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.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,591 lines we hold for Sir Bernard Jenkin, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 74 of 92.
“The Bill would do absolutely nothing to assist the ordinary population of Mistley in resolving this situation. A few weeks ago, a dinghy capsized in the Stour estuary and a lifeboat was called out from Harwich. A rescue was undertaken and the lifeboat took the people and their dinghy to Mistley quay, but they could not access the quay and no helicopter could land there because of the fence. The fence had to be cut down, with the help of local residents, so that the rescue could be properly effected. What a great victory for health and safety and the HSE! I hope that the Minister will forgive me for placing this very unhappy situation on the record, but I want to know how the Bill will help to resolve it.”
“For those areas, the phrase “may be” is very much the operable sentiment, because the Bill seems to do nothing to strengthen proposals for public open spaces on the coastline in areas that are excluded by the Bill. Let me emphasise how extraordinary the situation is. There has been a huge amount of public protest about this matter in my constituency. I feel sorry for Trent Wharfage, the owner of the quay to which I referred, for being caught up in all this, although I think that it has gone the wrong way about handling the situation and that it could have avoided a confrontation. It has blocked off historic rights that have existed for a long time, and it looks as though this matter can now be settled only through the courts and a complicated legal process that may not be successful.”
“That was fine until the Health and Safety Executive threatened to prosecute the quay’s operators under health and safety laws for providing insufficient safety equipment on the quay. The HSE gave the owner a choice between either putting up signs and providing suitable equipment such as lifebuoys and ladders or other devices by which people who fall in the water can get out or be rescued, or putting up a fence. It chose the cheaper of the two options and erected an 8-foot wire fence across that historic part of Mistley—across the quay. It is now impossible for ordinary people to access and use the quay. What will the Bill do for those parts of the coastline that have historically had public access but that are excluded by the Bill?”
“I am most concerned by what is excluded from the coastal access provisions under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 definition of relevant “excepted land”. I must relate to the House a bizarre situation, of which my constituent, Charles Clover, gave a very good account in yesterday’s Sunday Times , concerning the Mistley quay in my constituency. Mistley is a little town on the Stour estuary that has a quay on which it is recorded that boats unloaded fish as long ago as the 14th century. By some anachronism, perhaps, the quay has historically been privately owned. However, the public have always enjoyed access to it, so that barges and, in more recent decades, yachts and pleasure craft have been able to use the quay for their enjoyment.”
“I have spoken to the Bill only once before, on Second Reading, when I discussed its fisheries conservation aspects. I shall use this opportunity, however, to address its coastal access provisions. I have no registrable interests to declare, but my family, like the Secretary of State’s family, have a tiny patch of coastline that is affected by the Bill. I do not wish to address that today, however. I am intrigued by the amendment, which replaces “is” with “may be”. Perhaps in tabling it, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) was demonstrating his lack of faith that the Bill would deliver what the Government promise. If the amendment is proffered in that spirit, I very much want to support it, not because I oppose the principle of coastal access but because I think a lot of people will be disappointed by what the Bill delivers.”
“I do not know whether the Minister will return to the question of Mistley quay, but does the Secretary of State or Natural England have any discretion under the Bill if access is denied and included in the “relevant excepted land”? Is there any discretion or power that the Secretary of State could use to resolve a dispute such as that at Mistley quay?”
“I thank the Minister for his comments and his helpful suggestion, which I think means I shall be able to take part in the consultation on what categories of exempted land shall be made. Perhaps areas where public access has historically been allowed could be included in that. In the meantime, however, may I ask the Minister just to have a word with his ministerial colleague with responsibility for the HSE? It seems that at present the Minister is trying to extend coastal access but the HSE does not give a monkey’s about coastal access issues. It could therefore be encouraged to behave a little more responsibly in that regard.”
“The Government are to be commended for commissioning this report; the report itself is commendable and the Secretary of State has said nothing unreasonable in response to it. However, I sense a lack of urgency. The report says nothing that the Defence Committee has not been saying for a great many years about the unaffordability of the existing programme, and we need to make decisions now. What are we going to do to prevent a period of paralysis from gripping the Government until a general election?”
“Although the Attorney-General was pretty categoric, she was not absolutely categoric. She said that “it is very unlikely that anything in the Bill would give rise to subject matter that could be interpreted by the European Court of Justice.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 July 2009; Vol. 712, c. 1423.] The Attorney-General has not said “Never”. If there was ever a case for belt and braces, it would seem to be this. If she had said that it could never possibly happen, the Government could legitimately oppose the amendment, but the fact that she said merely that it was “very unlikely” suggests that she holds out the possibility that it could happen.”
“And, it is no good pretending that those matters in the charter of fundamental rights have nothing to do with free speech, because that is there, in the charter.”
“There is no doubt that the charter of fundamental rights, if incorporated into the treaties, would create all kinds of legal apparatus in the European Union which would overlap with the matters in the Bill—and, indeed, with parliamentary privilege. Article 234 of the charter states unequivocally: “Where any such question is raised in a case pending before a court or tribunal of a Member State against whose decisions there is no judicial remedy under national law, that court or tribunal shall bring the matter before the Court of Justice.” There is no question of there being a choice for the national court; there is an obligation on it to refer the case to the European Court of Justice.”
“Will my hon. Friend recall the words of the Justice Secretary? He said that he was prepared to wager that nothing arising from the Bill would go in front of the European Court of Justice. Are we to make the foundations of our constitution depend on a wager made by the Justice Secretary? Why do we not just put in place the belt and braces that we need?”
“I understand the hon. Gentleman’s frustration; indeed, I signed his amendment. It would have been refreshing, in a way, if the Government had allowed his amendment to be debated and then accepted it or been defeated. My only problem with his approach is that there is a tendency on the part of Front Benchers to feel that if they make a few phone calls, there has been consultation. There are 646 Members of this House who often feel left out of such consultations, and I regard the to-ing and fro-ing on the Order Paper as a rather refreshing change. I would not dismiss the generosity of the Government in the way that they eventually handled this.”
“His behaviour was not bizarre; it was principled. He insisted that if we were to strengthen the House, we should do it by the proper procedure and on the basis of debate.”
“It struck me as odd that while we were attempting to set up a Committee to strengthen the House’s control of its business and its Select Committee, the Government imagined that that could be achieved without debating the motion. It is, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said, an irony that underlines the gulf between those in government or who aspire to government and the rest of this House. There was a failure of imagination among those on the Treasury Bench. They thought that simply accepting the amendments and including them in the motion would obviate the need for debate, but that was to underestimate what this House thinks of itself, and, indeed, what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) thinks of himself. I think that he was unfairly criticised in The Guardian leading article today.”
“I believe that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) is unnecessarily modest about his own role in bringing the House of Commons to this point. He is chairman of a cross-party group: we call ourselves Parliament First, and we have been agitating for Parliament to have a greater role and a greater say in its own affairs. We have a list of aspirations—“demands” would put it too strongly—to put Parliament back at the centre of our national life. The hon. Gentleman has played a welcome role in that. His warm words for the Government in bringing us to this point are all part of the consensual atmosphere that we need to generate around this proposal.”
“The world is very different from that conceived by, say, the 1832 reformers, or by Edmund Burke, who coined the immortal phrases about representative democracy and Members exercising their judgment on behalf of their constituents in the national interest, rather than being their delegates. Ultimately, the more complicated government and politics become, the more inevitable it is that those who devote their lives to politics and to service in Parliament will have to exercise their judgment on behalf of the 99 per cent. of the population who are far too busy leading a normal life to worry about the things that we worry about.”
“Whatever part of the House one comes from, one can choose one’s list of organisations to which power is handed over, which destroys the accountability and authority of the House. I put it to those on the Treasury Bench, and to anyone who aspires to sit there, that there is a fundamental truth about our democracy: the weaker that Parliament becomes, the weaker the Governments who derive from Parliament become. It is an irony that respect for politics and politicians has declined as the power of the House of Commons has declined. I do not dismiss the difficulty of exercising representative democracy in a world in which 1.5 billion people are on the internet and expect their say over every issue, in what we now call the network world.”
“Surely we exist for three fundamental purposes: to check the abuse of power by the Executive; to ensure that legislation is properly scrutinised and is fit for purpose; and to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent wisely and efficiently. In all honesty, has the House been doing a good job over the past 10, 20 or 30 years? Actually, we have been doing less and less of that job. More and more legislation goes through without being debated. Fewer and fewer Supply debates are about Supply and scrutiny of the Executive’s expenditure. It has become harder and harder to check the power of the Executive, as more power has been handed over to agencies, quangos, the courts, Brussels or the European Court of Human Rights.”
“My hon. Friend is entirely right about that point. The importance of this moment is that it grows out of the crisis that we have all endured as a result of the publication of our expenses and allowances. That issue did not just excite public anger; it was a lightning conductor for the fury felt by many people—not just about how politics has been conducted in this country in the past 10 or 15 years, but, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central said, about a trend reflecting, particularly in the post-war era, the ever-increasing ascendancy of party over the individual judgment of Members of Parliament. What is the House of Commons, or Parliament, for?”
“It has meant the withdrawal of that final sanction. It is interesting to note that the former Leader of the House, now the Secretary of State for Justice, said during debate on the Parliamentary Standards Bill that he believed that Parliament had become more effective in recent years. He holds that belief because the number of Divisions that the Government have lost has begun to increase, despite the enormous majority that the Government have enjoyed in recent years.”
“For most of the period since the debate about Irish rule, the only constraint on Government business has been the power of delay. Even during the 1970s and 1980s, when the guillotine began to fall more and more often on Government business in order to expedite its progress, delay was still the weapon. When, as shadow Secretary of State for Transport, I conducted the Bill that became the Transport Act 2000 through its Standing Committee, it was decided that we should delay the Bill for as long as possible on a particular point because we were so concerned about it. That kind of attrition is no longer available to the House. What is termed “modernisation”—and I think that even the most ardent advocates of modernisation would recognise that it has become a loaded term when connected with parliamentary reform—has come to mean emasculation.”
“It has been telling to see exposed how ineffective we have become at performing our real task, which is to check the abuse of power, to check the legislation, and to check the expenditure of the Executive. I feel that there is now a drive—a determination—in the House to put matters right. I do not want to raise expectations beyond what might be delivered by the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), but I believe that, of all the reactions to the expenses and allowances crisis, this is the most significant. It may be a small first step, but it is the most significant; and the most significant step that the Committee might recommend is one that would enable us to regain control over our own business.”
“My hon. Friend makes an extremely apposite point, and I do not hold an instant answer to the problem he raises. The demands on individual Members of Parliament are less and less to conduct ourselves as national politicians in this Chamber, and more and more to act as super-ombudsmen and super-councillors—as representatives of our national Parliament in our constituencies, as opposed to representatives of our constituents’ interests in Parliament. That is the context in which the Committee will have to conduct its investigations and inquiries and make its recommendations. As result of the crisis that has occurred, we have all been humiliated—I have certainly felt humiliated. That has served as a reminder of the real purpose of each of our existences in the House.”
“I will in a second. I submit that the reason the Government are now losing Divisions is that the weapon of delay is no longer available. Whereas concessions used to be extracted through delay, the only way to force concessions now is by defeating the Government in the Division Lobbies. That may be a healthy development and a healthy response, but I do not think that it necessarily demonstrates that the House is working more effectively than it used to. The fact that so much legislation now passes through the House without debate and has to be scrutinised at length in the other place—and even the other place has a difficult job, given the present volume of legislation—leaves a serious gap in the armoury enabling our Parliament to hold the Government to account.”
“There may be an advantage in limiting speeches to 12, 10, eight or six minutes in one respect, but I believe that it destroys the real purpose of this Chamber, which is to debate the issues and to allow every Member to speak and to take part in those debates.”
“The hon. Lady has led me precisely to my next point. The task of the business Committee will not be to return us to the war of attrition represented by the ludicrous all-night sittings of Committees and the whole House, although I believe that we lose something by our determination not to engage in such action. Here we are sitting at 10.55 on a Monday night, and I see no difficulty with our sitting late on occasion when there is pressure on the timetable and no other way of conducting our business. It strikes me as extremely frustrating when stacks of Members want to speak in a debate and the Government limit it to five hours and will not lift the 10 o'clock rule to allow more Members to speak—and indeed more Members to speak at length.”
“Its purpose is also, if necessary, to provide the extra time by lifting the 10 o'clock rule and proposing changes to the business of the House—”
“I am bound to say that my experience of that was not entirely satisfactory. Often, a new amendment would be moved. The former Father of the House, that great opponent of devolution on the Labour Benches, Tam Dalyell, would start a debate on a new group on an aspect that none of us had thought of and the motion would be closed off instantaneously. The purpose of a business Committee is to manage the business on behalf of the House and that includes managing the Government business. That was an important concession to extract from the Government. Its purpose is not to prevent the Government from obtaining their business, least of all their manifesto commitments, but to ensure that the House as a whole, including Back Benchers and the minority parties, have their say on Government proposals.”
“It is interesting that my hon. Friend should remind the House of that. It shows that efforts have been made to do programming in an intelligent way. I was an Opposition spokesman on the two devolution Bills at the beginning of this Government's term of office. Our great fear was that there was going to be an arbitrary guillotine that cut off debate on vast swathes of the Bill that we wanted to discuss. We proposed to the Government that there should be timetabling of the devolution Bills. It was quite controversial at the time. Many of my colleagues in the House were quite cross that we should co-operate in that way, but we calculated where the knives should fall during the Committee stage to ensure that the really important bits of the Bill were discussed and debated at least in some form.”
“Just as with the Kelly inquiry, we should generally be minded to accept whatever proposals arise from the Cannock commission—if I may call it that. I realise that that puts a heavy responsibility on that Select Committee, but I believe the Government should appoint this Committee in good faith and we should do our best to make sure its proposals are implemented—and there should certainly be no whipping of either Back Benchers or Front Benchers on votes on those proposals.”
“I support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). It is quite a simple matter to bring Members of the other place to the Bar of this House, or, indeed, to the Dispatch Box, to account for themselves. The advantage of allowing more Ministers to sit in the other place—of allowing more GOATs, or more representatives of the Government of all the talents—is that we may finish up with fewer Members of this House on the Government payroll. I reminded the House a short while ago that before the second world war there were perhaps as few as 50 Members of this House on the payroll. Today, there are more than 140. If we want this House to be more independent, perhaps we should look at how many Members of it are on the Government payroll.”
“If the business Committee is going to obtain control of the business of the House, it should surely be able to make proposals on Standing Orders. Indeed any Back Bencher should be able to put down a motion to change the Standing Orders. There are some positive proposals on Select Committees. Anybody could provide a shopping list of things that need to be done. I think the Select Committees need to consider taking more business under oath. If we want our Select Committees to be respected, why do we treat our witnesses so casually? Why do we not ask them to swear in before they give evidence so that they respect Parliament and there is respect for what is said? In particular, those who serve in Government but are not Ministers should realise that they are answerable to this House and not to the people who provide them with the line to take.”
“Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, which does not have a Government majority, to ensure that it does not become another means by which the Government control the business. The Committee needs to discuss a lot of other matters. Why is it that only the Government can propose a business motion? Surely if we are going to control the business, either the business Committee or any Back Bencher should be able to put down a business motion. If there is sufficient support, it should be called for debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) said, why should the Government have a monopoly on proposing changes to the Standing Orders?”
“I must press on, unless my hon. Friend thinks that it is an urgent matter. For that reason, the business Committee must be composed of Back Benchers. There is a great temptation for the Government to insist that the Committee should deal only with non-Government business, that it will only deal with Government business because non-Government business impacts on Government business and that there must be a Whips majority from the Government on the Committee to ensure that the Government’s business is obtained. That misses the point and misunderstands the spirit in which the hon. Member for Cannock Chase and his Committee will want to set up the Committee. It should not have a Government majority. It should be like a Select Committee. Perhaps it should be like the Committee chaired by my right hon.”
“On the question of the election of Select Committees, does the hon. Gentleman think that paid members of the Executive should be able to vote in those elections?”
“I hope that we will debate the motion before the House rises.”
“I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for assuring us that the Committee on the reform of the House will be debated before the summer recess and will be established. That is important. May I draw her attention to one point that she made? There is a tendency for her and her counterparts on the Front Benches of the other two parties to feel that if something has been agreed between them, there is no need for it to be debated. There are far more Back Benchers than Front Benchers in the House, and that tendency underlines the need for a business committee to look into such issues and make sure that Back Benchers get our fair share of input. I disagree with the continued intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), blocking the motion, but it is his right to make it.”
“I am most grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He is being admirably brief and very generous in taking interventions. May I report to him that when the Defence Committee took evidence on the comprehensive approach last week, Lord Malloch-Brown, a Foreign Office Minister, made it clear that Ministers were still “on probation”—his words—in terms of the Government’s delivery of the comprehensive approach? There is no Cabinet secretariat for the comprehensive approach, no Cabinet Sub-Committee, and no sub-committee of the Ministerial Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development. How are the Government actually delivering the comprehensive approach, when Whitehall is simply not geared to deliver it?”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. In evidence given to the Defence Committee last week, we were told that the Secretaries of State of the three key Departments currently represented on the Treasury Bench meet once a month. They have no Cabinet secretariat, and there is no formal Cabinet sub-committee. We would be making fewer strategic and tactical mistakes if there were a single Minister with full-time responsibility for the war in Afghanistan.”
“I have been listening carefully and seeking to hear from the right hon. Gentleman what the strategy is. What he has outlined is a series of aspirations, but as Professor Richard Holmes would put it, this campaign seems to be long on aspirations and rather short on coherent strategy—on how we are going to achieve those aims.”
“That is not because of what he said or did not say at the time, but it is widely known and has been confirmed on the public record to the Defence Committee by Brigadier Ed Butler that the whole operation was artificially capped by the Treasury at 3,150 men and a cost of £1.5 billion, a sum that was meant to last over three years. That initial strategy was quickly diverted by political pressures into the platoon house strategy and into defending far too many forward operating bases with far too few troops and—the ubiquitous subject—far too few helicopters.”
“I agree with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) said about the lack of co-ordination between Government Departments here in Whitehall. It has become axiomatic that Whitehall is not on a war footing, as it should be. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) said about the complexity that we have created for ourselves, particularly between the EU and NATO. Everybody knows that that arrangement does not work and has to be sorted out on the ground in spite of institutional conflicts. That underlines the fact that, although I have the greatest respect for the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), the original deployment on Operation Herrick IV in 2006 will prove to be one of the most ill-judged and ill-conceived military deployments of modern decades.”
“Perhaps the offensive will buy us the space in which to develop a much more limited strategy. We will know in a few short months the judgments that we are required to make.”
“Meacher) and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who start from a completely different premise from me. I fear that their pessimism may be vindicated, but it is too soon for the House to decide or form a judgment about whether the new McChrystal strategy will succeed. However, we will know in a few short months—soon after the elections in August and by the time the House sits again in the autumn. At that time, neither the House nor Ministers should depend on yet more military advice—it is not right just to ask for more military advice until a politically convenient answer is given. The politicians must take responsibility for a proper judgment call on whether it is worth continuing to pursue a strategy that already appears to be in some trouble. Perhaps we will need to revert to a much more limited objective.”
“It became clear to me as soon as I rejoined the Select Committee in 2006 that the problems in Iraq would be far easier to resolve and that Afghanistan would be a much harder nut to crack. As the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) said, we are still trying to turn Afghanistan into a fully functioning state. That is a tall order for a country that has hardly ever been such—certainly not in living memory. At least Iraq had been a country and feels like a nation. Afghanistan is made up of many nations, which have historically been at war with each other. However, we have a new strategy under General McChrystal of primarily defending civilians and putting in far more troops, but it is too soon to say what will happen. I find myself—somewhat uncomfortably—agreeing with the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr.”
“We need to be realistic about the way in which the campaign is developing. Between September and December 2007, there were 75 improvised explosive device attacks on NATO forces. In the same period the next year, there were 180 such attacks. This year, there were 361 attacks in March, 407 in April, 465 in May and 736 in June. The dramatic rise in casualties was inevitable in those circumstances. I respect those who say that a rise in casualties was inevitable, given that there is currently a big push forward, which is being resisted. However, we are in the early stages of a new Afghan strategy. President Obama, for good or ill, has decided to make Afghanistan rather than Iraq his political priority. I believe that that is directed more by electoral and politically correct UN-sanctioned considerations rather than a more realistic campaign.”
“I have to accept the assurance that the right hon. Gentleman has given, even though we have conflicting testimony. However, we have wonderful armed forces in this country, who tend to put the best complexion on what they are being asked to do; they tend to give the optimistic view. I have an eye-witness account of the final Cabinet Committee meeting that signed off the deployment. A row was expected, but it never took place. We know that the deployment was driven ultimately by the desire to showcase Helmand as the British province that would lead the way as an example to the rest of Afghanistan. That has lamentably not been the case. We are finding ourselves in an Iraq situation, whereby we depend on American reinforcements to bail us out of circumstances, which we have neither the capacity nor the military will to pursue on our own.”
“On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would I be right in saying, even if it is rather an irony, that in an effort to set up a Committee that may well strengthen the House’s power over its own business, we are entirely reliant on the Government to grant time to debate the motion setting up that Committee? Am I right in saying that only the Leader of the House, in a business statement, can allocate time for discussion of the motion?”
“May I put it to the Secretary of State that, with the appointment of General McChrystal as supreme commander in Afghanistan under President Obama, the Americans and the British are in fact embarked on a new strategy of which Operation Panther’s Claw is a part? Will we not know in just a few short months whether we are able to win the hearts and minds of the ordinary Afghan; if not, will we not have to rethink what we are doing in Afghanistan?”