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Cambo Chained Or: Dissension amongst the Coalition’s Parliamentary Parties, 2012-2013: A Data Handbook Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart Contents Introduction 1 I Backbench rebellions and rebels, 2012-2013 13 II List of all Coalition rebellions, 2012-2013 34 III Major rebellions against the party whip, by issue/bill 37 Europe 37 House of Lords Reform Bill 39 Growth and Infrastructure Bill 41 Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill 42 Crime and Courts Bill 43 IV The Coalition Rebels 44 Sorted by number of rebellions 44 Sorted alphabetically 48 As always, we are grateful to the various bodies that have helped support our research on backbench behaviour – most obviously the University of Nottingham who fund the current research – and to the many MPs who have responded to our plentiful queries. Copies of this pamphlet and other material on backbench dissent are available free of charge from the blog of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham (nottspolitics.org). We would also like to thank Tiffany Trenner-Lyle and James Donald for helping to check the data, and Andy Platt for the cover design. 1 Introduction The second session of the 2010 Parliament lasted from 9 May 2012 to 25 April 2013. In that time there were some 227 divisions (votes) in the House of Commons.1 Of these, there were rebellions by Coalition MPs in 61 divisions, covering a wide range of issues and bills, from Europe (repeatedly) to House of Lords reform, from child benefit to housing benefit, and from the succession to the Crown to planning regulation. In absolute terms, a figure of 61 rebellions by government MPs might seem low. It certainly pales by comparison with the previous session, which saw some 239 rebellions by Coalition MPs – the highest figure for government MPs in the post- war era, as we reported in our publication on that session, The Bumper Book of Coalition Rebellions. (Indeed, that figure of 239 was higher than all but three entire post-war parliaments). However, the comparison is not valid. In order to accommodate the changes to a fixed-term Parliament, the first session of the 2010 Parliament lasted two years, a full 290 sitting days, longer than any session since 1945. That atypical session aside, a figure of 61 rebellions looks much more normal. Out of the 67 post-war sessions before the 2012-13 session, for example, there were 51 which saw a smaller number of rebellions, four which saw the same number, and only 12 which saw a larger number. A figure of 61 rebellions is therefore high if seen in a longer historical perspective, but not exceptionally so. Every Parliament since that of 1966 – and every Prime Minister since Wilson – has experienced at least one session with a larger number of rebellions than seen in the last session; and of the 19 sessions in the last two decades, since the 1992 election, seven have seen more rebellions, and one the same number. A more useful measure is the relative rate of rebellion, to take into account the number of divisions that occur in a session. As a percentage of divisions, the 61 rebellions in the 2012-13 session constitute a rebellion by coalition MPs in 27% of divisions. Again, whilst a clear drop from the 44% witnessed in the last session, seen in a longer historical perspective a figure of 27% is relatively high for the post-war period. It tops the comparable figure for all but nine post-war sessions. Most of these nine are from periods of Labour government (two under Callaghan, five under Blair and Brown); the preceding session of 2010-12 aside, only one Conservative Prime Minister has experienced a session with a higher level of dissent (that is, Edward Heath), and he only experienced it for one session (between 1971-72). If we break down the overall figure of 27% into its two component parts, Conservative MPs have broken ranks in 19% of divisions (down from 28% in the 2010-12 session), Lib Dem MPs have done so in 15% (down from 24% in the 2010-12 session). (These two figures sum to more than 27%, because of some votes in which both parties have seen dissent, something considered further below). In other words, the decline in rebelliousness has been equal (down nine points for the Conservatives and nine for the Lib Dems) for both parts of the Coalition. These separate figures are still relatively high if compared to the overall post-war period, although less so if compared to recent decades. In the last twenty years, 1 This figure is itself relatively low. Leaving aside the final sessions of parliaments – which are usually truncated by the coming general election – we can identify just three other sessions in the last 40 or so years which saw fewer divisions. 2 for example, nine sessions (including eight of the last ten years) have seen higher rates of rebellion by MPs of the governing party than the current Conservative figure of 19%. But the figure of 19% for the Conservatives alone is still higher than for all but seven sessions of Conservative government during the post-war era. It is, for example, higher than John Major faced for all but the 1992-93 session; higher than Margaret Thatcher faced during her premiership save for the 1981-2 and 1984-5 sessions; and it is higher than the levels of rebellion faced at any point by Churchill, Eden, Macmillan or Home (save for the 1962-3 session, when it also ran at 19%). Edward Heath faced a higher rate of rebellion in three of his four sessions in government, but overall the rate for the 1970 Parliament was 19%. In other words, even the figure for the Conservatives alone is relatively high compared to most periods of previous Conservative government. Even the Lib Dem rate of 15% is still higher than that seen by government MPs in the majority of post-war sessions (being higher than in all but 24 sessions since 1945), although slightly low compared to most of the last decade or so; you have to go back the 1997 Parliament to find MPs rebelling at a rate as low as a rebellion in 15% of divisions.2 The good news for the whips therefore is that we can report a gradual reduction in the level of backbench dissent on the Coalition side. Between September 2010 and February 2011 the rate of dissent consistently exceeded 50%, with divisions more likely to see a revolt than not. By the end of the last session, cohesion was the norm again, albeit with dissent a relatively common exception. In the last year, by contrast, for every division seeing backbench dissent there have been (roughly) three divisions without any dissent. However, the rate of rebellion in this session only appears low when compared to the unprecedentedly high levels seen in the preceding session. Viewed in a longer historical perspective, the rates of rebellion amongst Coalition MPs remain high. Indeed, despite the reduction in the rate of rebellion from the preceding session, the Parliament still remains on course to be the most rebellious since 1945. The rate for the Parliament as a whole (that is, 2010-13) now stands at a rebellion in 39% of divisions, easily topping the 28% seen in the 2005 Parliament which currently holds the record for the most rebellious post-war parliament. If rebellion in the remaining two sessions continues at the rate seen in the 2012-13 session, and assuming a 2015 election, we can project the total for the Parliament to be around 34% by its end. Indeed, even if the rate of rebellion drops again by half – down to a rate of around 13% - in the remaining two sessions, we would still expect the overall total for the Parliament to be 29%, still (just) enough to make it the most rebellious in the post-war era. *** A total of 185 Coalition MPs have voted against their whip thus far during the Parliament. Most (148) of these are Conservatives, but this is not surprising, given that there have been more Conservative rebellions and there are anyway more Conservative MPs. The most rebellious nine Coalition rebels are Conservatives, headed by Philip Hollobone, with 129 rebellious votes since the election in 2010. The most rebellious Liberal Democrat MPs so far are Andrew George and Mike Hancock, both of whom have rebelled on 44 occasions, making them joint-tenth on the list. In total, there are six Lib Dem MPs among the top 20 Coalition rebels. 2 It is also higher than the rate of rebellion seen by Lib Dems in any session for which we have data, going back to 1992-93 when the rate of rebellion was at 9%. 3 Of these 185 MPs, 144 rebelled during the 2012-13 session, and there was a strong relationship between behaviour in the two sessions of the Parliament. The correlation between rebellions in the 2010-12 and 2012-13 session was 0.79.3 Some 33 MPs rebelled in the 2012-13 session for the first time this Parliament, with the most rebellious of these being the Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather, whose departure from government in September 2012 was followed by enough rebellions to make her the (joint-)second most rebellious Lib Dem MP in the whole session. The most notable falls in rebellious behavior also came from Lib Dems, most obviously Mike Hancock, whose 44 rebellious votes in the 2010-12 session were followed by none in the 2012-13 session, as a result of illness and absence from the Commons.