On Friday the Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope made headlines by objecting to a Private Member’s Bill on Female Genital Mutilation. The proposed law would make it easier for judges to remove children from parents who have put them through FGM, and has already been approved in full by the House of Lords. However as the Bill is a Private Member’s Bill – proposed by a backbench MP rather than the government – only one MP’s objection is needed to stall it for over a month.
On 15th June 2018 Chope blocked a bill to make the taking of photographs looking up a woman’s skirt illegal. Chope admitted that he did this despite not knowing what ‘upskirting’ meant at the time he derailed the bill. On the same day Chope also objected to bills intended to give police animals more protection from attack, and reform mental health units.
According to the Labour MP Jess Phillips, Chope and his fellow Tory MP Philip Davies have a long record of derailing bills, saying that they “invent a million ways of exclaiming that the only reason they stop new laws is because they find some tiny element of the bill imperfect.” She shared her experience of trying to pass a Private Members’ Bill to allow mother’s names to be listed on marriage certificates, only to be told that Chope intended to block it under advice from a local vicar.
As the Parliamentary website explains, Private Member’s Bills are bills brought by individual MPs – usually backbenchers rather than the government or leader of the opposition. They rarely become law directly, but can be a good way to increase publicity around an issue, test the popularity of a potential law, and pressurise the government to take the idea further.
According to BBC News, ‘Mr Chope has a track record of objecting to [Private Member’s Bills], arguing that he does it on a point of principle, because he does not agree with legislation being brought before Parliament on a Friday without enough time for a full debate.’
However the anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali has countered this by tweeting that “There would still be Committee Stage, Report stage and Third Reading.” The Independent’s Parliamentary reporter Tom Peck seems to agree with Ali, writing that “this bill had already been through several stages of legislative scrutiny. Then there’s the fact that had he allowed it to pass, it would have been through several more, of far more detail, before perhaps becoming law”.
If all of that wasn’t hypocritical enough, one of the main proposers of Private Member’s Bills in recent years has been…Sir Christopher Chope. In July 2017 the Bournemouth Echo reported that Chope put 47 Private Member’s Bills down at once, while his fellow Tory MP Peter Bone put down another 26. In June 2018 the Metro calculated that Chope had sponsored 31 Private Member’s Bills ‘in the past year alone’. And in November 2018 the Big Issue reported that Chope had put his name to 47 Private Member’s Bills in the current Parliamentary session, which began in June 2017. The Big Issue calculated that of all the bills debated up until that point, 29% had been from Chope.
On Friday morning he presented his own bill, a proposal to use Brexit as an opportunity to lower VAT after March 29th, the date “when UK citizens will end their enslavement by the European Union”. Over two hours were given to this Private Member’s Bill, but on the same day he was unwilling to grant the same courtesy to an issue not as “close to my heart” as the issue of lower taxes.
“He blocked motions to debate Hillsborough, pardon Alan Turing, ban the use of wild animals in circuses, target ‘upskirting’. He even blocked the Guardianship Bill that would have enabled families of missing people to manage their loved one’s affairs.”
– Zac Goldsmith
Chope’s fellow Tory MP Zac Goldsmith has been scathing in response to Chope’s latest objection, listing some of the most broadly popular potential laws Chope has blocked.
However Chope has not been consistent in his opposition to Parliamentary Member’s Bills, as the quotes in the opening image show.
“The reason why I asked to put the previous Bill back to next Friday is that I already have a Bill dealing with the European Union on the Order Paper for that day, so I thought that I should regard today as providing an important opportunity to talk about an equally significant issue for our constituents and citizens-namely, road traffic congestion reduction.”
Chope was willing to impede a bill on upskirting, an issue which he admits to not understanding. But in 2008 he sponsored his own Private Member’s Bill to combat the inconvenience of traffic congestion.
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point on having steered her first Private Member’s Bill so far. As you know, Mr Speaker, I have been in this House for some 23 years and have never got a Private Member’s Bill as far as my hon. Friend has, so she is to be congratulated.”
In 2012 Chope congratulated his fellow Tory MP Rebecca Harris on having gotten her Bill (relating to daylight saving time and timezones) a significant distance towards becoming law, and made lengthy contributions to the debates to help craft the legislation.
“when I introduced a Private Member’s Bill to deal with drug-driving”
Speaking in October 2013, Chope references a Private Member’s Bill he had previously sponsored, in June 2011. Chope mentioned during the debate that his Bill was motivated by “a horrific accident on the A31 in which a lorry driver crossed the central reservation and killed a young student” after taking amphetamines and falling asleep at the wheel. This is an issue where I am in agreement with Chope on principle. However, in his own words “I was told on successive occasions that we could not do anything about it because we did not have the right equipment to enable us to identify the drugs that were in the people who would be stopped by the police”.
Chope has this weekend claimed that his critics on the FGM Bill are “indulging in virtue-signalling rather than looking at the substance”. If Chope has been informed that the technology doesn’t currently exist to properly test for drug misuse, it seems that he was “virtue signalling” with his anti-amphetamine bill.
“As the Bill is a Private Member’s Bill, I was trying to restrict the degree of controversy that might develop about it. I know that the mere prospect of legislating on bats has already created an almost hysterical reaction among some members of bat conservation societies.”
In January 2015 Chope introduced a Private Member’s Bill to address the issue of bats living in churches, and the inconvenience of worshippers needing to wear hats during mass in order to protect their hair.
I don’t want to downplay this nuisance of course. Finding habitats for wildlife that allow them to thrive without causing distress to humans is the kind of issue that seems minor enough to slip outside of the government’s thinking, but will cause anxiety for the people whose life they affect. It’s a first world problem certainly, but it is, I would suggest, the kind of issue which Private Member’s Bills are suitable for, allowing backbench MPs to pressurise the government. But I’d say that protecting children from genital mutilation is probably a more important issue. Chope concluded the half-hour debate on bat habitats by expressing his “hope that a review of the bat habitat regulations and the directive will be one of our main renegotiating points when we come to renegotiate our relationship with the European Union”.
“As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) generously pointed out, the Bill was first presented to the House during the 2012-13 Session, in the form of one of the Private Members’ Bills that I tabled in an attempt to put pressure on the Government to implement all the recommendations in Lord Young of Graffham’s report “Common Sense Common Safety”, which was published in October 2010.”
Speaking in January 2015, Chope referenced a Private Member’s Bill he proposed in March 2011.
As a leftie I’m always reticent when I hear Tories refer to ‘common sense’ – in general it tends to mean cutting the legislation which is evidence-based but counter-intuitive, leaving only the legislation whose purpose is obvious, and leaving ordinary people with less protection. However a summary of Lord Young’s report seems to suggest that it is mainly about ensuring that there are enough qualified health and safety officials to make sure that health and safety laws are properly understood. Nevertheless, an hour was used for debate on Health and Safety laws in March 2011, whereas Chope blocked any form of debate on upskirting or FGM.
As the Independent’s Tom Peck points out, Chope also used Private Member’s Bills to push legislation to allow companies to opt out of paying the minimum wage, and to protect a pot of public money for ex-MPs.
Whether deliberate or not, Chope may have helped the upskirting bill become law – which it did in September last year – by bringing more national attention to the issue. The Labour MP David Lammy has argued that Chope “embodies a brand of thoughtless, regressive conservatism which can ruin lives” – it may be that a desire to distance themselves from being seen in the same way was a factor in the government paying more attention to upskirting than they otherwise would do. Hopefully the same will prove true of the FGM Bill.
Happy Sisyphus 
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