Government Policy and the Proceedings of the House

Constituents can agree or disagree with their local Member of Parliament, but it is important that they know how their local Member of Parliament views an issue and how they vote on that issue when it comes before them. Voting in that sense is a cathartic process: it allows us to support the process of democracy even if we do not support our particular representative. The problem with not bringing an issue to vote is that it undermines the very process of you, Mr Speaker, hearing the ayes and noes. That will lead to the Opposition forcing votes. It will lead to us wasting time unless it is clear that the silence on the Government Benches is a silence of approval, rather than a silence because they are afraid.

It seems that the Government have not got the message that they should be accountable to this House. It is of course welcome that they have announced some minor changes—at the Conservative party conference and to the press lobby—on tuition fees and the public sector pay cap. But the problem with decree through press release is that it reduces the ability of this House to ensure that the detail of the volte-face is actually as the House wished.

The subject of how we challenge statutory instruments is important in the light of our discussions on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. I sat through a lot of those discussions and Government Ministers tried to reassure me time and again—not that they were very reassuring—that we should not worry about processes through the negative procedure. They said that we should not worry about statutory instruments because if the will of the House was clear, the House would have the opportunity to review and rescind, and to ensure that statutory instruments that overstepped the mark would not be allowed on the statute book. However, what we see here is parliamentary jiggery-pokery.

This parliamentary jiggery-pokery was used not only to ensure that the debate did not come in time to be able to withdraw the statutory instruments, but to prevent a vote in the House. Therefore, the will of the House seems less strong to members of the public. That is the reality of what happened.

If the Government had stood at the Dispatch Box that day and said, “We won’t be calling a vote because we agree on the two issues”, there would be no problem. The problem was that Government Members spent the whole day arguing against the content of the motions, but then did not vote on them. That is the concern. It is fine—in fact, I am more than happy—for the Government to change their mind after listening to our compelling arguments. I applaud them for that, but let us have a statement about how their mind has changed and, therefore, how policy has changed.

It is no good that members of the public are unclear about the position of this House and that people are left in limbo. They need to be able to hold their politicians to account. They need to be able to hold their Government to account, and the Opposition parties and Back Benchers need to be able to do that too. Therefore, I call upon Members of the Treasury Bench to stand up and make ​a statement about how and when they reflected on the motion passing unanimously, when they will bring forward the changes called for in both motions and the details of how they will do it.


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