30/10/2015 The Week in Parliament

Hello. Welcome to The Week in Parliament.

the Commons and the Lords fall out over the government's

Last night unelected Labour and Liberal peers voted down the

financial measures on tax credits approved by this elected House of

Commons, which raises clear constitutional issues.

Are we heading towards reform of the House of Lords?

The Government asks Tory peer Lord Strathclyde to review

It is clear the Government intends to give the House of Lords are

kicking. And Labour MPs call for a statue

in Parliament of former Peers threw

down the gauntlet this week. On Monday, after four hours

of debate, the Government was defeated when the Lords backed plans

to delay cuts to tax credits. Ministers say the Lords have

overstepped themselves and defeated the government

on a finance matter - something they David Cameron has ordered a review

of the powers of the House of Lords. The week's drama began in the Lords

with the government defending This Government believes that

as part of the overall package of measures that support working

people, these changes to tax credits But with the amendments we are due

to consider, there are broader About our role

in scrutinising secondary legislation and the financial

primacy of the other place. All three, those in the name

of the noble Baroness's Lady Manzo, Lady Meacher and Lady Hollis,

would, if agreed to, mean that this House has withheld its approval to

the statutory instrument. The duty of your Lordship's House,

as we know, is to enable governments to think again,

if in our professional judgment they We can be supportive

of the Government and give them what they did not ask for, financial

privilege, all we can be supportive they did not ask for, financial

privilege, or we can be supportive instead of those 3 million families

facing letters at Christmas telling them on average they will lose

up to around ?1300 a year. A letter which will take away 10%

of their income on average. Last night,

an elected Labour and Liberal peers Last night,

unelected Labour and Liberal peers voted voted down the financial

measures on tax credits approved That raises clear constitutional

issues which we will deal with. That raises clear constitutional

issues, which we will deal with. Does the Chancellor agree that

whatever our views may be on this House on the tax credit dispute,

in overturning the will of the elected chamber, the unelected Lords

have exercised the powers of a chamber of Parliament

in the tax area, where for at least a hundred years it has been

well-established that they have and should have only the legitimacy

of a consultative assembly. It is something we will have to

address, the Prime Minister has made that very clear, and that is what we

will do in order to make sure that the elected House of Commons is

responsible for the tax and spend decisions affecting the people

of this country. the Chancellor,

if he brings forward proposals to reverse the cuts to tax credits

fairly and in full, he will not be How much will the Chancellor saved

from the public purse Now that is a very decent proposal

for the Autumn Statement! Mr Speaker, following the events in

the other place on Monday evening and the rather belated acceptance

from the Prime Minister of the result there, can he now guarantee

to the House and the wider country that nobody will be worse

off next year as a result What I can guarantee is that we

remain committed to the vision of a high pay, low tax,

low welfare economy. Will he confirm right now that tax

credit cuts will not make anyone What we want is

for people to be better off because we are cutting their taxes

and increasing their pay. The relationship between the Commons

and Lords is extremely important, The relationship between the Commons

and and when conventions that govern

that relationship are put in doubt, It is clear that the Government

intends to give the House of Lords a kicking, but it should remember,

I think, as it fashions this present constitutional crisis, that the vast

majority of people in this country I am sure

the British public are just amazed and bewildered at this ermine

handbags at dawn spat between the Tories and the unelected Lords,

in this great battle of the nobles, and we on these benches are just

hoping it is a double knockout blow. It is clear the Government intends

to clip our wings. And less than six months into

a new Parliament, the Government is trying to change the laws to ensure

it won't lose a vote again. So Monday was the significant day

for this House, and the events of Monday are what justifies

the review. And it is punishing people who are

going out there and trying to work and do

the right thing, and that just does not sit right with me, so that is

something I could not support. One can only think that because I

don't think anybody in any party in this House would deliberately

have impoverished the working poor. But we do of course acknowledge the

concerns expressed in recent weeks. My Right Honourable Friend

the Chancellor said we would listen, and that is precisely what we

intend to do. Earlier this week,

I spoke to former Lord Speaker Lady Hayman about what happened after the

Lords voted to delay tax credit cuts Did the Lords overstep the mark,

and are we now in the midst I think this is being talked

up out of all proportion. It is very unusual to vote

against a statutory instrument but not unknown, and it has been

done when Labour was in Government and it has been done when the

Conservatives were in Government. The argument is that because there

is a lot of money involved in this, it should have been taken as what

is now being called a financial measure, that is a term of art with

no definition in Erskine May or anywhere else,

and should be treated like the Finance Act is treated - when

the Chancellor introduces his budget,

he makes changes to taxation, so only the House of Commons should

look at those measures. But this wasn't part of a

Finance Act. We have had 13 SIs under

the Tax Credits Act. This Government is now looking at

the relationship between the House You have unique perspective

as a former Lord Speaker. What would you

like to see come out of it? Well, I would like a serious

consideration of the issues. I think the Government is very

angry, and it wants to punish the House of Lords, and I can

understand why it is angry, because Some people think they ought to be

very grateful because otherwise it would have

turned into their poll tax, I would like to see

a serious consideration of statutory instruments and how they

are examined in both the Commons and the Lords, because suddenly, not

suddenly, over time, we have started seeing statutory instruments

used for very big policy things What are the other options

for the Government? The Government talked very wildly

at the beginning about suspending the House of Lords,

flooding it, because it is all Now, to my mind, the House

of Commons always gets its way. They are the elected House and they

should have primacy, in, in They are the elected House and they

should have primacy, in particular in financial matters, but

the role of the House of Lords, when it feels strongly about something,

is to ask the House of Commons to think again, and I think that is

a very important role, I think the amount of support for what happened

shows how important that is. There are 818 peers, so flooding the

House of Lords with more would not Absolutely not, and some would say

we have been flooded already. I think the real challenge is to

reduce the size of the House of Lords and to look at

Prime Ministerial patronage, to look at how the House of Lords

should reflect the results There has been a convention that

the Government should not have a political majority in the House

of Lords, so it can be defeated, because that defeat is not fatal,

in the end all we can do is delay. Now, you have talked plenty

of times in the past about the House Where do you think the House will

be in the next ten years time? Where do you think the House will

be in the next ten years' time? I hope that we will have

a smaller House. I hope that we will have a House

where the appointments process is In a much more open and transparent

way through a statutory appointments commission with criteria that are

laid out so that all the criticism that is being made about how

appointments come about, political That means we are going to

have to reduce our numbers. I would certainly like to see by the

next election the House of Lords Thank you very much indeed,

Lady Hayman. More claims of foul play this week,

as the chairman of the FA told Mps More claims of foul play this week,

as the chairman of the FA told MPs he isn't surprised by comments

from Sepp Blatter that a deal was made in advance to award

Russia the 2018 World Cup. Mr Blatter is the suspended head

of football's world governing body Fifa, and is under investigation

for a payment he made to the Uefa He told a Russian news agency that

Fifa's executive made Greg Dyke appeared

before the Culture, Media and and Sport Committee and said

the claim would be looked into. It looks like he wanted that

before there was any, It looks like he wanted that

before there was any vote, First of all I would like to read it

again in more detail and then get my people to go through it, but it

does look like he is suggesting that Greg Dyke told the MPs that Fifa had

been a "corrupted organisation" And he said the FA had now suspended

its backing for the Uefa president as its candidate

to be the next head of FIFA. We have been impressed by Mr Platini

in his time as president We are of the view that

he has done a good job. We also have a good working

relationship with Uefa, and we thought supporting the Uefa

candidate would lead to a better As we have said on many occasions,

the reform of Fifa is more potent to important to us than who is

the new President. You will be supporting the reform

candidate whoever that proves to be? The board of the FA will discuss who

we should support, we don't have to We didn't nominate anybody,

and we will make a decision close to the vote

when we see who is left standing. If England was bidding

in good faith in a process that was corrupt and Fifa officials knew it

was corrupt, I think to ask them My view of Fifa is that it is

a corrupted organisation and has Therefore not a lot

of it surprises me. It has been suggested that the FA

maybe start a new process in forming a new governing body

whether it is for the Uefa nations Can you just clarify

for this committee what discussions have you had, maybe in private or

public, about setting up a new We haven't had any discussions to

my knowledge. We obviously have chatted

to one two people. We obviously have chatted

to one or two people. Yes, but not discussions,

just saying... It is almost like the Archers,

like an everyday story, it is a soap opera, every week there

is something new that comes out that you have never heard of,

that you didn't know about. I mean who would have thought

that the Germans would suddenly find themselves with the problem

they have found themselves with? So these conversations,

have you had conversations? With Association heads,

even in the bar? I think you have had chats,

that goes without saying, saying, And if you wanted my honest opinion,

that would be, yes, you have to form something totally

new and start again. That would be a good idea

but that is not where we are. To try to get 209 football

associations, of which, I think Mr Blatter said 130, 140,

rely totally for their existence on Fifa money, to try to get them to

actually read form the organisation Fifa money, to try to get them to

actually reform the organisation Now, it's time for MPs to have

a greater say on what gets debated That's the argument from veteran

Labour MP and former chair of the Political and Constitutional

Reform Committee, Graham Allen. Mr Allen wants to take Commons

agenda-setting out of the Government's hands and give

it to a House business committee. This week he forced a vote

in the Commons on considering the proposal in the

hope of opening it up to debate. Parliament is meant to hold

government to account so it is very strange that the very

body that his men to be held to We need to have

a committee where members of Parliament, as backbenchers,

are represented on their agenda setting committee rather than it

being left to the government Mr Cameron said it was a good idea,

Sir George Young, the Leader of But for some reason or another,

the government seems reluctant to let go of the agenda and it

maintains control of parliament. I want Parliament to be

an independent institution, ultimately, and this is one small

step on the way. Let's look at some of the offbeat

stories around Westminster. An annual saving of ?80,000 could be

made in Parliament by using paper instead of vellum for formally

recording acts of Parliament, But calligrapher Patricia Lovett

said... Vellum is derived from the Latin

word vitulinum, The enquiry into

the Iraq war should be published Sir John Chilcot set out

the timetable in a letter to the Prime Minister David Cameron

on the enquiry's website. National security checks will

be done on the report which is The first female bishop took seat

in the House of Lords this week. The Bishop of Gloucester, the right

Reverend Rachel Treweek said ideally she would like a female to lead

the world Anglicans in the future. A usually sombre chamber,

here's broke into And those rounds of applause will

be getting louder in the future. As our ermine-o-meter shows,

the number of peers sitting More rough than tumble

in Westminster as MPs and their canine friends battle it out for

the annual dog of the year contest. Winner was Tory MP Andrea Jenkins

with her schnauzer Lady and Godiva. Thankfully,

both pooches kept their fur on. Labour MPs have called

for a statue of the former party leader and Prime Minister,

Harold Wilson, to be erected Next year marks the centenary

of his birth. MPs said too often

his many achievements had been Building new towns like

Milton Keynes, building more housing than I think anyone has ever built

in this can't treat before. That is something that I think

we should remember Harold for. But if you want to know some

of the other things he did that people should remember -

the transformation of the culture. In terms

of our attitude to homosexuality. Changing our attitudes to divorce

and the rights of women in property. It is quite wrong that in the

members' lobby, there is a small It is about time we honoured him

with a full statue. It is time for a major revaluation

of not so much Harold's reputation, his own personal achievements are

fairly well-known, but the government of the time,

it was a very fine administration. And I think that what might

Honourable friend is leading up The minister could not promise

a statue but paid tribute to The Harold Wilson, as Labour leader,

one for the five general All current parliamentarians will

appreciate what a genuine and truly magnificent achievement

that was for any party leader. He was a social reformer,

that has been referred to, I think he will largely be

remembered for abolishing capital Looking at some

of the other stories of the week. The issue of the so-called "tampon

tax" on sanitary products will be MPs rejected the amendment

in the Finance Bill which would have forced a negotiation with Brussels

over the VAT rating. Female MPs and campaigners have been

fighting for years to remove the VAT on tampons - pointing out that items

like incontinence pads are exempt. The UK can't apply

for a zero rating under EU law. Nonetheless,

as this debate illustrates, there is very

considerable cross-party support to To that end, I undertake to the

House that I will raise this issue with the European Commission and

other members states setting out the views reflected in this debate that

it should be possible for a member state to apply zero rate to sanitary

products. And in that context, may I thank

the honourable member in raising I think we have seen a demonstration

with the views of all sides of the House of the belief that they

should be that flexibility. Every individual will now be

required to sign up to the voting register, after the House of Lords

failed to block moves to speed up The old "head of the household"

method will be scrapped after the Government decided to switch to the

new system by 1st December 2015. At a stroke, ministers are prepared

and disenfranchised huge numbers It is highly likely that people who

think they are on the register will find themselves

unable to vote when the time comes. The core of what we are debating

comes down to the accuracy Do we keep

on the electoral registers ghost entries, entries who have moved

house, died, or who may never even Are these ghost entries living,

breating voters? As the noble Lord

Tyler calls them. Or hundreds of thousands

of database errors which need to be moved ahead of the

next important elections next year? Job advisers are to be posted

at food banks. Food banks provide free food to

people in need who're given vouchers by job centre staff,

social workers or doctors. The Trussell Trust,

a main provider of food banks, put the number using food banks in

the last year at over one million. Something that I am also trialling

at the moment, which people will not be aware of, I haven't said anything

about it before, I was visited either particular food bank before

the summer break to talk about some of the issues

about delivering food and some of the problems with individuals

that turn up and say they have I am trialling, at the moment, the

job advisor situated in themselves in the food bank for the time that

the food bank is open stop we are already getting very strong feedback

about that, where they will be able to check if somebody comes in

and says, I haven't got a payment, If this works and other food banks

are willing to encompass this, I think we would like to roll this

out across the whole of the UK. Steelworkers marched on Parliament

on Wednesday to make the case for political intervention

in the steel industry. The Prime Minister updated MPs

on what What we are doing to help the steel

industry that I know is important to his constituents, and on energy

costs, I can announce today that we will refund the energy intensive

industries for the full amount of the policy costs they face

as soon as we get the state aid I can confirm that payment will be

made immediately and that payment will be made

throughout this Parliament. Far more generous than what has been

proposed by the party opposite. This subject, the Chagos Islands,

but wait a minute, who is this? It is unusual to see a party

leader in this debating chamber. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

wanted to make his point. I give way to the Leader

of the Opposition. Firstly,

I apologise for not being in full I am doing what I have condemned

many others are doing, I declare an interest as

the president of the Chagos Islands group and I declare an interest as a

passionate advocate for the Chagos Do join me for the next

Week In Parliament. Until then from me

Georgina Pattinson, goodbye.