A Citizens' Agenda

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 3:31 pm on 26 October 2006.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Gisela Stuart Gisela Stuart Labour, Birmingham, Edgbaston 3:31, 26 October 2006

Yes, extremists, whether from the right or the left, appear to be offering certainties, and people want certainties. That is worrying.

But I want to look at our own house, before we criticise the rest of Europe. There are two options. We can either draw more of the decision making up into Brussels, which clearly has not worked, or we can draw it down to member states, which is what I think we need to do. In that regard, we should start at home. Let me give an example of what I mean. Early in October, I turned the radio on and tuned into the "Today" programme, hoping to have my daily rant at John Humphrys. Our Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was talking about age discrimination legislation. I thought that it was very good legislation, and that I would have enjoyed, and have felt proud as a Labour MP, and campaigning and saying, "This is what we have done."

But what happened? That is the first I had heard of that legislation, so I sent an e-mail to the Library, asking whether the House of Commons had ever debated that it. The Library wrote back saying that the legislation was statutory instrument 2006/2408. It could find no debates on it in the Commons, but there was a debate in the Lords, on 30 March. Of course, the Lords cannot amend statutory instruments. I read the relevant Lords Hansard and discovered that they did indeed debate it—from 4.22 to 4.54 pm, which is a grand total of 32 minutes. I did a little more reading, and I was given the website link for the relevant research paper. This morning, I asked for a hard copy of it. It has not been printed yet.

Since 1997, there have been nine attempts to introduce anti-age discrimination legislation—via ten-minute Bills and amendments to existing legislation, for example— so this issue has exercised the House. That is good, but I would have liked to know about it. There is another reason the House should debate such legislation at length. When Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and explain their understanding of such legislation, courts then refer to such statements in interpreting that legislation.

There was another element of that "Today" programme that really upset me. When the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was asked whether the new anti-age discrimination legislation would be incompatible with certain UK legislation, he said that it had yet to be tested in the courts. I do not have a problem with legislation being tested in the courts, but we need to give courts guidance on how we regard it. When such legislation affects all our constituents—indeed, this legislation will have ramifications that we have not even dreamt of yet—we need to be much more realistic about how we deal with and debate it in this House.

I have three suggestions. First, we should have a proper Europe Minister. By that I mean a Minister who is in the Cabinet, who has regular —[Interruption.] The current Minister for Europe is a perfect candidate and I would propose him for that role. Indeed, I want to enhance his role. In addition to being in the Cabinet, he should have regular question sessions at the Dispatch Box as the Minister for Europe, during which he explains all the decisions taken at European level that impact on domestic legislation, and how matters will be co-ordinated across Whitehall. That role is currently fulfilled by our permanent representative in Brussels, but I would like it to be fulfilled by someone of Cabinet rank who is regularly answerable to this House. Indeed, in terms of its political significance, that role is almost one for the Deputy Prime Minister.