Nomination of Members to Committees — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Government Operations
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): I certainly do not want to detain the House for long, but I do wish to take seriously the interesting speech by the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I shall comment on its logic and the motive that it betrays, and thereby try to set the debate in its proper context Let us observe the logic of the hon. Lady’s remarks. She argued that it was improper for the Government to seek to establish a majority on the Committee of Selection with a view to having either equal or superior numbers in Committee, because, she implied, that would enable the Government to pass legislation that they might not be able to pass on the Floor of the House because, she argued, they do not actually have a majority on the Floor of the House. Let us take that proposition seriously and suppose she is right; let us suppose that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is wrong and we do not have, for the purpose of many Bills, a working majority. Incidentally, there is no evidence so far of that proposition being true: as far as I am aware, the Government have managed to pass all their business so far in this Parliament in good order—indeed, with rather larger majorities than the supply and confidence agreement would imply Nevertheless, let us suppose that in general the shadow Leader is going to be proved right. If she is right, when it comes to the Report stages of all the Bills in question, she and her colleagues will have the delight of being able, one by one, to reverse all the amendments against which they voted in Committee. Therefore, if her own argument is correct and she actually holds the majority, she cannot have any reason of substance for caring whether there is a majority for the Government upstairs in Committee. According to her own argument, she has in her hands the power to take such steps as to ensure that the Bills come out as she wants them Manifestly, that is not her view. Her view, which was displayed passionately by her desire to prevent the Government from taking a majority on Committees, is that she is at least not sure—in fact, I suspect that she strongly suspects she does not have a majority on the Floor of the House. That leads me to the question of motive. If, actually, she does not believe that there will be any substantive difference one way or the other—indeed, she cannot believe that there is, because it is a clear matter of plain fact that whoever holds the majority on the Floor of the House will prevail in the end—we have to ask why she put the argument she did. What is her motive? We know what it is, because it is the same as the motive of the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was quoted earlier. It is the traditional motive of Oppositions and it is a perfectly respectable position for Oppositions to take What are Oppositions in business to do? Incidentally, I do not know whether it makes sense to have a parliamentary system as opposed to a Congress and so forth, but it is the system we have so, in that system, what is the purpose of an Opposition? First, it is to hold the Government to account by causing trouble in the House of Commons; secondly, it is to seek to destabilise the Government; and thirdly, it is to put themselves in a position of having appealed to the people sufficiently so that when the Government are destabilised, the Opposition can win a general election and take power. That is the legitimate role of an Opposition under our constitution. It therefore always falls to the Government of the day —as it did to the Labour Government under the conditions about which Mrs Thatcher was complaining and as it does now to our Government—to seek to assert the principle that Her Majesty’s Government should be able to take the steps necessary to pass their legislation, and not merely in substance but in good order and at a reasonable pace. It is the Opposition’s duty to seek to disrupt that, which is, of course, what is going on here The Labour party wishes to achieve not a substantive change in the outcomes of legislation but the delicious prospect of their being able to make it well-nigh impossible for the Government to get any sizeable amount of business through the House, which is, despite all the ritual shakes of the head that are going on at the moment, exactly what any respectable Opposition would seek to do. I congratulate them on it, but there is not the slightest reason why people on the Government Benches should be beguiled by this, any more than the Callaghan and Wilson Administrations were beguiled by Mrs Thatcher’s asseverations at the time. This is a ritual dance that will always occur under circumstances such as those that we now face. We should continue in exactly the way that the Government are doing in order to deliver what the people of this country want, which is the smooth process of Her Majesty’s Government. That is what is in the interests of the people of the country and that is what should guide us.