House of Commons Governance

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Winnick]

To the extent that we caused the expenses scandal, we inflicted a collective punishment on ourselves. Can the right hon. Gentleman point to a period when this place was not the subject of derision in the media? We all know the sketches written by Charles Dickens and by others before him. As the media would argue, it is part of their job to have a go at us.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. That matter goes a little wide of the Committee’s report, and I am conscious that other Members want to speak, so tempting though Mr Winnick’s proposition is, Sir Alan, I hope that you will return to your speech and not respond to it.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

Madam Deputy Speaker, that shows I was too generous in giving way to the hon. Gentleman. I could have dismissed his comment in a sentence, but in view of what you have said, I will not even do that.

What I am trying to get at is that if we can establish a system of decision making and management in this place, we can have greater confidence in the decisions that are taken and be more robust in describing them to the outside world. We should be proud of this place, and if we think that we are doing the right things because we have a sound system for achieving the right conclusions, we should be able to say so and be respected for doing so. Indeed, we should promote the good things that happen in this place. Most of the matters on which the greatest amount of money is spent are in fact for the benefit of the general public, the electorate who put us here and those who wish to come here to support us.

I wholeheartedly commend the report, and again thank the Committee members for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is fighting a gallant rearguard action for the old guard, but if the degree of management skill imbibed previously led to this spectacular spaghetti junction of an organogram of the existing system, there was something deficient in the in-house management training. Any Committee that comes up, by contrast, with something as clear and sensible as the new—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House a very long time, so he knows that holding up bits of paper and shaking them around adds nothing to the debate. I am sure he can convey in words his frustration at the organisational structure he is waving around on a bit of paper.

[Dr Lewis]

I am absolutely reproved, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was thinking for a moment that those ground-level cameras that have periodically appeared here might still be in action, but I see that I wasted my ingenuity.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that he was playing to the cameras. I hope that he was speaking to the House clearly, making very incisive points about this report.

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I always care to project my message in as many dimensions in the 21st century as are routinely offered to me.

It is a measure of the success of this Committee that at least two members of my party who were greatly exercised a few months ago about every aspect to do with the appointment of the next Clerk are sufficiently satisfied that they have not felt it necessary to attend or contribute to today’s debate. I presume that their satisfaction has been reflected in the sentiments expressed from both sides of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Forgive me, but we are debating whether to agree to the specific set of proposals before us. We are not in the process of gathering more up, interesting though they are, before we make a decision on the report before us. I would be very grateful if the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) could, in his brief reply, focus specifically on the points that have been made that are relevant to the report before us now—and, as we all know, there will be further discussion in the time to come.

[Mr Straw]

Thank you—I have got your point, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and the hon. Member for New Forest East both raised the issue of the relationship between the Clerk and the director general. We thought about this a great deal, and I say to both of them that even in institutions where the wiring diagram is very clear and there are clear lines of authority—the military or a grand corporation—there will be some areas of ambiguity, and we will find that the actual power structure is a bit different from that in the wiring diagram.

Let me explain why we took evidence from the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge. I have had experience of dealing directly with the judiciary, of course. The Lord Chief Justice and the judiciary have to be totally independent of the Executive, but the administration of the court service is in the hands of Her Majesty’s Courts Service, which is run by a combination of members of the judiciary and people appointed, effectively, by the Secretary of State for Justice. We looked at those analogies and I think this structure will work. It will work a great deal better, if I may say so, than a split structure involving a Clerk and a chief executive who are wholly separate. I came at this issue rather neutrally, but, having thought about it, it will also work a great deal better than the chief executive/director general being over the Clerk but having no direct knowledge of our primary purpose, which is to run a legislature.

Yes, there is some ambiguity. I am not being Pollyanna-ish about this, but with good will, clarity of expectation on the part of those taking on the jobs, and the clarity we have put into the job descriptions, this structure should work. If there are any specific arguments, the Commission is there to sort them out.

The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) made some points about the portfolio appointments, which I think were answered well by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). These four portfolio appointments will be busy ones and will make a big difference to the accountability and transparency of the House administration to Members of the House.

I think I have dealt with all the key points that were raised. The issue of getting items on the Order Paper relating to House business is slightly separate from our considerations, and I will not go down that route. I repeat my thanks to all members of the House of Commons Governance Committee, to all those Members who have contributed today, and to the House. I commend the report and the motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the report of the House of Commons Governance Committee; notes the priority it has given to agreeing a package of proposals which can both significantly improve the governance of the House and be capable of attracting support from Members on all sides of the House, in a timely manner and well before the House is dissolved; agrees to the recommendations in Chapters 6 and 7, with the proviso that, without changing the party balance of the Commission as proposed in the report, the recommendations relating to the composition of the Commission be implemented so as to allow the Chairs of both the new Finance Committee and the Administration Committee to be elected to these positions rather than appointed to them by the Commission; and encourages the appropriate bodies in both Houses of Parliament to address the Committee’s remaining conclusions and recommendations.