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House of Commons (Effectiveness)

First, may I pay tribute to you, Mr. Fraser? I mean that. I know that you are standing down, and many of us deeply regret that, so I should like to get that off my chest to begin with. Secondly, I congratulate the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter). He and I have taken part in these debates on a number of occasions. He, too, is standing down and I pay tribute to him for the effectiveness that he has brought to the House. I also pay tribute—without overdoing it, I hope—to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), who has continuously fought for the rights of this place, and to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). I welcome very much what he said, because it is exactly what I should like to say. It is simply this: responsibility is the other side of the equation. We need radical reform in the House, and furthermore we were promised it. When I say "radical reform", I mean radical reform. We must bring the House back to where it belongs—being respected by the people. It must also be in line with what the freedom of choice that lies at the heart of our democracy really means. The question is who governs and how, and the abandonment of the business committee by the Government yesterday is not in any way a reflection of the direction in which we should be going. We also have the matter of the House business committee, which slipped off the agenda about 10 days ago. That is also vital to bring back the conduct of matters in the House to where it belongs, which is not with us because we think that we are important, but with the voter because we are elected by them and it is their freedom of choice that enables us to speak on their behalf. I deplore the introduction of the proposal for the alternative vote system and the gimmickry that lies behind it, for the same reasons. It will not make the House more effective. It will not bring it back to the people. It will simply act as an artificial mechanism to achieve the results that the Liberal Democrats want. It is no more than a piece of political chicanery as far as the Government are concerned. I have had this out with the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) in the past, and he knows that Lloyd George himself switched horses on this subject over and over again. We dealt with the Equality Bill yesterday, and the issue of Christians wearing crosses came up. There is not only a question of equality, but a necessity for responsibility. I deplore the decision that was taken in the employment tribunal yesterday. The issue hinges ultimately on the question of the application of human rights. I referred yesterday to the remarks of the Lord Chief Justice, who issued severe strictures against the way in which the human rights culture and human rights decisions have been advocated even by judges at the expense of our own common law and in relation to the European Court of Justice as well. That is there in the speech that the Lord Chief Justice gave only a few days ago, on 17 March. I believe that the effects of the Lisbon treaty in relation to the criminal justice law will make the position even worse. Ultimately, the question turns on how we are governed and who governs us, and the bottom line is that it is increasingly the legislation and abstract principles that come from Europe, adjudicated by unelected judges instead of the people themselves. We must tell the British people the truth both on the economy, which is not being done, and on the way in which the European Union is taking away their right to govern themselves through their elected Members of Parliament. My final point is simply to repeat what Churchill once said. I am paraphrasing, but it is so important: "You should put your country first, your constituency second and your party third."