Transport Select Committee’s Inquiry into High Speed Rail: Update

The Transport Select Committee’s inquiry into the strategic case for high speed rail, which was announced on 21 March, is now well underway.  192 submissions of written evidence were accepted by the committee, and three oral evidence sessions have been held to date.  Copies of the written evidence, as well as transcripts and videos of the oral sessions, can be found on the committee’s web-site here.  There are two further oral sessions planned.  These will be held on the 6^th September at 10am and the 13^th September at 2pm.  On the first of these, representatives of environmental groups, the aviation industry, and Scottish and Welsh regional interests will be giving evidence.  During the final session, representatives from HS2 Ltd as well as the Secretary of State for Transport will be speaking.  The public are welcome at these sessions.  They are expected to be well attended, so visitors will want to arrive early to avoid disappointment.  More information on visiting Parliament can be found here.

Dissolution of Parliament

From Monday 12th April at 5.00pm Parliament was dissolved. This means there will be no MPs until after the General Election on 6th May. Until that time I will be campaigning for re-election as the Conservative Party’s Candidate for Aylesbury.

My Westminster staff are not allowed to work in the House of Commons during the election campaign though they are continuing to deal as best they can with constituency casework from their homes.

To find out more about the Conservative Party’s policies please visit http://www.conservatives.com/

High Speed 2 (Buckinghamshire) Debate

Please find a link to both the Hansard and a video of my High Speed 2 debate on 23rd March 2010.

Hansard: High Speed 2 (Buckinghamshire) Debate

Video: High Speed 2 (Buckinghamshire) Debate

HS2 – Parliamentary Questions

Below are the answers that I received from the Minister regarding the Parliamentary Questions that I tabled about High Speed Rail. As you can see, one of the questions has not been answered yet but it does say the Minister will get back to me shortly. Sometimes this can take a couple of days but on other occasions it can be a few weeks. I will nevertheless post the response on my website as soon as I have received it.

Electing the Speaker

Today I’ve had a few calls and emails from constituents in places that are going to be part of the Buckingham seat at the next election(see previous post on boundary changes) asking if it’s true that they are going to be deprived of their right to vote this time.

The short answer is “no”. Whoever is the Speaker has to stand for re-election to his or her constituency in the same way as any other sitting MP and is  described on the ballot paper as “The Speaker seeking re-election”. Of course what makes things different from other constituencies is that by convention the main political parties do not contest the Speaker’s seat. That doesn’t mean that the Speaker is re-elected unopposed. Both Betty Boothroyd and Michael Martin were opposed by independents and minor parties and the same seems certain to happen in Buckingham.

I take seriously the complaints from a number of local residents that this tradition in effect deprives them of the right to vote for a party candidate and hence for a government of their choice.  They are right about this. But there are also good reasons for the convention and difficulties with the alternatives  that have been suggested.

The reason why the big parties do not contest the Speaker’s seat is that the Speaker, once elected to that office, gives up permanently and irrevocably all his previous party political loyalties and cannot campaign on party political issues. It is important to the functioning of Parliament that the chair is seen by all sides to be impartial and that the authority of the Speaker is accepted, something that would prove a lot harder to acheieve if the Speaker still flew party colours.

I readily concede that it is difficult for constituents of whichever MP is elected as Speaker suddenly to find that they have a representative who is unable to speak on their behalf in Parliament or to table Parliamentary Questions and who must give up any party political affiliation. However, although the Speaker is independent of party politics, he does still take up cases on behalf of constituents and make representations to Ministers and other authorities. He or she also continues the programme of constituency surgeries and non-party engagements that make up the majority of constituency activity for most MPs.

In most European democracies, the Speaker remains a party politician, standing on the party ticket. The problem with this is that it means that the Speakership inevitably changes hands when the Government changes. The office of Speaker becomes the property of the majority party, something that I wouldn’t welcome since I believe that an important part of the Speaker’s role should be to defend the rights of minorities, whether Opposition parties or backbench MPs from all sides, against the tremendous power of the Executive.

Another option would be for the Speaker, on his or her election to the chair, to vacate his constituency (where a by-election would take place) and serve as the member for a fictitious seat (Member for St Stephens, Westminster is one option that has been mooted before). I see the arguments in favour of such a move.  However, there are arguments the other way too.  I think it is a good thing that the Speaker should be exposed to constituency problems like any other Member of Parliament.  The Speaker has to take decisions about selecting subjects for debate, whether Adjournment Debates, Urgent Questions or the ordering of debates on amendments to a Bill.  It is important that the Speaker in carrying out that duty has some feel for which issues are the subject of particular public concern and a constituency postbag is a very helpful indicator of the public mood.

Weapons Proliferation Debate: update

Here is the Hansard record of the debate. You’ll notice that there was a long interruption to the debate caused when a series of votes were called in the main Chamber. Whenever that happens, all Commmittees must be suspended to enable MPs to take part in the votes if they wish.

My short speech is towards the end of the debate, just before the Minister’s response.

A Bad Day for Parliament

Today, the House of Commons convened at 11.30 am. Business in the Chamber packed up just after 4 pm. Now I’m typing this at 10.15 pm and I know that a lot of other MPs  have been working on constituency correspondence or preparing for tomorrow’s debates. But it is just wrong that we should have finished prematurely today (the main debate could have run on till 7pm) when last night we debated a constitutional reform Bill and ran out of the allotted time before we had even started to debate several important amendments.

A large part of the problem is down to the fact that the Government of the day controls more than 90 per cent of the agenda of the House of Commons. It’s Ministers who decide what debates are scheduled on which days.  And for about the last 10 years  the Government has routinely guillotined every Bill, sttting a strict time limit for amendments to be debated. If that means an important  amendment is not reached, then tough!

So on Tuesday we debated a controversial Bill and ran out of time while today we debated a Bill on which there was little dispute and finished early.

Tomorrow we get the chance to vote through procedural reforms that may improve matters a bit. the idea is to reduce the Government’s control of the Parliamentary timetable by setting up a cross-party business committee and giving it a  degree of influence over the allocation of debating time. personally, I’d like reforms to go further but I hope that tomorrow we at least make a start in improving the capacity of the House of Commons to hold the Government (of whichever political party) to account. I think that is the job that the public wants us to do.

Falkland Islands

Walking through the Commons corridors a couple of days ago, I bumped into Sukey Cameron who runs the London office of the Falkland Islands government and we had a brief chat about the current row with Argentina over oil drilling off the islands.

I doubt that anyone will be astonished if I say that the two of us agreed that the democratic right of the Falklanders to remain British was not negotiable. What we also agreed was that the hostile attitude of the Argentinian government is self-defeating.

Argentina’s economy is in a dire condition. As the nearest country to the Falkland Islands, she might hope to benefit from oil and gas  development there. Industrial plants need supplies, repairs, spare parts. Falklanders making money from industrial development might want to spend some of it on Argentinian goods and services. Obdurate hostility to the islanders and a stubborn refusal to accept that they have the right to determine their own future ends up impoverishing the people of Argentina.

Lloyds Group job losses – Minister’s reply

The loss of 800-900 jobs at Lloyds group (formerly HBOS, formerly Equitable Life) was a devastating blow to the Aylesbury economy. You may remember that on 1 December last year I secured an adjournment debate in the Commons to ask the government, which has designated Aylesbury as a growth area,  to respond by diverting money from existing budgets to provide a package of help for the sacked employees and to attract new employers to the town.

The Industry Minister, Ian Lucas, was courteous in replying to the debate and has since written to me at length about the six specific proposals that I made. The text is HERE. To be honest, while his tone is sympathetic, there is very little on offer in the way of help. It’s quite a contrast to the Government’s £60 million emergency package to deal with the consequences of the Corus job losses on Teesside.

I discussed Mr Lucas’s reply with Aylesbury Vale Council and others responsible for economic development in our area and sent a further letter back to him to ask him to look again at the case that I and local council and business leaders have been making.

Below I have included the Minister’s letter to me following the adjournemt debate of the 1st December and my subsequent reply to that letter.

My reply to the Minister’s Letter – 25-02-10

Minister’s Letter to me after the adjournment debate – 01-12-09

To read the Bucks Herald’s report please click here.

High-speed Rail Link 2

On Tuesday 8^th December David spoke in a House of Commons debate about High-Speed Rail 2.

David and Cheryl Gillan MP previously met Sir David Rowland, Chairman of High-speed Rail 2 on 29^th June in Westminster. At the meeting, Mr Lidington told Sir David about constituents’ concerns over the effect the new rail link will have on the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

Below is an extract from the debate. To view the full text of the debate please click here.

Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury) (Con): First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) on securing this debate. High-speed rail is one of those things that almost everybody, whichever part of the country they represent, can happily sign up to as an attractive and valuable idea in principle. The trouble is that, unless and until we reach the stage where we are starting to debate particular route options and the problems and challenges that arise from each of them, we will not start to come to terms with both the benefits and the costs that are involved and we will not be able to assess the benefits and costs of a project of this ambitious scale.