Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I am glad that the Secretary of State is open to further suggestions—the obvious one is to move to use the affirmative system, as opposed to the negative procedure, in this House. That would at least ensure that a vote took place in this House, even if a debate did not. The Bill is very disappointing on prerogative powers. The document that the Government issued last week is possibly the most complacent that I have ever seen come out of government. Basically, it lists the prerogative powers that are known to exist and then says, "Apart from one or two that the Government have already covered, there is nothing wrong with the present system and it is a very good idea that Ministers should have all these powers." It simply makes a mockery of the Prime Minister's promise to entrust""more power to Parliament and the British people."—[Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 815.]" Like the Secretary of State, I would have much more strongly preferred to see something concrete about war powers in the Bill, rather than merely a proposal about consideration of a draft resolution of the House. That was rightly described by the Public Administration Committee as leaving""too much discretion in the hands of the Prime Minister."" The Bill contains nothing about the Dissolution of Parliament and nothing about many of the other powers listed last week. Crucially, it contains nothing about the power to appoint the Prime Minister, which remains in the mysterious official channels of ways and means. That is not acceptable in modern democracy; this House should openly elect our Prime Minister, after a general election. The prerogative is simply arbitrary power dressed up in mediaeval clothes, and it is a means for the Government to avoid democratic scrutiny. We should be discussing a general provision to shift all prerogative powers on to a statutory basis or to this House, and the Government should have to argue for any exceptions to that. May I just briefly mention the public order provisions, because I was disturbed by part of the debate about that earlier? I am happy that the provisions that exist now on protest near Parliament are being repealed, but the Bill replaces them with a regulatory regime that could be abused. I am thinking about, for example, the power at large to confer discretions on senior police officers and the power to impose a limit on the maximum number of protestors without there being any limit to that power. When this Bill reaches Committee we will need to examine carefully what those provisions are meant to do and, if necessary, restrict their remit. On the judiciary, as the Secretary of State said, the effect of the Bill is to take the Prime Minister out of the loop on judicial appointments. I suppose that that is also largely symbolic, since the Prime Minister is replaced with the real power in the land—the power behind the throne all the time—the Lord Chancellor. On human rights, I have no objection to tidying up the anomalies to do with the devolved Governments. However, if the Government are in a frame of mind to tidy up the Human Rights Act 1998, I urge them to consider not only the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) on foreign civil servants, which he has mentioned before, but, rather more importantly, his Bill on human rights, which would ensure that Government contracted-out services, which are only technically in the private sector, are included in the scope of the Human Rights Act. The financial provisions of the Bill on the Comptroller and Auditor General and the National Audit Office are mostly harmless, but there is nothing in the Bill to deal with the ludicrous lack of scrutiny to which the Government are subject in this House before they spend public money. Our method of scrutiny takes place almost entirely after the fact. We in this House have less say in advance of Government spending than a parish council does about what that council spends. Since the reality of politics is that expenditure is policy and policy is expenditure, we are reduced to merely a spectator in government. It seems to me that serious reforms are required to the way in which Parliament relates to the Government on money issues. The Bill, as it does with so many other issues, simply tinkers lightly with the far edges of a very serious problem. A Second Reading debate is supposed to be about the principle of a Bill, and the principle of this Bill appears to be to do as little as possible about as much as possible in a limited way. The big issues that face us about the legitimacy of the political system and the future of our democracy have been ignored. If I am right that we are already in a constitutional moment—in a serious political crisis—that is simply an inadequate response. I urge the Government to think again about what they want to achieve through the Bill and about whether it is right to introduce such a pathetic little Bill at this stage and carry it over into the next Session. It might be a better idea to take the whole thing away and to return in the next Session with a serious attempt at reform.