
“I listened carefully to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman was saying, and he said he does not want to have to adopt rules of origin. How will we avoid doing so unless we are in a customs union relationship with the EU?”
“I commend my right hon. Friend’s statement and the extraordinary degree of personal responsibility she is taking in this response. Have she and her officials had the opportunity to look at reports by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and its predecessor Committee under Dr Tony Wright, which repeatedly recommended that the House of Commons should have more of a role in the setting up of such inquiries? Will she consider asking the House to establish a special Select Committee very quickly, to look at the terms of reference, to have a pre-appointment hearing of the chair of the inquiry, and to set the budget and the timetable, and make sure this public inquiry has cross-party and public confidence, which so many public inquiries have failed to have?”
“A Queen’s Speech with, I think, 21 Bills in it, and draft Bills, is not a thin Queen’s Speech. May I just point out that the mandate from a 42.5% vote share in this high-turnout election is rather better than, say, Tony Blair’s mandate in 2005, when he got only 35% of the vote?”
“May I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that the last thing people want to see now is parties turning this into a party political argument? It would be equally easy for us to point out that the present Government inherited the 2006 regulations from his Government. If there has been a failure of regulation, I think that it is shared. I think that what the public want to see is the House taking full and shared collective responsibility for what has happened and putting it right, rather than Members trying to accuse each other in order to score political points.”
“The Leveson inquiry, for example, has been regretted because not enough thought was put into it. I do not belong to the tradition of democracy that believes that the elected Government are necessarily the fount of all wisdom, however much I admire the Prime Minister herself.”
“As well as Chilcot, we looked at other inquiries that lost public confidence, including the child sex abuse inquiry, and at the length of time that it took for the Saville inquiry in Northern Ireland to report. We recommended that a public inquiry should not be established unless the House has voted for it, on an amendable motion dealing with the remit, the timetable and the chairmanship, and that before such a motion is debated a special Select Committee should be established to consider those matters and report back to the House. Everyone wants to set up this inquiry as quickly as possible in response to public anger, which is very understandable, but so many public inquiries are set up in haste before their terms of reference are properly considered.”
“If we are going to introduce a public advocate for public disasters, is it going to be a statutory body? Would it not be a good idea to combine ombudsman reform with a new public advocate statutory function? I wish to talk about the response to the Grenfell Tower fire and to raise some issues relating to how a public inquiry could be established. Just this year, in February, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee produced a report called “Lessons still to be learned from the Chilcot Inquiry”. We drew on previous reports produced under the chairmanship of Dr Tony Wright. Public confidence in public inquiries is not to be taken for granted.”
“If we leave without a comprehensive trade deal, we will have an agreement about lots of detailed things that will enable goods to flow across the Northern Ireland border, just as goods flow across the border between Canada and the United States without the lorries stopping, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) said. I commend the Gracious Speech because I am delighted to see that it contains a draft patient safety Bill, which is the result of a 2015 recommendation on clinical incident investigation by the Public Administration Committee, which I chaired at the time. I had hoped to see a draft Bill on reform of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which the Committee described as “stuck in time” in our report entitled, “Time for a People's Ombudsman Service”.”
“There is obviously not going to be a comprehensive trade agreement within two years—to that extent, we are not going to have a deal—but are we seriously suggesting that the EU is so insane that it will not make the same kind of arrangements on aviation, data protection, intellectual property, customs facilitation or product recognition on standards that it makes with 100 or 150 other countries with which it does not have a trade deal? I prefer to regard the EU as a bit more constructive than that; indeed, the EU has said that it wants to be constructive and does not want to punish us.”
“The EU has made it very clear that—to paraphrase Michel Barnier—we cannot enjoy the benefits of membership and not be in the EU. Perhaps the ex-remainers have a plan to make so many demands that will not be granted to us in the hope that the country will decide, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t leave the EU after all.” I put it to them that if there is any idea that we are going to try to reverse the decision taken by the British people in the referendum, that would be an incendiary decision for the House to take. Secondly, we keep hearing about a cliff edge. What is this cliff edge? It seems to me to be a continuation of the fear campaign that is now so discredited.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, as Deputy Speaker Sir David—albeit fleetingly, perhaps. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows). I did not agree with all her points, but I thought that the collaborative tone of her response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy set the tone that the public want and expect to see in the House. I commend the Gracious Speech. I am not going to labour the point on Brexit, except to make two brief points. First, the ex-remainers who continue to increase the demands that we should make on our European partners for concessions as we leave the European Union are actually making it harder to get any deal at all, because the more we demand and the more concessions we want, the more we will be accused of cherry-picking.”
“There should probably be an independent investigatory body to determine the causes of accidents, rather like the air accidents investigation branch of the Department for Transport or the rail accident investigation branch. The healthcare safety investigation branch of the Department of Health is to be established in statute to do the same kind of thing in health. We want to know who is accountable and what lessons need to be learnt. The whole landscape is very confusing at the moment, and that is what this inquiry really has to resolve.”
“I remember that after the Paddington rail crash there was so much blame, but in the end the report did not blame people. The Cullen inquiry was a good inquiry that resulted in far-reaching institutional changes in how safety is managed on the railways. I suspect that we need the same kind of far-reaching reforms on fire safety. We heard from the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) about the different regulatory arrangements that are scattered across the landscape of housing management. All those arrangements need to be brought together and considered as a whole, and possibly there should be one new body supervising the safety management of residential property.”
“I am glad that my right hon. Friend has made that intervention, because I want to be absolutely clear. I fully support what the Prime Minister is doing in setting up a public inquiry; what I am suggesting is that a special Select Committee should be established to supervise the setting up of the inquiry, to monitor it and, essentially, to set some timelines. These inquiries take so long because lawyers can always think of new questions and new points to make. We need to put a sense of urgency into these inquiries so that they report on time and do not drag on and on. I submit that the terms of reference should not be about finding blame. If there are to be prosecutions, there will be prosecutions, but we will not make life better by creating an atmosphere of blame, however understandable it is.”
“I appreciate that that is something for the next Parliament, but I wonder whether he could leave something on his file to remind him when he gets back.”
“May I commend my right hon. Friend for being an exemplary Leader of the House? He is widely regarded as someone of impeccable integrity and has conducted his office impeccably during this Parliament, and I hope that nothing will change. May I also draw the Leader of the House’s attention to and put down a marker about Select Committee staffing? We have wonderful staff who work incredibly hard, but Committee specialists tend to change too often. That does not happen in the Library, where specialists sometimes remain in post for a decade or more. It would strengthen the role of Select Committees if we could look at changing the nature of staffing, rather than put up with the current turbulence.”
“Let me take this opportunity to thank the House, but more particularly my Committee and its dedicated staff, for the privilege of serving as Chair of PACAC in the current Parliament.”
“Civil servants should never have been asked to operate in a climate in which contingency planning was officially banned, and the Government should not have shirked their constitutional and public obligation to prepare for both possible outcomes. PACAC recommends that, in the event of future referendums, civil servants should be tasked with preparing for both eventualities, as they do in the case of general elections. It is essential for referendums to be well run, to be conducted fairly, and to command public trust and confidence. PACAC therefore hopes that the Government will heed our recommendations so that the country will be ready for any further referendums in the future.”
“In the run-up to the 1975 referendum, according to the contemporary accounts, Whitehall prepared for a possible UK exit from the common market with a “fairly intensive” programme of Cabinet Office-led contingency planning. PACAC was alarmed to learn that in the run-up to the EU referendum last June, the Government’s official position was that there would be no contingency planning. The only exception was planning in the Treasury to anticipate the impact of a leave vote on the UK’s financial stability. PACAC was relieved to learn that work was undertaken within the civil service on the potential implications of a leave vote, albeit without the knowledge of Ministers and despite their explicit instructions. There was a secret away day.”
“We expressed concern that the manner of the presentation of some Government reports, particularly those from the Treasury, and the decision to spend £9.3 million on sending a leaflet to all UK households advocating a remain vote, were inappropriate and undermined public confidence in civil service impartiality. PACAC reiterates the recommendation made by its predecessor, PASC, that there should be a new paragraph in “The Civil Service code” to clarify the role and conduct of civil servants during referendums. It currently contains no reference to referendums. Finally, we looked at the degree of contingency planning that was made in respect of a possible leave vote.”
“Our understanding of cyber is predominantly technical and computer-network-based, but Russia and China use a cognitive approach based on an understanding of mass psychology and how to exploit individuals. In my capacity as Chair of PACAC, I shall be writing to the Intelligence and Security Committee to raise the issue of cyber-security in the EU referendum, and to ask whether it will be following up on PACAC’s concerns. Today, however, I am encouraged by reports that the National Cyber Security Centre will be advising political parties on the matter during the forthcoming election campaign. PACAC also again looked at the role played by the civil service during the referendum.”
“The media devoted a great deal of attention to our having raised the possibility that the website collapse had been caused by a cyber-attack. Whether or not that can be proved is not the point; it is important to be aware of the potential for foreign interference in referendums or elections, responsibility for which is actually being claimed by some countries, and attacks experienced by others. Permanent machinery for monitoring cyber-security in respect of elections and referendums should be established. Lessons relating to the protection and resilience of IT systems against possible foreign interference must also extend beyond the technical.”
“The Government attributed that to “unprecedented demand”. More than 500,000 online applications to register to vote were recorded on 7 June alone. According to the Electoral Commission, the problems that led to the website’s crash were aggravated by a large number of duplicate applications: 38% of applications made during the campaign were duplicates, and there was no way of checking online whether an application was a duplicate. PACAC supports the Electoral Commission’s recommendation that the Government develop an online service to enable people to check whether they are already correctly registered to vote, which would be invaluable in preventing the website from collapsing again in the future. Such websites should be better tested for resilience.”
“It is something of a testament to Select Committees that we succeeded in persuading the House of Commons to prevent the Government from altering the purdah rules in advance of the referendum. We also recommend that the rules be updated to reflect the digital age. We support the Law Commission’s proposals to consolidate the law regulating the conduct of referendums. As for the administration of the referendum, the evidence gathered during PACAC’s inquiry suggests that while it was not without some faults, the referendum was on the whole run well. PACAC commends the Electoral Commission for the successful delivery of the referendum, which was of enormous scale and complexity. One of the most significant problems was the collapse of the voter registration website just hours before the registration deadline on 7 June.”
“Today, people are educated and have direct access to the information. Voters are therefore more capable of deciding individual questions for themselves, and less willing to accept wisdom handed down from on high. PACAC also considered the conduct and delivery of referendums in the future. It found that Government fears that the purdah restrictions provided for in section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 would impair the conduct of government were groundless. The Committee recommends that those restrictions, which are vital to the fair conduct of referendums, should be extended to cover the full 10 weeks of a referendum period, as recommended by the Electoral Commission.”
“Although we are becoming used to direct democracy, it contrasts with our constitutional traditions and culture of representative democracy. Direct democracy, as we have just learned, can be a shock to the system, particularly when most of the elected representatives disagree with the result. The forthcoming general election is all the more necessary because it will heal that rift, and will translate the direct mandate from the EU referendum into a representative mandate for a new Government and Parliament. That, however, is the point of a referendum. It is a new way of challenging entrenched opinion, just as the Anti-Corn Law League overturned agricultural protection and the campaigns to widen suffrage and to open our economy to free trade challenged the establishment in previous centuries.”
“However, it also argues that the system is less satisfactory in the case of what might be called a “bluff call” referendum which—as happened last June—is used by the Government to try to close down an unwelcome debate. Future Parliaments and Governments must consider the potential consequences of promising referendums, especially when, as a result, they may be expected to implement an outcome that they opposed. PACAC argues that referendums should be limited to matters that are in some way of fundamental or constitutional importance and lend themselves to binary questions, and to instances in which the consequences of both possible outcomes are clear. That is not least because referendums still create a tension in our parliamentary system of government.”
“PACAC’s report, published last week, seeks to draw out some important lessons to be learned from the EU referendum in relation to the purpose of referendums and how they should be conducted. It builds on the work of our predecessor, the Public Administration Select Committee, whose report on the Scottish independence referendum was published in the last Parliament. We hope that both reports will be regarded as required reading for anyone who plans a major referendum in the future. PACAC argues that referendums are appropriate for resolving questions of key constitutional importance that cannot be resolved through the usual medium of party politics.”
“I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving me time to present PACAC’s 12th report of this Session, which is entitled “Lessons learned from the EU Referendum”, and which is still topical in so many ways. We shall be producing further reports at the fag end of the current Parliament—including, on Monday, a report on the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments—but I fear that there will be no opportunities for them to be presented on the Floor of the House before the Dissolution. The referendum on our membership of the EU and the vote to leave by a margin of 52% to 48% represents one of the most momentous political events in our politics for decades. It has already had, and will continue to have, far-reaching consequences, and it will shape the destiny of our country.”
“I do not think that any country influenced the result of the leave vote in the EU referendum. I do not think that the result in any election in any major country would have been altered, but we need to understand why certain countries are doing this and what psychological effect they are trying to create by attempting these things, and we need to be alert to the vulnerability of our systems.”
“I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question. I will not tangle with all the things that he raised, but we have a pretty resilient system. The fact that the vast majority of votes cast are pencil or pen marks on bits of paper that are physically counted means that it is basically an impossible system to hack. What we need to be aware of is the vulnerability of electoral registers and systems. The dispersal of our electoral register among different electoral authorities is another source of resilience: there is not one system to hack. However, we need to be aware of what certain countries might want to be seen to be doing—what they might want to be seen to be attempting to influence the result of, or want to be thought to influence the result of.”
“I do. We made a specific recommendation that a new body be established to monitor cyber-activity in relation to referendums and elections. However, I emphasise that we are in a much stronger position than countries that have electronic voting or single population registers. I have confidence in our system, although we need to be more alert in order to maintain public confidence; that is the main point.”
“It is a fact—I make no comment on it, as an impartial Chairman of my Committee—that referendums are constitutional matters and therefore are reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. I recognise that there is some demand for a new referendum in Scotland, but even the Good Friday agreement says that there should not be a referendum more than once every seven years. There needs to be a respectable interval between referendums, otherwise they just become meaningless. How many times in the European Union have we seen another referendum called when the first gave the wrong result? I do not put the Scottish National party in that category, but calling referendums too often is actually a contempt for democracy.”
“I ask the hon. Gentleman: why stop at 16? Why not 14 or 12? These are subjective judgments made by different bodies in different parts of the constitution. That franchise is a devolved matter; it is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. Personally, I favour maintaining the status quo in the UK.”
“Gentleman draws attention to, and to be ever more alert to the fake news that appears on the internet and is designed to manipulate people’s expectations.”
“With respect, I have asked that question, and I feel I have been rather brushed off by Ministers, perhaps on the advice of officials who are perhaps not as knowledgeable as the Committee is about the technicalities, algorithms or indeed the cognitive approach taken by some of the countries with which the Committee has made itself familiar. I am always grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s contributions to the Committee—I think he is our longest-serving member—but personally I do not agree that this threatens the credibility of our elections. In 1880, one of my predecessors in North Essex conducted his election with his wife walking behind him down the high street handing out gold sovereigns. We have come a long way since that kind of corruption in elections, but we need to be alert to the things that the hon.”
“I think there is always an advantage in what one might call a post-legislative referendum, or a referendum on a proposal on which a White Paper is produced. The devolution referendums in 1997 were both premised on pretty well developed Government policy. One might even pay tribute to the Scottish National party and say that at least it produced a comprehensive document. The leave campaign did produce 600 pages explaining what leave might look like, but the Government had done no preparation, and it is for the Government to prepare for the outcome of a referendum that the Government initiated. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and perhaps he will join us on the Committee again; I miss him.”
“That should ensure that, in future, expectations are much clearer at the outset of an inquiry. PACAC has not sought to reopen all the issues explored by Chilcot; nor has it explored whether Parliament was deliberately misled by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Tony Blair. However, by highlighting what the Chilcot inquiry revealed about the weaknesses in the Government’s decision-making procedures, and by exploring what lessons can be learned from the inquiry for the conduct of other public inquiries, I hope that we can ensure that the processes are in place that may enable such controversies to be avoided in future. I commend the report to the House.”
“It would also make clear to Ministers the vital importance of following proper procedure. The second key finding of PACAC’s report relates to the establishment, role and conduct of the Chilcot inquiry itself and builds on the work of PACAC’s predecessor committee, the Public Administration Committee, which carried out a number of inquiries into the conduct and effectiveness of public inquiries. PACAC recommends that in future, before an inquiry is established, Parliament should set up an ad hoc Select Committee to take evidence on the proposed remit of the inquiry and to present formal conclusions and recommendations to the House. There should then be a full debate and vote in Parliament on an amendable motion setting out the precise terms of reference and an estimated timeframe and proposed budget for the inquiry.”
“Beyond making representations to Ministers and to the Prime Minister, and short of resignation, a Cabinet Secretary does not have any formal recourse to object if a Prime Minister chooses to disregard the procedures for decision making set out in the Cabinet manual. PACAC is in no doubt that this absence of safeguards cannot persist, and this leads to perhaps the most important conclusion in our report. We recommend, in line with a proposal from the Better Government initiative, that the Cabinet Secretary and/or senior officials should be able to require a formal letter of direction if they are being instructed to carry out the wishes of the Prime Minister disregarding the normal procedures set out in the Cabinet manual. That would both safeguard the Cabinet Secretary’s independence and clarify their responsibility.”
“PACAC’s report, launched today, examines the striking extent to which Cabinet government and collective decision making were sidelined by the then Prime Minister in the run-up to the Iraq war. As was made clear in the Chilcot report, significant decisions on Iraq, pre-conflict, were taken without sufficient consultation of Cabinet colleagues. Chilcot concludes that there were 11 decision points prior to the invasion on which there “should have been collective discussion by a Cabinet Committee or small group of Ministers on the basis of inter-departmental advice agreed at a senior level between officials”. A worrying finding of PACAC’s report is that, if so inclined, a future Prime Minister could override the proper procedures of collective decision making without obstacle.”
“However, in the minds of many, it was already far too late. I am reminded that the House of Commons first voted on the question of whether to have an inquiry in 2002, on a Conservative Opposition motion. For many, the length of the inquiry that was eventually established has itself has been subject to extensive criticism. Most of the reporting and discussion of the Chilcot inquiry has been preoccupied with the substance of the decision to go to war, its legality, and what happened in the aftermath of the invasion. Yet there are also lessons still to be learned regarding the machinery of government and how it operated and regarding the conduct of public inquiries, and that is what Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee therefore agreed to focus on.”