Tag: George Young

Below is the text of the speech made by George Young, the then Conservative MP for Ealing Acton, in the House of Commons on 8 March 1978.

Most hon. Members are now on their way home—most of them, I suspect, in their own cars, one or two enlightened Members by bicycles. Many hon. Members will be outside at the Members’ Entrance, waiting for taxis to arrive to take them home. If they find that they have to wait a little longer than usual, and if their cab driver is a little less alert and cheerful than they might expect, the reason is that the 16,500 taxi drivers in London have been singled out by the Government for harsher treatment than any other section of the community. They bitterly resent the way in which the Home Office has handled their application for a tariff increase.

I spent a few nights in Ilford, North a few weeks ago, for obvious reasons. I met many taxi drivers there. The animosity they expressed about this matter was something I shall always remember. I am delighted to see in his place my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall), who will represent not only taxi drivers but everyone else in Ilford, North for a long time. I am also pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry), who has a large number of taxi drivers in his constituency.

Although the economics of the taxi industry are complicated, the basic case ​ which I wish to put to the House tonight is reasonably simple. It is that the cost increases that the taxi drivers have had to bear over the past two and a half years have been far higher than the tariff increases that the Home Office has allowed. As a result, the fleet proprietors have had to go out of business. The owner-driver is having to work far longer hours even than Members of Parliament and insufficient funds are being set aside for future investment.

The responsibility for this state of affairs rests entirely on the Home Office. To substantiate my argument I go back to July 1975 when the last major tariff increase took place, based on a claim made in December 1974. Since then the drivers have had a lop interim surcharge, introduced in December 1976.

It was against that background that a claim was made last July for an increase of 28 per cent. That sounds a lot, but we have to bear in mind that the increase in British Rail fares from January 1975 to January 1977, a roughly comparable period, was 93 per cent., that London Transport but fares went up 126 per cent., in that period and that Underground fares rose 147 per cent. Those organisations have access to capital funds to help them invest and also have access to revenue subsidies. Both of these advantages are denied to taxi drivers.

Put in the context of the costs of other transport organisations the drivers’ claim was a modest one, reflecting the fact that, for example, a taxi cab that cost £2,900 in 1975 cost £4,500 in 1977. The cost of fuel has risen by over 50 per cent. and the cost of all the other related goods and services have gone up likewise. The figure of 28 per cent. was not plucked out of the air. It was substantiated in a detailed memorandum sent to the Home Office on 11th May last year based on a formula for calculating costs and revenues of the average cab used by the 1970 Maxwell Stamp report. Since that claim was put in nearly a year ago, costs have continued to rise.

The approach of trying to justify a tariff increase on the basis of costs was in line with the Price Code operating at that time. I quote from a letter which the Home Secretary—whom we are delighted ​ to see in the House—wrote to another London Member on 10th May last year:

“In fixing the appropriate scale of charges for London cabs I, as Home Secretary have to have due regard to the provisions of the Price Code. Under the Code fares may be increased to an extent sufficient to offset the increase in prices which has occurred since the base date for the Code which, in the case of taxis, is taken to be 30th September 1972.”

London’s taxi drivers accepted that those were the rules, and they were quite happy to play the game by those rules.

The country had a high rate of inflation and the Government introduced a policy to try to tackle it. Because taxi drivers suffer from inflation like everyone else, they supported the initiative and wished to stay within the limits allowed by the Price Code.

Now we come to the skulduggery, which is what has deeply upset the trade. Halfway through the game, when the taxi drivers felt that they were winning the argument, the Government changed the rules. This is set out in a letter dated 14th February from the Under-Secretary herself:

“However, at the end of our deliberations, the Government had had to conclude that under current counter-inflation policy it would no longer be appropriate to allow a straight passing-through of cost increases into price rises. As you will recall, earlier stages of the counter-inflation policy placed emphasis on allowable cost increases. Under the current stage less emphasis is placed upon cost increases and more on profit margins, return on capital, and the factors affecting these, such as the efficiency of the enterprise and the use of resources.”

That is a totally different game with a totally different timescale and totally different rules set up not by the Maxwell Stamp Committee but by the Price Commission.

The matter was referred to the Price Commission on 12th December last year, according to a parliamentary reply on that date:

“Following consultation with the Price Commission and the Director General of Fair Trading I have today directed the Price Commission to examine and report to me on prices, costs and margins in the provision of cab services. The examination will cover all of Great Britain, and will include both hackney carriages, such as London taxis, and certain other private hire vehicle services, as laid down in the terms of direction.”—[Official Report, 12th December 1977; Vol. 941, c. 15.]

We learn from the Minister’s letter of 14th February that the Commission had been directed to report by 30th June.
​

By that time events had infuriated the taxi drivers and the matter had been made worse by the Secretary of State and the Price Commission. If the inquiry had been confined to London’s taxi drivers, and if it had started work on 13th December and used the figures of the audited accounts of the taxi fleets and the owner-drivers, which were available, it might have been completed by now. But none of that happened. The questionnaires on which the report is to be based have not even gone out yet. The offers of audited accounts were refused and, three months after the inquiry was announced, very little progress seems to have been made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) was provoked to wonder in Taxi of 2nd March.

“whether there was a conspiracy between the Home Office and the Price Commission to drive London taxi drivers so close to bankruptcy that the Labour Party proposals for the municipalisation of London taxis actually looks attractive.”

The red herring of hire cars outside London has been dragged across the stage, and it is quite irrelevant to the problems facing London’s taxi drivers.

In the meantime, an increase of 10 per cent. came into being on 22nd December last year based apparently on the 10 per cent. maximum wage guidelines. This is an entirely inappropriate basis on which to treat the taxi drivers’ claim. By all means give the police and the firemen 10 per cent., but they do not have to buy the police cars or the fire engines and run them. To treat this as a wage claim instead of a tariff increase is totally inappropriate.

I should like to try to set out in simple terms the problems now facing the average cab driver. The average cab driver driving, say, 24,000 miles a year, which is approximately 54 hours a week, and allowing him a 10 per cent. return on his capital and letting him put enough money aside to replace his cab after five years, would in July 1975 have earned £2,730. His total costs in that year would have been £3,171. That left him a deficit of £441 per year. That has two consequences: either inadequate funds are set aside to replace his vehicle, or he has to work excessive hours.

If the situation was bad in 1975, by January 1978 it was disastrous. The figures for that month were: income ​ £3,430; total expenditure £4,587. It is not surprising that in the meantime firms have gone bankrupt. Since July 1975, five fleet proprietors, operating some 650 vehicles, have stopped trading. I calculate that to break even now a taxi driver would have to work an extra eight hours per week than he worked in 1975. This is before the impact on his take-home pay of higher taxation and inflation.

The taxi drivers are confident that the current inquiry will vindicate their claim, but they need the increase this summer. If the report is delayed, if the Government do not accept it or refuse to implement it on time and winter comes without another tariff increase, the situation will be desperate. I have had discussions with the Leader of the GLC, Horace Cutler, who obviously has an interest in an efficient taxi service, as it is part of the transport strategy for the capital. In a letter dated 7th March, I was pleased to hear from him:

“We hold regular meetings with representatives of the trade to ascertain their views and we support them in their efforts to operate economically.”

Basically, they want equal support from the Government.

It is against this background of growing financial problems and total exasperation with the Government that I put five specific questions to the Minister, of all of which I have given her notice. The answers may define the area of agreement, clarify the situation and perhaps demonstrate that the Government have some residual sympathy for the taxi trade.

First, will the Minister confirm that she and her Government believe that the capital city needs a flourishing and efficient taxi industry?

Secondly, will she admit that the current level of tariffs means that a taxi driver working as hard now as he worked in July 1975 is substantially worse off on his vehicle operation, setting aside the ravages which taxes and inflation may have made on any take-home pay?

Thirdly, will the hon. Lady confirm that there is now no incentive to become a taxi driver, as a man who buys a new vehicle today, who makes the accepted provisions for depreciation, running costs and so on, will lose over £1,000 a year on his vehicle operation? Fourthly, will she give an assurance that the Price Commission will report on this matter, as ​ requested, by the end of June? Finally, in view of the intolerable delay to date and the impossibility of back-dating any increase, will she accept and implement as speedily as possible the recommendations it contains?

I forgot to say earlier that there is present my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill), who shares the concern of other London Members about this matter.

Licensed taxi drivers are entitled, if they are entitled to nothing else, to some straight answers to the straight questions that I have put to the Minister.

Below is the text of the speech made by George Young, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, in the House of Commons on 16 January 1986.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry) made a moving speech about the real problems that face his constituency in Liverpool. He is honest enough to acknowledge that the problems have not simply emerged over the past six years. They derive from the long-term economic decline of Liverpool, which has brought with it high unemployment and associated problems of physical dereliction, poor housing stock and a high proportion of disadvantaged groups.

The problems in Liverpool have built up over the past 25 years. It has been subjected to massive economic changes over that period, and it has lost about 30 per cent. of its population. Many of those who have left have been young people with skills. Changes in the national economy since the war have also led to the rundown of the port of Liverpool and the port-related activities. That, in its wake, has brought substantial losses in manufacturing capacity.

The hon. Gentleman would be wrong to suggest that there had been a massive reduction in Government spending on Merseyside. Since 1979–80, Government expenditure in that area has risen from £718 million to £1,041 million—an increase of 45 per cent The Government are spending a great deal of money on the city of Liverpool. A massive £28 million was allocated through the urban aid programme alone last year. The initiatives have included the creation of a new maritime museum, a revamp for Lime street station, improvements to the city centre sites and buildings and access routes related to the international garden festival.

We are doing what we can with derelict land in Merseyside. We spent £6 million on derelict land grant, and there was a major land reclamation exercise costing £6·5 million to create the Wavertree technology park. Some £12 million has been spent on housing and historic buildings. The Anglican cathedral precinct is the most significant initiative under that heading, but we are also upgrading housing in Princes boulevard, preserving the ​ 18th and 19th century houses in Canning street and helping the Weller street and Brownlow hill co-operatives provide homes.

The hon. Gentleman spent some time discussing housing and homelessness. There are a large number of vacant dwellings in Liverpool—2,178 in 1984, which is 3·35 per cent. of the housing stock. It is essential to bring back into use existing dwellings that are unoccupied, before we indulge in a major new house building for rent programme.

Mr. Parry

Is the Minister referring to houses awaiting demolition? A number of pre-war tenements are boarded up and cannot be used for housing.

Sir George Young

Those are the figures given to us by Liverpool city council, and they are vacant dwellings in its area. Any district council will have some houses that are empty because tenants are changing or the properties are awaiting refurbishment, but the percentage in Liverpool is 3·35. That is relatively high. In Birmingham it is 2·15 per cent. and in Gateshead it is 2·59 per cent. The first point that I want to make on housing is that, before the city council engages in a fairly expensive programme of new buildings for rent, it should realise that it is cheaper and quicker to bring back into use some of the dwellings that are unoccupied.

The hon. Gentleman spent much time on housing, I would not dispute the proposition that Liverpool’s housing problems are among the worst in the country. The reasons for housing decay and the appalling problems of some of the post-war housing are well known. It is common ground between us that much money will have to be spent to give the people of Liverpool the opportunity to live in decent houses. The Government’s view is that we must get the best value out of every pound of public money spent.

The Government believe that the response should not be rooted in the replacement of unpopular municipal stock. The aim should be to find the most cost-effective approach which provides housing choice and uses all available resources, including the private sector and the resourcefulness of local communities. The city council’s reliance on a physical solution underplays the social problems on estates and ignores the desirability of giving people responsibility for their own homes. The municipal solution to which the council is committed is very expensive and rides roughshod over people’s aspirations to own a home of their choice or to be involved in the management of their own housing.

There are many examples of improved council estates in other Merseyside authorities which have not relied on municipal action. Through the Merseyside task force, initiatives have been set in hand covering more than 10,000 dwellings. Housing choice has been widened through the privatisation of estates in Wirral and Sefton.

Through a package of urban programme and MSC funds, improvements to rundown estates are being secured by tenants themselves on community refurbishment schemes. Twelve such schemes are now under way, covering 6,500 dwellings.

The private sector is taking part in an initiative to develop sites which would not normally have attracted private funds, as a result of which over 800 new homes are being provided. However the sad fact is that none of those initiatives are taking place in Liverpool. They are taking ​ place elsewhere in Merseyside. The opportunities for making more rapid progress in tackling the problems raised by the hon. Gentleman have been sacrificed by the city council on the altar of dogma.

The need to develop a varied and innovative approach to the problems was emphasised when my Department’s urban housing renewal unit visited Liverpool in October. The unit explored the scope for involving the private sector in renewing the city’s rundown estates. Both the task force and the unit have encouraged the city to decentralise its key management functions to a local level to improve services for the tenants. I hope that Liverpool will respond positively to these initiatives. They are not inspired out of political dogma, but have at their heart a commitment to improve the difficult conditions in which many tenants find themselves living in Liverpool.

The hon. Gentleman was critical of the Government’s response to the issue that he has raised. I think that there is a feeling between us that much needs to be done to regenerate Liverpool. Government expenditure on Merseyside is running at about £1 billion a year, but we can see from the problems associated with post-war housing that committing resources is not by itself enough. Measures have to be taken to rebuild confidence as well as bringing about physical improvements. The Government are tackling the deep-seated economic and industrial problems of Liverpool on many fronts. The Department of Trade and Industry’s grants and expenditure towards industrial investment in the area exceed £50 million in 1985–86. Since May 1979 Liverpool has received over £155 million in regional aid.

A concerted effort has been made, through MSC programmes, to improve the skill levels of the community, with some £78 million being spent in that area in 1985–86. Overall there has been an increase in adult training opportunities in Merseyside from 3,500 in 1984-85 to about 11,000 in 1985–86. Urban programme resources have been used in conjunction with MSC programmes to set up training projects. The designation of the Merseyside development area, the Speke enterprise zone and the freeport in Bootle have also improved the climate for investment in Merseyside. That joint approach is vital if real progress is to be made.

The hon. Gentleman was somewhat dismissive of the Merseyside Development Corporation, which we established in 1981. It has a remit to regenerate some 900 acres of massively derelict and disused docklands at the heart of the Merseyside conurbation. We have made good progress, and substantial reclamation and infrastructure programmes are under way. They already include notable successes such as the international garden festival and the restoration of the Albert dock, which will include the Tate of the North from 1988. In the current year, the MDC has resources of some £30 million.

The hon. Gentleman was again somewhat dismissive of the garden festival. It was the first ever garden festival to be held in this country. It attracted over 3·3 million visitors in the six months that it was open during 1984. It represented a major boost to the reclamation programme in the area and a stimulus to the Merseyside economy. The corporation has moved on to restoring the Albert dock warehouses—an outstanding group of grade 1 listed buildings in the Liverpool south docks. A joint restoration project with the Arrowcroft Group is now under way to provide commercial and residential accommodation. Two major blocks of development opened in August 1984, ​ including the highly successful Maritime museum. A further block opened in July 1985, and a further development, to open in 1988, will include the Tate of the North gallery.

Other substantial projects include the restoration of the water system to the south docks, and the British American Tobacco project to convert disused dock sheds into small industrial units.

The MDC has adopted a tourism and leisure strategy for the Liverpool waterfront which builds on the success of the international garden festival, Albert dock and Martime museum. For the dock system between Albert dock and Toxteth dock a “shopping list” of key projects has been identified from which a successful mix of schemes will be drawn. These will include national tourist attractions as well as local and regional sports and leisure facilities.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the need for central Government to play their part in stimulating investment. The Merseyside task force has been active in promoting development projects and bringing together different agencies. Particular emphasis has been placed on interdepartmental co-operation and establishing good links with the private sector, including the secondment of staff on specific initiatives. The main job of the task force is to work with local authorities, Government agencies such as English Estates, and with the private sector to carry forward initiatives and projects which help regenerate the area. There are considerable achievements to the credit of the task force.

A number of vacant sites have been brought back into use through the efforts of the task force—the most important being the Anglican cathedral precinct site. Others are the former Exchange station, which has been redeveloped for offices, the Wavertree technology park, where 64 acres of derelict land are being transformed into a centre for high technology industry. Public parks at Everton and Speke are being created out of derelict and neglected land. The Government have also co-operated with the private sector in land reclamation—examples of such schemes are Minster court, Kingsway loop and Mathew street.

The Government have been doing what they can, and it is legitimate to question the approach of the city council. The municipal approach of Liverpool city council has not been helpful in the regeneration process. It has largely ignored the potential of the private and voluntary sectors and has been patently wasteful of resources. It has helped to camouflage financial inefficiency. The council’s housing strategy is almost entirely oriented towards municipalisation. It has embarked on an extensive new building programme, but has consistently refused to support self-help initiatives such as co-operatives, shared ownership schemes and building for sale.

Mr. Parry rose——

Sir George Young

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I must finish my speech, so I shall not give way.

The city council has been at best indifferent and at worst hostile to the private sector and has withdrawn much of the support and encouragement given by the previous council. It has disbanded the Liverpool development agency, whose job it was to assist existing businesses and encourage new investment.

The council has failed to make use of Government money, provided through the urban programme, to assist firms. It has abandoned the industrial improvement areas set up by the previous Administration. It has made next to no use of urban development grants from my Department, which are specifically designed to enable investments to go ahead which would not otherwise be viable.

It has refused to co-operate with major Government-led initiatives to improve Liverpool’s image and generate new activity, including the international garden festival and the Speke enterprise zone.

Mr. Parry

Will the Minister give way?

Sir George Young

No. With respect, the hon. Gentleman took 15 minutes to present his case and I have only half a minute left of my 15 minutes.

The council has tried to undermine and take over the traditionally strong voluntary section in Liverpool by refusing to support new voluntary sector proposals, and it has attempted to municipalise existing activities.

That is a formidable catalogue of missed opportunities by the city council. I know from my own experience as chairman of the London partnership committees, which are run by Left-wing Labour councils, that it is possible to work with the Government to tackle problems of urban regeneration. There is still the possibility of a consensus on the need to encourage business, create jobs and promote self-help. All too often, Liverpool has slammed the door on this type of co-operation. I very much hope that the hon. Member for Riverside will use what influence he has with the city council to persuade it to change its posture for the better in the coming year.

Below is the text of the speech made by Sir George Young, the then Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 18 December 1995.

With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the franchising of passenger rail services.

The House will be aware that, on Friday, the Court of Appeal, considering an application for judicial review by Save Our Railways, found against the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising on whether the passenger service requirements for some of the first seven franchises had been developed in accordance with the instructions and guidance that had been issued to him by the Secretary of State.

The court ruled that the franchising director could proceed with the award of the first three franchises—Great Western, South West Trains and London Tilbury and Southend Rail—although it ruled that the PSR for LTS Rail was not consistent with the instructions. The court also ruled that the PSRs for the next four franchises were similarly inconsistent. In doing so, the court was overruling an earlier judgment of the High Court that had dismissed the judicial review.

The court’s ruling comes after the franchising director made excellent progress in preparing the first franchises for award to the private sector. Indeed, the first three franchises are ready to be awarded soon.

We have, of course, given careful consideration to the implications of the court’s judgment. I confirm that, as planned, the franchising director hopes to announce the award of the first three franchises later this week, and I welcome the court’s agreement that he should go ahead with them.

The court has been concerned with the consistency between the franchising director’s instructions and guidance and the PSRs. It is, in the court’s words, a “limited legal problem”. The court has not questioned the Government’s policy. Indeed, the judgment describes the franchising director’s approach to developing PSRs as

intelligible and in no way irrational”. The franchising director has prepared his PSRs in a manner which my predecessors and I have consistently approved. We believed them to be consistent with the formal instructions and guidance that were given to him. The Court of Appeal has now examined the meaning of the existing instructions and guidance and concluded that the existing PSRs are not consistent with them.

I have decided, therefore, to clarify the instructions and guidance to the franchising director to ensure that they reflect beyond doubt the policy that we have always followed. Franchisees should have flexibility to adjust commercial services, but the franchise agreement should ensure that a core service level is protected so that service levels operated by franchisees are broadly similar to those operated immediately prior to franchising. My intention is to ensure that the work done in developing the PSRs so far can be relied on in the continuing franchising process.

I am pleased to tell the House that, while clarifying the franchising director’s instructions, I intend to go beyond the requirements of the Court of Appeal judgment. I shall instruct him, when considering the award of future franchises, to take account of bidders’ contractual commitments to, and future plans for, providing services over and above the PSR. In practice, bidders for the first franchises are offering significant commitments in addition to the minima required by the invitations to tender, and they have been taken into account by the franchising director when evaluating bids, but I have judged it right to require him formally to do so for the future to ensure the continuation of that policy.

In view of the uncertainty generated by the court’s judgment, I hope that the House will welcome this statement of the Government’s intentions. Our concern is to ensure that passengers should be allowed to enjoy as soon as possible the benefits that franchising will bring. The Government’s policy has been clear and consistent and I assure the House that there will be no change as a result of last Friday’s judgment.

Below is the text of the speech made by George Young, the then Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 19 November 1996.

At approximately 8.45 pm GMT yesterday, a fire broke out in a lorry on board a Eurotunnel freight shuttle inside the channel tunnel between Calais and Folkestone. The shuttle was carrying 29 heavy goods vehicles with 31 drivers and companions, plus three crew members. The shuttle, on its way from France, had a French driver and crew. It stopped 12 miles through its journey on the French side of the tunnel.

Emergency services, firefighters and ambulances, arrived at the scene within 20 minutes and helped evacuate everyone on board the shuttle. Twenty-eight were taken back to France by a tourist shuttle travelling in the untouched northern tunnel, and six were evacuated by the service tunnel transport system. Eight people were taken to hospital, two of whom were detained, including the driver of the shuttle; their condition is reported to be serious but not life threatening. I understand that both will be discharged today.

French and British fire brigades worked through the night to bring the fire under control. The emergency is now over. I am sure that the House will want to join me in congratulating the emergency services on the way in which they coped with the incident and in expressing relief that there were no fatalities.

The French authorities have already begun a formal inquiry. That is for them since the incident happened in the French part of the tunnel. Eurotunnel’s own investigation is under way. In addition, the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority, which includes representatives from this country and France, will be making its own inquiry into the incident and studying the reports from the operators and the French authorities. The safety authority’s findings will be made public. I shall be urging my French counterpart, Mr. Pons, to ensure that the French authorities publish their findings as soon as they properly can so that the lessons of this incident can be learnt by all concerned.

In the meantime, it would be wrong to speculate on the causes of the fire. I can assure the House, however, that representatives of the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority are on site and will not allow either passenger or freight operations to recommence until Eurotunnel can prove that that can be done safely.

Below is the text of the speech made by Sir George Young to the Hansard Society on 18th March 2010.

Thank you, Peter, for that introduction – and thank you also to the Hansard Society for inviting me to speak to you this evening.

I’ve had the good fortune to be closely involved with the Society over many years, including as a former Vice President. Everyone who works in politics knows what a tremendous contribution it makes both to the public’s understanding of Parliament and to the way Parliament works.

It not only monitors the health of our democracy – it’s also on hand to prescribe the right medicine when the body politic is under the weather. We’ve seen that recently, with the unexpected but welcome progress that has been made introducing the reforms of the Wright Committee on the Reform of the Commons; issues on which the Hansard Society has been campaigning for many years.

I’m particularly delighted to be winding up this series of three talks on parliamentary reform. If you put all the speeches from the different parties together, you can see where we agree; where we disagree; and work out how, in the next Parliament, things might be different if the Conservatives win.

The last few weeks have seen the House of Commons make some big – and positive – decisions to change the way it operates. Given the disastrous year Parliament has endured, these are necessary reforms. The challenge before us is to implement them in the little time that remains before the election; and then to build on them in the next Parliament. The House has suffered something of a cardiac arrest; our task must be to revive it and ensure that it becomes the beating heart of democratic life.

What’s gone wrong?

I’m not suggesting that there is a mythical golden age to which Parliament can return. I agree with Jack Straw that no such time ever existed. Governments of all colours and from all ages have sought to erode Parliament’s authority and compromise its ability to assert itself. The enduring tension between the executive and the legislature lies at the centre of British politics.

But we risk looking at least complacent, at worst fully detached, if we fail to recognise that the current public mood relates to a widespread sense of dissatisfaction with the way Parliament does its job.

Trust – or the lack of it – plays its part. Last week, newspapers reported the headline finding from the Hansard Society’s annual Audit of Political Engagement as “expenses scandal does not cause collapse in trust”. MPs rushing to read the good news will have been disappointed. Underneath the headline was the depressing realisation that the 70 per cent who said they distrusted politicians 7 years ago haven’t changed their mind. Suspicion has just hardened into cynicism.

What concerned me more was the indifference with which an increasing number of people appear to view Parliament. This message is strikingly conveyed by the finding that just one in five people think Parliament is one of the institutions that have the most impact on their lives – a sharp decline from previous years.

To borrow from Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than Parliament being talked about, would be for Parliament not to be talked about. The House depends for its relevance on the strength of its relationship with the electorate. When it speaks to the concerns of the nation, the Chamber is lively and constructive; but when it retreats into itself, debate becomes ritualistic and purposeless. It is this sense of purpose which Parliament has lost. And in a moment I will outline our proposals to make it more relevant and effective.

Labour’s record

It would be unfair to lay the blame for this state of affairs entirely at Labour’s door.

I was shadow Leader of the House in their first term; and now I am shadow Leader in what I hope will be their last. This has given me a good perspective on their approach to reform. And it’s not all been bad.

Under the banner of modernisation, real improvements have been made to the working practices of the House. Our sitting hours are more sensible and more reflective of the patterns of modern life. No one wants to return to all-night sittings to tramp the lobbies in their dressing gowns. We work now in a more balanced and professional environment. To prospective MPs who are women with young families, it will seem a less intimidating place of work.

There have been other successes. Westminster Hall – for which I was the sole and lonely cheerleader on Conservative benches – has opened up greater opportunities for backbenchers to raise constituency issues. Public Bill Committees are a considerable improvement on Standing Committees benefiting from formal evidence sessions before the detailed scrutiny.

The Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee twice a year is another welcome innovation, which has provided a more reasoned forum for scrutinising the Prime Minister than the hurly-burly of Question Time. Though I say in passing that they have not in my view reached their full potential. Two and a half hours interrogation of the country’s Prime Minister by the country’s top inquisitors should elicit more information than it has done to date about what makes Prime Ministers tick and, if it was more effective, it would get more coverage than it does at the moment. As a former participant, I take my share of the blame for this.

While Parliament needed modernizing, it certainly needed strengthening; and too often the measures that modernized it, weakened it. Lasting reform can only take place when there is agreement between the competing interests in the House – but too often the Government proceeded on the basis that what was good for it, was good for everyone. That has sadly not been the case.

The main vehicle for reform – the Modernisation Select Committee – initially managed to foster a sense of collaborative engagement. But instead of being chaired by a senior backbencher, to speak with the authority of Parliament, it has instead been led by a Cabinet Minister, who acts under the direction of the Government: a clear conflict of interest that we have promised to end. The Leader of the House is the member of the Cabinet charged with delivering the Government’s legislative programme through the House of Commons. It is a constitutional affront that that same person should also chair the Committee which decides how the House of Commons will scrutinise that programme.

Inevitably, having such a powerful executive presence on the Committee has led to a divisive approach to reform. Instead of the process being owned by the House – as it should be – it has been at the whim of the Government. When it has suited the Government, reforms have made progress; when it doesn’t, they don’t.

We have seen how ready the Government are to push through unwelcome proposals, even using the casting vote of the Leader of the House to introduce the unpopular regional select committees – which we propose to abolish.

I witnessed this at first hand as a former member of the Modernisation Committee, when for the first time in my 35 years in the House the Government broke with all-party consensus to force through a report on programming. The minority report that I produced with my Conservative colleagues to protest against these changes was voted down. The Government simply deployed its majority both in the Committee, and then on the floor of the House, to introduce what was in effect an automatic guillotine on all Government legislation.

The then Leader of the House Margaret Beckett argued that the guillotine was a way to cut down on late sittings and allow MPs to invest more time in their families. But it was heartening last week to hear Jack Straw publicly accept that programming had undermined effective scrutiny. I hope that Labour will now follow my pledge to return to the more collaborative approach to timetabling business that existed before. As a seasoned campaigner for a stronger Parliament, you will forgive my scepticism.

Constitutional Reform

Too often the Government offers words of support, and then fails to act on them. The initial spark of enthusiasm for one morning’s good headline never seems to burn as brightly the following day.

You only have to look as far as Labour’s flagship Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill to see the divorce between the rhetoric and the reality. In the week that Gordon Brown entered Downing Street in 2007, he announced plans for a “new British constitutional settlement”1 to thrust power into the hands of Parliament and the people.  I welcomed his statement.

But what happened? A Bill was published in draft form; it was put before a joint committee for urgent consideration; the committee completed its work in haste at the request of the government by July 2008 – and then the Bill was lost without trace into the legislative Bermuda Triangle for a whole year. Having just about made it through the Commons low on fuel, it will now be glimpsed below the clouds by their Lordships at Second Reading on March 24 before being downed in thick fog in the remaining days of this Parliament.

There has been little or no progress on nine of the twelve areas where Brown pledged action – such as a Commons vote to trigger dissolution – to transfer power from the executive. Rather than strengthening parliamentary accountability, the Bill itself was so tightly programmed in the Commons that at least 28 clauses – about a third of the Bill – were not debated at all. And although this was designed to reinvigorate democracy, the last minute insertion of a referendum on AV was a pre-election stunt that serves only to undermine it.

This has not been, as the Prime Minister predicted, “an important step forward” – but rather, as the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer pertinently called it, a “constitutional retreat”.

Wright Reforms

The Government was also in headlong retreat on Commons reform – though I’m pleased to say they are now finally running, if you’ll excuse the pun, in the right direction.

The vote on Wright was doubly significant because the proposals that the House overwhelming endorsed on 4 March were not dictated by the Leader of the House and pushed out by the Modernisation Committee. Instead, they were introduced by a committee whose chairman, Tony Wright, is a well-respected backbencher and whose members were elected by their peers, not nominated by the Whips. Instead of enabling the Government to break the consensus on reform – as it has previously done – a consensus in the House broke the Government.

Harriet Harman implausibly argued during the debates that the Government was always on the front foot. But while they have dragged their feet, it was the reformers, supported by the Conservatives, who have been pushing the pace of reform.

We opposed the Government’s attempts to restrict the terms of reference, which would have strangled the House Business Committee at birth. We pressed them for time to debate the report after it was published. We forced them to give the House a vote on all of the proposals. We called for the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee at the beginning of the next Parliament – something even the Wright Committee appeared reluctant to see. And it was only after I threw our weight behind the creation of a House Business Committee that Harriet Harman conspicuously reversed her previously stated opposition and indicated that she would support it.

The Government failed to recognise that the harder they tried to resist, the more effectively their own actions made the case for the executive relinquishing its iron grip on the business of Parliament. As the Labour MP Martin Salter memorably put it, “The power of these shadowy forces at work behind the scenes demonstrates more clearly than ever why the Wright Committee recommendations need to be implemented in full, and that the clammy fingers of the whips and Government business managers are prised once and for all off matters that are for Parliament rather than for party”.

Reformers from across the House should be delighted by the results of the votes a fortnight ago. It was a March Revolution – a definitive victory for Parliament over the executive. The decisions that the House took to elect select committee chairmen and members, create a Backbench Committee and lay the path towards a more collaborative way of handling our business were necessary and long overdue.

The challenge now is to put these sensible changes into practice. I was particularly struck by the words of Tony Wright during the debate when he warned that setting up new structures is easy, but it is more difficult to make them work. As he said: “In a way it is easy when we can blame the Government for everything, but from now on we shall have to attend to ourselves and take responsibility for ourselves. If we do not do that, this is not going to work; it will be sunk”.

We now have just 9 or so days in the remainder of this Parliament to implement the decisions. There is no room for error within such a tight timescale.

Harriet Harman said today that she will find time to debate all of the necessary changes to Standing Orders. But there is a growing concern that this may not happen before dissolution. Such a delay would jeopardise the ability of the Backbench Committee to be up and running in time to set the first topical debate of the new Parliament.

What’s next?

The big question that remains is: what should happen next? Given Parliament’s self-inflicted wounds, have we done enough to stop the bleeding?

My answer is emphatically, no. Parliamentary reform is not a single day’s work. To many people, it may seem a painfully slow and arcane process, but when the circumstances are right – as they are now – it has the opportunity to transform not just Parliament, but the way we do politics as well.

I want to make it clear to you tonight that, if we win the election, the Conservatives will not rest on the achievements of the last few weeks. But we will use the momentum created by the Wright Report, build on the consensus that has been established and feed off the energies of a new generation of MPs.

Yes, there will be other big priorities for the next government – not least paying down the national debt. But we know that urgent action is needed to cut the democratic deficit too. Just as we will rebalance our finances to get growth back into the economy, we will also rebalance the power between government, Parliament and voters to bring confidence back to politics.

So let me outline a number of areas where we will help make Parliament more independent; increase its role in national debate; sharpen its tools of scrutiny; and strengthen its accountability to the people it serves.

Conservative proposals

Many of Parliament’s current problems stem from the over-interference of the executive. The Government is formed from Parliament – it doesn’t own it and it shouldn’t have so much say over how the House is run. We are committed to abolishing the Modernisation Committee and will return its agenda to a revitalised Procedure Committee, chaired by a senior backbencher, elected by secret ballot of the whole House.

But the new rules on electing the heads of select committees will also lend new authority to the Liaison Committee – whose chairman should now take a greater lead than before in charting the direction of reform. Other than their landmark report “Shifting the Balance” in 2000, they have focused more on their evidence sessions with the Prime Minister than spelling out their vision for the House in greater detail. In the future, I believe they should do that.

To help them meet this challenge, we will break the monopoly on statements currently held by ministers and hand to the Liaison Committee a quota of 12 statements a year, which can be drawn on to enable select committee chairmen to launch their reports to the House and answer questions on them. So when select committees have got something important to say, such as today’s report from the Defence Committee on the need for a comprehensive approach to securing peace after military operations, it won’t be buried in a press release and relegated to a few columns in a newspaper; but broadcast live to the nation in prime time.

This will help the House become a platform for debating the issues of the day. And we’ll go further. Too often the Chamber can seem like a sea of green benches, particularly during thinly attended Opposition debates. So we will allow the Opposition to trade the time allocated on those debates to force the Government to give topical statements on the issues of the day – again in prime time.

As the Wright Report observed, all too often MPs themselves do not see the point of making the House the primary focus on their activities. But our proposals will seek to transform this by replacing long and turgid debates with short and punchy statements that will get far greater air time. You only have to compare the amount of media interest that was shown in Tuesday’s statement on BA with the equally topical but less gripping debate later that afternoon on higher education to understand the impact. Parliamentary theatre can be as gripping as the real thing – but we need to make better use of the stage.

Backbenchers aren’t in Parliament just to talk – they’re there to scrutinise legislation and improve the law. While we give them more of a voice, we must also sharpen their teeth.

Making law is a two-sided process: the executive should keep a handle on the volume of legislation that it tries to pass, while the legislature needs to have enough time to give proper attention to every part of every Bill. At the moment it’s going wrong in both respects. There is currently too much legislation, produced too often, with too little effect. And while the Government churns out Bills like press releases, there has been no effort to give the Commons the time and the tools it needs to examine them in detail.

We all know what happens when our brains don’t get enough oxygen. Time is the oxygen of Parliament. At the moment, the sheer volume of legislation is suffocating the House. We will give it the breathing space to be able to undertake its scrutiny in a measured and considered manner, without forcing it to hyperventilate.

We will start from the premise that there should be fewer Bills, more thought-through and better prepared for their journey through the House. I applaud the work of the Better Government Initiative in this area and their principles will inform our approach, should we win the election.

Legislation is too often drafted on the hoof; which forces Parliament to do the heavy lifting that should have been done at an earlier stage by officials. In the 2007/ 08 session, the Government tabled well over 5,000 amendments to its own Bills. It is absurd to expect the House to take the hit for inadequate preparation in Whitehall.

We’ll abolish the automatic guillotine for Public Bill Committees, as I said earlier, which will give backbenchers more time for proper scrutiny. And we need to look closely at the Report stage of Bills where real issues of timing remain. I’m in favour of more split committee stages, where some of the committee stage is taken on the floor of the House, so that more backbenchers would have an opportunity to contribute at an earlier stage of the Bill – as well as stricter time limits on speeches so that some of the pressure is taken off timing.

More effective mechanisms such as these will help to make the Commons better at holding the Government to account – which in turn will build public confidence in what MPs do.

Lords Ministers in the Commons

The work of MPs has for decades stretched only as far as the Committee corridor and the Chamber of the Commons. But over the last three years, we have had to confront a new beast on the political landscape.

These stubborn, independent and wily creatures initially bred in great numbers – and in one case spent his time acquiring vast tracts of territory across Whitehall. But these animals are evasive too; and while they have been allowed to roam free and unrestrained, there is currently no means of bringing them to heel.

These are, of course, the Goats – those ministers appointed from outside Parliament to sit in the Lords and form Gordon Brown’s famous Government of all the talents.

Since July 2007, there have been ten peerages awarded to individuals so that they can function as ministers including two secretaries of state: Lord Mandelson, who needs no further introduction, and Lord Adonis, at Transport.

This is not a new development – there have been nine secretaries of state sitting in the Lords since 1979. What is unusual is for their departments to be accountable to the Commons only through junior ministers. Under Conservative governments, there was typically another minister of Cabinet rank who handled departmental business in the Commons.

There is no such equivalent today. Lord Mandelson delegates Commons work to Pat McFadden; Lord Adonis to Sadiq Khan. Both are doubtless competent ministers.

But it is frustrating that at a time of economic fragility, with industrial strikes brewing, that the Cabinet Ministers with responsibility for industry and transport are unaccountable to the House.

I have made clear in a submission to the Procedure Committee that the current state of affairs must now end and a way should be found for Lords Ministers to be cross-examined, like the rest of their peers in the Cabinet, by MPs.

We should start in Westminster Hall, requiring ministers who sit in the Lords to respond to debates where responsibility for that particular issue rests with them. The Committee will publish their report on Monday; and I hope they will agree with me that it is time to tether the goats.

Cutting the size of Parliament

Our proposals will help to make Parliament a more formidable inquisitor of the Government; and a more relevant force for the public.

But we cannot start work on cutting the democratic deficit without acknowledging that the first priority of the new Government will be to tackle the financial deficit.

We all know that whoever is in power after May 6 is going to have to make some difficult decisions on spending. These won’t just be taken by the Chancellor; or even the Cabinet; they will require the collective will of Parliament. And at a time when we are calling for restraint from the public and the private sector, it’s vital that Parliament leads by example and does everything it can to search for efficiencies.

Over the last thirteen years, the cost of politics has doubled. But we haven’t seen double the benefits. So just as we try to achieve more with less in the public sector, so we must in Parliament.

There are too many MPs. The House of Commons is the largest lower house of any major Western democracy. Even the world’s largest democracy, India, makes do with 545 MPs.  By comparison, the UK has 20 per cent more MPs but just 1/20th of their population.

This is why we have pledged to create a smaller House of Commons. If we win, we will introduce legislation to instruct the Boundary Commission to reduce the number of MPs by ten per cent in time for an election in 2014. By May 2015 the House of Commons could have 585 members – a cut of around 65.

These proposals will have the potential to save over £15 million a year. And it will give an even more valuable political signal during this time of fiscal restraint: that we are all in this together.

And on this, the public are right behind us.

Far from being anti-democratic, we will help reduce the inequities in the electoral system at the same time as we bring down the costs. At the moment, the electoral maths is skewed. In 2005, Labour polled seventy thousand fewer votes in England than the Conservatives, yet won ninety-two more seats.

Jack Straw has accused us of gerrymandering. It’s a claim that’s hard to swallow given their recent conversion to the Alternative Vote. If AV had been used in 2005, it would have delivered more seats for Labour than the first-past-the-post system, even though the party only secured 36 per cent of the popular vote.

What’s more, leading academic experts have said that our proposals would make little change to Conservative representation.

On our direction, the Boundary Commission will ensure that every constituency is roughly the same size. This will address the disparities that exist between constituency populations – and give each vote an equal value. What could be more democratic than that?

Conclusion

I want to end on a broader reflection. Society has changed, but Parliament has not. As the constitutional expert Professor Vernon Bogdanor has said, power has not been handed to people, it has merely passed “between elites”.

Our task now must be to drive much wider cultural reform in Westminster – not just cleaning up politics, but transforming it. That is why we are committed to a substantial shift of power from the centre down to the local; from Whitehall to communities; and from bureaucracy to democracy.