House of Commons Governance
Bernard Jenkin Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
As a traditionalist, perhaps, neither do I want to see business as usual.
The right hon. Gentleman’s findings are a great opportunity for a big change in the culture—by which we mean the attitudes and behaviour—of people throughout the organisation so that, in cases such as that of the gym, there is somebody who is clearly accountable for such decisions and wants to take responsibility for making them. The lack of trust that the current structure has generated needs to change, and I think he has come up with the right solution. Some structures can be set up in such a way as to generate mistrust, but he has chosen a structure—not entirely one of my choosing, I accept—that will create the opportunity to generate real trust and accountability throughout the organisation.
Mr Straw
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, not least because, as I acknowledged in my opening remarks, he co-sponsored the resolution that led to the establishment of the Committee. Those who have had to put up with it can smile about what has been going on in the bowels of the old Canon Row police station, but I very much hope that the Commission might examine, as a case study, what went wrong there. In my judgment—this is not to criticise the good faith of the officials involved—we have a decision-making structure at an official level where somebody gets something agreed, then they have another thought, and there is no proper structure above that for saying, “Should we be doing this? Why didn’t you think of that in advance?” It is ironic that the people making these decisions in Parliament are less accountable—certainly to Members and, I think, to senior officials—than they would be in an ordinary corporate organisation. That has to change because, apart from anything else, it is wasting a lot of money.
Mr Jenkin
The other tension that exists in the current organisation is that, with the best will in the world, the Management Board is trying to think strategically in the long term and there has not always been synergy between its strategic long-term thoughts and the Commission’s strategic long-term thoughts. Merging the two organisations will generate that synergy.
Mr Hague
That is a very fair point. When the Commission meets next week, subject to the motion being approved by the House today, it will be able to consider such things and, indeed, to bear in mind the urgency stressed by the right hon. Gentleman and other Members.
We have already invited the two existing external members of the Management Board to attend Commission meetings as a first step. Indeed, they attended the Commission’s meeting on Monday, so that recommendation has already been provisionally implemented, as announced by the Commission in a written statement to the House yesterday. My right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who speaks for the Commission, may wish to elaborate on that. It was the first in a series of periodic updates on process that the Commission has undertaken to make, which in itself was in direct response to one of the Committee’s recommendations.
I have already indicated to the House on an earlier occasion that the Government are working hard to find a way to make the minor legislative changes that are needed to alter the membership of the Commission in the way recommended by the Committee, and to do so quickly. I will make further announcements about that as soon as I can. We will also provide the necessary time requested by the right hon. Member for Blackburn for the House to consider before the Dissolution of Parliament the minor changes to Standing Orders that implementation will require.
Mr Jenkin
Given the delays that tend to affect legislation, is there any impediment to the Management Board and the existing Commission working together as one body on a pro tem basis until legislation formalises the arrangement, even though any formal Commission decisions would have to be taken by the Commission as currently constituted?
Mr Hague
No, I do not believe there is any legislative impediment to that. Indeed, I have already mentioned how the two non-executive members of the Management Board have started attending the meetings of the Commission. That work is already going on, but legislation will be essential in order to alter the membership of the Commission. Given that we all envisage that the Commission in the new Parliament will be appointed and elected in a different way from before, there is a very good case for that legislation to be dealt with speedily. I will return to the House on that matter in the not-too-distant future.
Finally, we can acknowledge that the House faced a significant problem and disagreement on these matters, and that the Committee, chaired so ably by the right hon. Member for Blackburn, has not only found the right solution but set out a governance structure for the House that I believe will provide Members and the public alike with the levels of confidence, capability and accountability that are so vital to the long-term health of the House of Commons.
Ms Eagle
I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. I hope that anyone who wishes to apply for the post will read the Committee’s report, as well as all the fascinating evidence people gave in such a short time, so that they are well aware of the nature of the job and the authority that we intend should go with it.
Mr Jenkin
I agree with everything that has been said, but what is so vital in the arrangement is that there should be complete trust and understanding between the Clerk of the House and the director general. The sequencing of the appointments, which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House mentioned, is therefore very important. The Clerk must feel that he or she has had a say over the director general’s job description and how the job is advertised, otherwise the arrangement will not work. We will be setting it up to fail if anybody feels that premature decisions have been foisted on them. That must be borne in mind.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
The hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) talked of the pace of change over the years. She and I used to sit on the Select Committee on Employment in the early 1990s, when Committees were not supported to the extent they are now. As has been observed by others, there has been massive change over that period. This report has presented an opportunity to look at our arrangements, many years since Members last looked at them, and to see how we can better fit them to the current day.
I pay tribute to the work of our Chairman, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). The Committee sat a great deal. We sat three times a week and took evidence from many witnesses. I am grateful to him. It was a privilege to serve under him. We saw some excellent chairmanship skills, which is not surprising after his many years here and all the important posts he has held over the years.
It was a particularly good idea for the Committee to meet 60 staff members in break-out groups to hear their views on the governance of the House. That might be a good model for the House of Commons Commission to follow occasionally. The staff were genuinely excited and pleased to be asked their views.
I am proud of the work of the Committee. I pay tribute to my colleagues and the staff who helped us. It was a major undertaking and the report was delivered early. I am glad that the Commission has pledged to implement the proposals if the House supports them today.
The right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), with whom I served on the Modernisation Committee when I was shadow Leader of the House, asked whether this is a major change. One only has to look at the organograms in annexes E and F to see that it is. The wonderful current arrangements are shown in annex F, which is like a piece of modern art, it is so complex. What is being proposed is a much simpler, more straightforward and more modern system.
I do not want to dwell on the reasons the Governance Committee was set up. It was clear from the evidence that we heard that it was time for Members to look at this issue. I believe that the Committee did a thorough and good job.
One focus for the Committee was to consider the role of Clerk of the House and chief executive. We heard important evidence from Members and a large number of other witnesses. Lord Browne, who at the time was the Government’s lead non-executive, was a particularly telling witness. He explained that, in designing who should be at the top of the pyramid of officers in a company, it was important to look at who had detailed knowledge of the core business. Although we are not a company—we are a very unusual body indeed—I felt that he had a point. He felt that the same principle should apply here, and I rather agreed.
We also heard from Lord Judge, the previous Lord Chief Justice, that if he was talking about privilege he would expect to talk to the person who was in charge and was expert in the matter. Many others, including the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), also gave good evidence on that point.
One thing that became clear during our deliberations was that there are models in the public service of the senior official having somebody with commercial and operational skills working with him. That can be valuable in ensuring that what is decided actually gets done. We heard from John Manzoni, chief executive of the civil service, and Michael Whitehouse, chief operating officer for the Comptroller and Auditor General at the National Audit Office. Lord Browne told us that if there are to be two roles, it is vital to have clarity and proper job specifications, and we have set out in the report the specifications for the two roles we decided on. He said:
“Governance must start with clarity, which is difficult to achieve, and with a clear understanding of accountability, which includes decision rights. Who gets to decide what and to whom do you report when you have done it?”
The chief executive of the civil service, who reports to the Cabinet Secretary, and the chief operating officer of the NAO, who reports to the Comptroller and Auditor General, had found that it was possible to have a senior official working closely with the person in charge in a role that was described in different ways—chief executive or chief operating officer. They found that it depended crucially on having the right people in position, having clarity and the two people having an ability to co-operate. We have set out a process whereby the Clerk would be appointed first and then the director general, which is important to ensure that we have people who can work closely together.
Mr Jenkin
From hearing this debate, I am increasingly persuaded that part of the accountability that we need is the autonomy and clear visibility of the director general. Even now, the director general of facilities wears a badge telling us his name and title, and he feels more accountable because people stop him and talk to him as he walks around the Palace. That shows how important the visibility and demonstrable autonomy of the director general will be under the new arrangement, which is something we have all learned from this process.
Sir Oliver Heald
I very much agree. We use the words “overall responsibility” several times in the job specification for the director general, to show that autonomy.
I support the conclusion that the Clerk should remain the senior official of the House of Commons, with the authority that that involves, but that a director general should bring the skills we have just discussed to that important role. It is also right that the director general should have the freedom to initiate in certain areas, that he should be on the House of Commons Commission and that his role should be clearly defined.
During the course of our evidence taking, it became clear that the arrangements for the Commission and the Management Board were not working as well as they should, partly because of the structure, which I have already mentioned and which is obvious from the annexes to which I have referred, but also partly because of culture. We proposed a model that would expand the Commission and involve every important player in this place, and we clarified an enhanced role for Back-Bench Members of the Commission. As the motion states, it is important that there is party balance on the Commission, and it is also important that there are non-executive directors to strengthen it and ensure that there is proper business experience at the top level.
The effect of the changes will be that the Management Board will be abolished and replaced with an executive committee. That is more common in public companies and other parts of the public sector. It will be a streamlined body, working on a House service basis, committed to delivering the Commission’s decisions. Some suggest that the Clerk should chair that body, but we decided that, overall, it should be the place where the director general ensures that the Commission’s decisions are put into effect. The Clerk should of course be a member, but the lead role of implementation should be with the director general.
The report is more extensive than we first expected, and I believe that it provides a good way forward for the future. I hope that the Government will commit the time necessary to put the new system in place so that it takes effect immediately after the general election, and I was grateful to the Leader of the House for his points on that, which seemed encouraging.
As somebody who has practised as an employment lawyer and advised the recruitment industry in the past, I was a bit surprised by the recruitment procedure followed last summer. The procedure from 2011, which was supervised by Susan Craig of the human resources department here, was a good step forward on what had happened previously. Although it was intended that a similar procedure would be followed this time, it was not. The House must have state-of-the-art recruitment procedures in place, so I welcome the report’s provisions setting out a model for future recruitment in line with current practice. That is an improvement on the 2011 procedure and fits in with the recommendations that Sir Kevin Tebbit made as long ago as 2007.
Over recent years, there has been a process of improving the way in which the House of Commons is managed, but having heard the evidence to the Governance Committee I have no doubt that there is a lot more to do. I believe that the report provides a basis for structural changes that are needed.
An important part of our recommendations relates to the culture of the House and the need for further efforts to achieve a more coherent House service that puts even more emphasis on staff development and training. Sir Kevin Tebbit told us that was important to break down the barriers between departments and functions. I am sure that is right, and our report suggests ways to foster that. I am proud of the report and its conclusions, and I hope that the House will agree that they have merit.
Business of the House
Bernard Jenkin Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Hague
I think that is not so much a question as an advertisement! I am sure readers in Scotland will be able to make up their own minds about what they want to read without our having to endorse it. There is always something a bit suspicious about newspapers being endorsed by politicians of any colour, and those politicians often live to regret it when the newspaper decides to change its editorial line. I caution the hon. Gentleman a little about that.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
May I say how happy I am to be able to join all those who have commended the House of Commons Governance Committee report, and urge my right hon. Friend to bring forward the debate as quickly as possible so that the findings can be implemented? I say that not least because I was the guy who came up with the idea of this Committee; I drafted the motion that was accepted by the House; and I was even the first to invite the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to take on the role of Chairman—and he has done so most ably. Moreover, the report concurs with the evidence submitted by the Public Administration Select Committee.
Mr Speaker
Anybody would think that the matter was about the hon. Gentleman! If he wishes us to think that, it is Christmas time, and we are pleased for him.
Devolution (Scotland Referendum)
Bernard Jenkin Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hague
I will make a bit of progress. Otherwise we will stop on that point.
As in Scotland, the Government have been making good on our promise to deliver further devolution to Wales, with the referendum on law-making powers, setting up the Silk commission and introducing the Wales Bill. The Bill takes forward almost all the recommendations of the Silk commission’s part I report and devolves a significant combination of tax and borrowing powers to the Assembly and to Welsh Ministers. It is important that Wales, too, is at the heart of the debate on how to make the United Kingdom work for all nations.
Sadiq Khan
I have a huge amount of respect for the former Attorney-General, but I am afraid that it is inconsistent to accuse us on the one hand of failing to look at the total picture and on the other hand to suggest a Westminster stitch-up.
Clearly, part of the solution is greater devolution within England, and that has been at the centre of Labour’s policy review: reversing a century of centralisation with radical plans to devolve power and responsibility downwards.
Sadiq Khan
I will give way to the Select Committee Chair in a moment. I want to make some progress first.
My Front-Bench colleagues have already announced ambitious plans that will be implemented should Labour form the next Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) has unveiled a new English deal in which the equivalent of £30 billion of spending would be transferred from Whitehall to city and county regions. My noble Friend Lord Adonis has outlined the way in which a future Labour Government will give local areas and city regions more powers over economic growth, transport and skills. There are other examples. In the context of my own brief, justice, I have announced plans to give local authorities more control over youth justice. They are closer to the issues, and the structure of incentives to cut crime and reoffending works much better on that scale.
Sadiq Khan
I give way to the Chair of the Select Committee on Public Administration.
Mr Jenkin
We have to understand that dealing with the English votes on English laws question is more difficult for the Labour party because it has a vested interest in the power of its Scottish MPs over English matters, but it is wrong to pretend that the delegation of powers and functions to local authorities, which are Crown bodies, is equivalent to legislative devolution to Scotland. That is what makes the English votes on English laws question altogether different from what the right hon. Gentleman has just been talking about.
Michael Moore
My right hon. and learned Friend rightly points to the history of engagement by the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and, later on, the Conservatives. Now, we must hope that the SNP will engage in the process in the right spirit. The interventions from SNP Members this afternoon seem to being going against the spirit of welcoming the Smith commission; they seem to have prejudged it and decided that it will not work. I believe that John Swinney and Linda Fabiani will enter into the work of the commission in the right spirit to ensure that we can reach common ground; I hope that that is the correct judgment to make. It is the responsibility of all participants to create a package that will meet the ambitious aspirations of the people of Scotland, that will maximise the common ground between the political parties and those not of any party, and that will prove stable for Scotland and the UK more widely.
Mr Jenkin
Have we not seen SNP Members demonstrating in the House this afternoon that they are interested not in reaching solutions or long-standing agreements but in wrecking, in spoiling and in taking slight and injury in order to destabilise whatever settlement is agreed on here among the main parties?
Michael Moore
I certainly think that any attempt to create grievance about the process goes against the grain of what we understand to be the SNP’s willingness to be a full participant in the process. I believe, however, that John Swinney and Linda Fabiani will enter into their work with the commission in the right spirit and that they will be determined to work with others and respect the outcome of the referendum, which made it clear that Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom.
The different parties debated and set out their proposals for what they seek from the commission, according to the different principles that Lord Smith asked for, by the end of last week. It is important that we should adopt those principles, so that we can have a Parliament with the maximum range of powers to fulfil our ambitions for it. Those ambitions include an ability for the Scottish Parliament to raise more than half the money that it spends, while retaining at UK level sufficient fiscal capability and responsibility to allow the UK Parliament, and all the MPs who are part of it, to perform the functions that are best secured across the whole UK, including defence, the provision of a unified international presence, fiscal transfers and solidarity, social protection and equity, and the macro-economic foundations of our economy.
It is important that we entrench the Scottish Parliament to make it clear that there is no danger of its ever being taken away, which would be a political disaster. Now is a good moment to entrench it in the United Kingdom constitution. We must ensure that we maintain what is valuable about the United Kingdom, what people have argued and fought passionately for over the past three years, including the single market for businesses and a single welfare system whose core elements are available across the whole UK.
There is another dimension to this, which has formed part of the debate in England and in Scotland. Although it is not part of his official remit, I hope that Lord Smith will look hard at the issue of local devolution in Scotland, because the cries for decentralisation within Scotland are every bit as strong there as they are here.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I fully concur with the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) that since the referendum in the north-east of England, the issues facing that region have not been pursued with the urgency that she demands. She was the agent for the yes campaign in that referendum and I was the Conservative shadow Minister who set up North East Says No. I am sure she accepts that there really was no appetite for that extra layer of government. However, both our parties pay lip service to decentralising the necessary powers and functions to the existing tiers of local government, but both have failed to do so. Such decentralisation would somewhat reduce the sense of isolation from the Westminster system that many parts of England—and Scotland—feel. If we do not learn that lesson from the Scottish referendum, we are really missing the point. I hope that we will build on the consensus.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend is saying about devolution within England. Does he agree that this is relevant to places like Cumbria and the north-east, which border Scotland, given that Scotland will be given greater powers? Those areas would like to have greater powers granted to them as well.
Mr Jenkin
I totally agree with that. I will come back to the question of English votes for English laws later.
I was overcome with relief at the outcome of the Scottish referendum. Both my parents were born in Edinburgh and half my family lives there—I say directly to the Scottish people: you are my kith and kin—and it would have broken my heart if we had found ourselves in separate sovereign states. I am heartily glad that Scotland voted no. However, it was a much closer vote than the Prime Minister intended when he first suggested that the referendum should take place, and we need to learn lessons from that. Given the nature of this debate, I wonder whether we are learning any lessons.
This scrappy, partisan debate is exactly the kind of thing that reflects badly on Westminster politics throughout the United Kingdom, and that was cleverly exploited by the yes campaign in Scotland. We should concede that to the Scottish National party representatives here today. We should also concede to them that the vow, however well intentioned it might have been, is in fact a bit of a muddle. It is indecipherable, and I do not think it made any difference to the result. It was ham-fisted. However, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the passion that they brought to the debate.
Pete Wishart
This is a matter that we are trying to determine today. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) was duped about the vow?
Mr Jenkin
No, I think it was a panic reaction to a late poll. It was something that they were desperate to do. I believe that the very fact that it was a close poll was enough to turn people away from voting yes, because they suddenly realised that their vote might make a difference. Most pollsters would agree that that was the effect of the very close poll.
The vow stated:
“We agree that the UK exists to ensure opportunity and security for all by sharing our resources equitably across all four nations”.
That is fine; I think we would all agree with that. Then, however, it goes on to reaffirm the Barnett formula. There are two things about the Barnett formula, the first of which is that if Scotland is to raise more of its own resources, the formula will become a much less significant component of the allocation of resources. Secondly, the formula actually represents the opposite of
“sharing our resources equitably across all four nations”.
It cements in place an artificial bias in favour of funding in Scotland, which is no doubt why Scottish politicians campaign so vociferously in favour of it.
Mr Jenkin
I have given way twice already; I do apologise.
The House of Lords produced a very good report in 2009 which concluded
“that the Barnett formula should no longer be used to determine annual increases in the block grant for the United Kingdom’s devolved administrations.”
It stated:
“A new system which allocates resources to the devolved administrations based on an explicit assessment of their relative needs should be introduced.”
The question is: how are we going to get from A to B? Lord Strathclyde has recommended a convocation in which the four component parts of the Union should be represented on equal terms in a single body. The question of the fair allocation of resources among the four parts of the United Kingdom deserves to be discussed in such an impartial forum. This cannot be imposed by the Treasury. It cannot be imposed by a system that we have inherited from a period when there was no devolution and no devolved tax-raising powers at all, so we need a new system. If we are going to learn from this referendum, it would be much more honest if we all agreed that, over time, we will need to move on from the Barnett formula.
Let us deal with the question of what the promises mean. If we ever want evidence of the chaos in the no campaign, we need only see that, even after the referendum, we still have three separate proposals in this Command Paper for what is to be devolved, and an unseemly scrap between the Westminster parties over what should be devolved. I have no doubt that agreement will be reached, and I commend the SNP for being determined to bring its good will to the party in order to get an agreement, because that has to be our objective. However, as part of that agreement, there is now huge awareness across the United Kingdom of English votes on English laws.
Select Committee on Governance of the House
Bernard Jenkin Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee and as I listened to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), I thought about how this debate is a microcosm of the debate that is going on in Whitehall about how to get Whitehall machinery to operate in a much more open, accountable and transparent way. I use the word “accountable” because I think a lot of this debate has arisen because there is a sense, particularly among younger and, dare I say it, more impatient Members—like myself, of course—that there is an opacity, a sort of Victorian mystery about the way in which this place works.
This whole episode has been painful for the House of Commons. I commend those on both sides of the House who have spoken, but particularly the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), who made a dignified and conciliatory speech. We need to avoid dwelling on what has gone wrong; we can learn from that, but we need to move forward.
I spent much of my summer worrying that this issue would divide the House and, because of the controversy, almost poison the office of the Speaker. The purpose of my asking for the motion to be drafted in the manner that it has been drafted, and of suggesting that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) chair the Committee, and of gingerly tip-toeing around the various—increasingly angry—people on all sides of the debate was to try to find a method of resolving the issue in a manner that will not result in a terrible and divisive row about a particular individual. I join the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough in sympathising with the individual who has been exposed in this episode.
My role as Chairman of the Public Administration Committee was to suggest that the ultimate modernisation of the process of appointment of the Clerk would be to make it subject to a pre-appointment hearing. Constitutionally, that matter rests within my Committee’s remit. We will keep that on the table for whichever candidate emerges as the final candidate, because whoever it is should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing. The right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, does the same for the appointment of the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is an Officer of the House. My Committee does the same for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, who is also an Officer of the House. The idea that Officers of the House should not be subject to pre-appointment hearings seems to me anachronistic and old-fashioned.
The remit of the new Committee is not about going back over the past, but looking to the future. It is about throwing light on the dim recesses of how this place operates. I say to hon. Members in all parts of the House that change is coming to this place whether we like it or not and—perhaps speaking to Government Members—if we want things to remain the same, things are going to have to change, but this is not about throwing babies out with the bathwater. If there is to be a chief executive, the role must be properly thought about, properly defined and properly embedded within the structures and accountability of the House, and within what the House is for, which is the scrutiny of legislation and the holding to account of the Executive.
We want more involvement for Members, more openness and accountability, and more listening and working together, plus less tearing chunks out of each other over this particular subject, if you please, because that does the House nothing but harm. I think that the proposed Committee is the solution.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
This is a crucial decision and we need to make it in a timely and sensible way.
We stand on the threshold of momentous constitutional events. We might even lose a country from our United Kingdom, or we might go into a period of fundamental constitutional change with a massive devolution of powers. We will need good professional advice and leadership to complement the crucial work of the democratically elected politicians.
The Speaker is the servant of the House. Mr Speaker has shown, by the way he has said that there has to be a pause and a reconsideration, that he knows that he is the House’s servant. In turn, the House has to be fair to Mr Speaker. It is our duty tonight to set in process a way of resolving this problem in the best interests of everyone and in a good spirit, knowing that Mr Speaker also wishes the best for our House of Commons and will be guided by the House. It is our duty to come up with competent and sensible guidance for him. He undertook a process with a series of senior Members and an outside adviser in good faith and they came to a judgment. Apparently, that judgment does not suit the House. That is the House’s privilege, but we now need to find a better way of resolving the matter.
This situation has consequences not just because we need good guidance, and especially so at this time, but because if we want the best talent from around the world to apply for jobs in this place, we need to show that we are professional in handling such matters and that there is no danger of an unsuccessful candidate having their name revealed or trashed in the process. That is completely unacceptable.
I am therefore drawn to the view, which some are expressing, that we need to examine quickly but thoroughly the idea that there are two functions and that there need to be two different roles. There are many fine things about this House, but I think that we could be better at some of the things that come under the chief executive’s remit. We have many able, hard-working and talented staff and I do not wish to imply any criticism of them. However, a good chief executive would look at the way in which we handle guests. Are we happy with the queues and the way in which security is handled? We wish to be safe, but we wish to welcome people. They are our guests or our constituents. I do not think that we always get it right. We need to ensure that our catering provides what people want in a timely and sensible way. There might be opportunities to improve that. We certainly need to look again at technology and the how we communicate with those who communicate about us and with the wider world.
Those are all time-consuming tasks and I am not sure that they can be carried out by a constitutional expert living through a constitutional crisis, who needs to be up to speed with everything that happens in this Chamber and with the long history of our traditions, our law codes and our constitution, written and unwritten as it is. Somebody needs to provide that guidance.
Mr Jenkin
My right hon. Friend’s description of the importance of the role of Clerk of the House is absolutely right. I heard the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) say that he did not understand why the Clerk was paid on a different scale from the Speaker and a higher amount. The Clerk is paid on the same scale as a High Court judge, because he is the arbiter of the law of Parliament across the entire Commonwealth. The independence of his remuneration is part of his independence and has to be preserved.
Mr Redwood
I quite agree. It is a crucial role for a very senior lawyer and has to be rewarded accordingly, and at a level that means that they do not have money worries, because they need to spend all their time concentrating on the job. I am quite sure that the Clerk’s role is senior to and more crucial than that of the chief executive, but I also believe that we need to do our guests and ourselves a favour by having the best possible management. We need someone to come in and look again at our standards, our quality, the choice that we offer and the way in which we handle guests, technology, information and research, and our messages.
That is the spirit in which we should enter the debate. We should get behind our Speaker and give him the right instructions, and then we will have a better answer.
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for refreshing the House’s memory of that particular Tebbit recommendation. If we had two co-equals, they could play Members off against each other; indeed, Members could play them off against each other too. That has to be taken on board.
Mr Jenkin
I do not prejudge this question, but if we went for a chief operating officer under the Clerk, the really important thing is that the chief operating officer should be directly and visibly accountable, in a way that the present officers under the Clerk are not visible and accountable.
Sir George Young
I think the Commission could make that happen in the terms of reference if we go down that particular route.
I agree that some of the considerable burdens on the Clerk’s shoulders should be removed. In the meantime, I think the appointment process should not be paused; I think it should be aborted. If Carol Mills, with whom I have some sympathy, wanted to show that she understands how this place works, she would withdraw her application, resolve a constitutional impasse and generate some good will among colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made a good point about there being robust interim arrangements in place.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) said, we have to take on board the interface with the other place, where there is a Clerk of the Parliaments, who has a unified command. How would he interface if one separated the jobs down this end?
I have two final points. I am slightly worried about the ambitious time scale for the Select Committee. Nominations for the proposed Select Committee do not close for over a month and then there are but three months to complete the task, including Christmas. The House may have other things on its mind by then. Braithwaite and Tebbit took many months, with people doing nothing else. We may need an interim report in January, if the ground is to be thoroughly covered, and a final report later.
I end by gently asking a question. What would have happened in this case had we not had the safety valve of the Backbench Business Committee, enabling the House not just to make its views known, but to pass a resolution, in a way that was not possible before—a resolution that I am happy to support?
Business of the House
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Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her response to the business statement. I echo her congratulations to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), whose re-election is a testament to her chairmanship of the Backbench Business Committee and to the work of the Committee as a whole. It has brought forward some important debates and given Back Benchers a greatly enhanced voice. Surveys in recent years have shown that the public now believe that the House debates issues of relevance to them on a more regular and timely basis.
I also echo the shadow Leader of the House’s good wishes to the England team. It will be a late night on Saturday, but at least it will be followed by Sunday morning. I am looking forward to the England team scoring many goals and kissing the badge, as they say. I am told that the Leader of the Opposition is being invited to do that with the trade unions in Nottingham at the moment. It seems a strange idea, but it tells us something about where the trade unions think the interests of the Labour party lie, in contrast to the coalition, which knows that it serves in the national interest.
The hon. Lady asked about a statement on Monday. I have announced that the Foreign Secretary will be in the House on that day to make a statement, and we will of course take opportunities to update the House on the very concerning situation in Iraq. The threat presented by the so-called Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant is alarming for the whole international community. The Iraqi authorities in the federal Government and in the Kurdistan Regional Government need to co-ordinate and work together to put forward a political response and a security response to the situation. We are aware of large numbers of Iraqis being displaced from Mosul and the surrounding areas. The Department for International Development is monitoring that situation closely, and rapidly assessing the humanitarian need that will arise from it. I will ask my colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and in DFID to ensure that the House can be updated whenever possible.
The hon. Lady mentioned the recall Bill. We announced the Bill in the Queen’s Speech and will introduce it in due course. We are making good progress with it. We have already introduced five Bills in this Session—three in the other place and two here—and we will introduce further Bills in due course.
The hon. Lady also asked about defence spending. I have announced a debate on defence spending, which will take place next Thursday following the recommendations of the Backbench Business Committee. It will give my colleagues an opportunity to remind Members—including Opposition Members—that we inherited a defence budget with a £38 billion black hole. We have taken action to balance the books; Army 2020 is an integral part of that. An excellent job has been done—not least by the Defence Secretary and the Chief of the General Staff—to redesign the Army so that it can meet future demands while remaining affordable. We are committed to investing £1.8 billion in the reserves, and we are now seeing the benefit of that: the trained strength of the reserve forces is rising for the first time in 18 years.
The hon. Lady asked about the situation in the Passport Office. I made it clear in response to questions last week that my colleagues would update the House on that matter this week, and they have done so in response to questions and to an Adjournment debate secured by the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson). The Home Secretary has also given the House a full, authoritative response on the issue and outlined a number of measures that will make a substantial difference in the weeks ahead.
The hon. Lady asked about issues that she suggested were not being covered in the Government’s reply, and she included food prices. I heard one of my DEFRA colleagues reminding the House that food prices in the year to March rose by only 0.5%, and in the past two months food prices appear to have been falling, so it is important to bear in mind the fact that on some issues relating to the cost of living people are in a better place than they might otherwise have been. That is particularly the case when they are in work, and as we saw just yesterday more than 2 million new private sector jobs have been created since the general election. If there is a gap, it is between the Labour party and reality on what is happening in our economy. Our long-term economic plan is delivering on reducing the deficit and on growth, which is 3% up on a year ago. We have 2 million more private sector jobs and 400,000 more businesses. We are delivering our long-term economic plan in the national interest while the Leader of the Opposition is off to serve the union interest.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I echo the call for a debate on the situation in Iraq, although it is noticeable that Her Majesty’s official Opposition did not ask for such a debate, having not provided a debate on foreign affairs during consideration of the Queen’s Speech. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need a general debate on foreign affairs, to cover not only Iraq but the crisis in Syria and the situation in Ukraine?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question and he is absolutely right: I was very surprised and disappointed that the Opposition did not choose to debate matters relating to foreign affairs and defence. Of course, the Backbench Business Committee will enable defence issues to be raised next week, but this was the second year in a row that the Opposition did not choose to debate foreign affairs. Given the circumstances in which they made that decision—the events in Ukraine and Syria, and now Iraq—it would have been helpful had they chosen to have such a debate. Anybody who examines the debate on the Queen’s Speech in the House of Lords will see that it had a full, substantial debate on foreign affairs. I believe that Members in the other place were astonished that there was no debate on foreign affairs in this House, but of course, these were matters for the Opposition.
House of Commons Business
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Mr Lansley
As my hon. Friend will recall from his experience of these matters, we sometimes believe it necessary to introduce what are known colloquially as “knives” into the programme motion to specify when discussion on certain groups of new clauses or amendments is to be concluded. However, we discuss that with the usual channels, and we try to ensure that the House gets the opportunity to debate all significant groups of amendments. The process of deciding whether we should do that or—as we sometimes rightly allow—whether to allow the debate on the amendments to proceed naturally, as it were, is not changed by the motion.
In effect, the motion creates during its trial period an agreement across the House that amendments on Report should be tabled three rather than two days earlier. The benefit of that is that we are more likely to get the programme motion right and not find, as has happened in the past as my hon. Friend will recall, that Opposition or Back-Bench amendments are tabled on Report at quite a late stage and at a time when it is very difficult—not to put too fine a point on it—to incorporate them successfully into a programme motion that understands where the weight of the debate will be. That is what this motion is principally about. A trial period in the next Session would enable us to see whether the proposal turns out to benefit Back Benchers and whether there are any unforeseen disadvantages. I am pleased that the Procedure Committee has secured the support of the Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition for the trial period, and has committed to reviewing its operation towards the end of the next Session. If judged successful, the Government will support a permanent change.
Let me clarify that we start from a shared understanding that we use the term parliamentary privilege to describe a fundamental constitutional principle that guarantees freedom of speech in Parliament and allows us in this House to work on behalf of our constituents without the threat of interference from the courts. The motion on parliamentary privilege arises from the work of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which was established to consider the Government’s White Paper on that subject published in 2012. I place on record my thanks for the diligent work of the Committee on that complex issue, and I stress that, as set out in the Government’s formal response, we agree with the Committee in its central conclusion that there is no strong case for comprehensive codification. None the less, there are steps that the House can take—I stress that the operation of parliamentary privilege is a matter for the House rather than Government—to provide greater clarity.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for his endorsement of the work of the Committee on which I served. Will he take this opportunity to make clear that we enjoy parliamentary privilege not as a privilege but as an obligation and duty? It is a freedom we hold on behalf of our constituents; it is a protection for our constituents that their elected representatives can enjoy limited immunity in respect only of what we do in this House, so that we can act in their interests without fear or favour. It does not protect us from any aspect of criminal law should we commit any ordinary criminal offence, which is how it should be.
Mr Lansley
I am hoping to make absolutely clear that this motion is in no sense about the law not applying equally to us as it would to any other member of the public. It is about what happens in this House and its proceedings, which require to be protected. Parliamentary privilege may have originated centuries ago, but it must always remain true. It may take a different character in terms of judicial activism, rather than Executive action, but none the less on behalf of our constituents we require what we do here to be done without fear or favour, and without risk of impeachment or prejudice from external parties. As my hon. Friend says, it is important for that privilege to be maintained for the benefit of our constituents.
The motion before the House is a means by which I hope we can provide the clarity necessary for the effective operation of parliamentary privilege. An equivalent motion was agreed by the House of Lords on 20 March this year, after a full debate. In essence, it calls for clarity in the application of any particular legislation to Parliament. The need for further clarification on that point arises because there is some legal uncertainty as to the consequences of a decision of the courts in the Graham-Campbell case of 1935, which held that the protection afforded to this House by the doctrine of parliamentary privilege was wide. The scope of parliamentary privilege has been revisited by the courts and commentators in more recent times—notably by the Supreme Court in the 2010 Chaytor case. However, the Graham-Campbell case has not been expressly overruled, which has sometimes led to uncertainty over what needs to be said in an Act intended to apply to Parliament. The boundaries of parliamentary privilege will in practice be determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis, so it is helpful to them if legislation makes clear Parliament’s intent when legislating in areas that might encroach on those boundaries. That is why this motion provides for explicit provision on that point in cases of doubt.
In practice, that will require discussions between parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses on whether relevant provisions in Bills should apply to the activities of the two Houses, and for there to be express provision in the Bill where necessary. That is a sensible and pragmatic move towards providing greater clarity on a relatively obscure but important issue. As a matter of principle, I am sure we all agree that the law of the land should apply equally to Parliament, subject where appropriate to the protections of parliamentary privilege. I hope the House will agree to the motion so as to provide for that consistency across the two Houses.
Mr Lansley
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. It was not an invariable practice. A moment ago I spoke about the necessity for discussions between parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses, and I hope that those discussions will enable us to meet the recommendations of the Joint Committee. That is important.
What has, in part, led to the necessity of the motion is that different Bills have taken different approaches, sometimes seeing it as necessary to disapply parliamentary privilege and in other cases seeking to make it clear in legislation that parliamentary privilege applies. Our general proposition is that it is not required to say that parliamentary privilege applies—it does apply. However, we need to make it clear where the provisions of a Bill intend to have an effect on Parliament. In particular, we need to identify and specify where they may encroach on the boundaries of parliamentary privilege, so that the courts have an unambiguous legislative provision that sets out to what extent Parliament has determined that the law, in that respect, applies to it.
Mr Jenkin
It is important to emphasise that parliamentary privilege rests solely on an understanding between the courts and Parliament, albeit that that rests on article 9 of the Bill of Rights. It is implicit that the Bill of Rights overrides every other Act of Parliament. All we are saying in the motion, for the avoidance of doubt, is that that is the case unless an Act of Parliament specifically says otherwise. In the absence of any provision in any Act of Parliament, article 9 applies and the courts, who do not wish to interfere in the proceedings of Parliament, will respect that.
Mr Lansley
Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend and he expresses that very helpfully. That is precisely what we are looking for. We do not suggest that it is not the responsibility of the courts to determine to what extent legislation applies, but that Parliament, through these legislative provisions and the discussions that will lead to them, should give the courts a clear expression of where in legislation that boundary applies, and legislation should apply, to Parliament in any particular instance. It must be in the best interests of this House, Parliament and the courts for us to be clear about what we intend to achieve in legislation. That is principally what we are trying to do.
Mr Jenkin
I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend again. The resolution does not need to be followed by any legislation. It is implicit that article 9 applies—end of story. The only time legislation might impinge on article 9, and the only time we are saying that it could possibly impinge on article 9, is if Parliament expresses that explicitly in a subsequent Act of Parliament. However, we do not anticipate doing that, so article 9 applies.
Mr Lansley
I agree with my hon. Friend. The motion is not about giving rise to legislation. It is about this House sharing directly, in the same terms as the House of Lords, an expression about how we should frame legislation in future to make clear the relationship between this House, and the privilege applying to this House, and legislation, particularly in circumstances in which legislation is intended to apply to this House and its activities. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to agree with that.
Ms Eagle
I suspect that will not do, because of the history of how parliamentary privilege has developed. The Joint Committee did think about looking at a review of previous Acts of Parliament so that we could deal with this point and concluded that it would actually cause more trouble and anomalies than it would solve.
Mr Jenkin
I support the hon. Lady’s response to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) because he has just made the classic error of thinking that privilege refers solely to freedom of speech in Parliament, and it does not, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) said. The term “privilege” is a technical one that applies in many spheres of life; we talk about legal privilege for solicitors and the privilege of the courts, and we should not try to redefine the term, as we would be tempting the courts to start to adjudicate on the very thing we do not want to tempt them to adjudicate on. That shows the importance of her explicit endorsement of these two paragraphs of our report.
Ms Eagle
The hon. Gentleman is right. It is a knotty and a thorny issue. I suspect that we need a translation of the term, so that lay people who are not technically proficient in constitutional law can understand that it is a good thing rather than something that gives Members of Parliament, or others who may be giving evidence in the House, a significant advantage.
Standards
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Kevin Barron
The Standards Committee did not know that this would come up when we started looking at all-party groups. The right and proper time to discuss those matters will be during next Tuesday’s debate.
The Committee on Standards has been critical of media stings in the past, but the case under discussion was not one in which a Member was misrepresented or had made a single error. It was a sustained course of conduct, not an ill-advised response to a single “fishing” incident.
There has been some confusion over the respective roles of the Committee and the commissioner. The commissioner is a finder of fact. She investigates and presents her findings to the Committee, and sometimes those findings include advice on the interpretation of the rules. The Committee entirely agreed with the commissioner’s conclusion that Mr Mercer’s actions had inflicted significant reputational damage on the House and its Members. The commissioner does not have a role in recommending a penalty. It is for the Committee to decide on the recommended penalty, and MPs and lay members play a full part in that discussion.
In this case, the Committee took into account the gravity of the offence and the penalties given in similar cases in the past. In fact, there are very few similar cases, and in most of them the Members concerned were no longer in Parliament by the time the Committee’s investigations were over. There is very little we can do about ex-Members.
As our minutes show, the Committee seriously considered an even heavier penalty than the one on which we eventually agreed. It is disappointing when colleagues say that the Committee overturned the views of the independent Commissioner for Standards and suggest that there are fundamental disagreements between the Committee and the commissioner, because that is not the case. Clearly, no system is beyond improvement. Indeed, the Committee will itself hold an inquiry into how the House’s disciplinary process could be improved, and the commissioner will contribute to that process as fully as possible. However, public confidence is not helped when Members of Parliament attack the integrity of the system rather than try to understand the Committee’s work, or when they claim that the Committee has overturned the commissioner’s findings, without appreciating the complexities of individual cases.
I do not want to go into this in great detail, but on 8 April my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who sadly is not in his place, asked an urgent question and said that the Committee’s proceedings should be open
“so that people can see on what basis the Committee overturns the views of the independent Commissioner for Standards”. —[Official Report, 8 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 124.]
There are three pages in that report that clearly explain our decision in relation to that of the commissioner. I advise Members of the House to read our Committee’s proceedings before dashing to the media to grab a few headlines.
I would have more sympathy with Members’ calls for reform to increase public trust if the proposals of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, made in December 2012, to update the code of conduct and the guide to the rules had been debated in the House. We are still waiting for that to happen.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am probably interrupting the Chair of the Standards Committee to make a different point, but on public confidence, why did Mr Mercer hear about the contents of his report before it was published from journalists briefed by people who were party to the report? Is that not a breach of privilege that the right hon. Gentleman should take very seriously?
Kevin Barron
We are undertaking a form of inquiry into what happened and this is all I can say at the moment, but it looks as though what was in the media came out before the decision had actually been taken. We may make a further report to the House at some stage if we feel that it is necessary. However, I have no concerns about that. The integrity of the Committee stands good. We take decisions not on the basis of party politics, but on the basis of the commissioner’s memorandum, the precedents of actions we have taken in the past and what is presented to us. What happened was unhelpful, but it may have been based on pure speculation about this case. As has been said, there are other cases, one of which—in the other place—is directly related to this media sting.
Finally, if any Member has issues about a report, its coverage in the media or anything else, they can talk to me or any Committee member. We hold no party political proceedings on such matters. We are trying to get this place beyond what came to light in 2009, and it would be most helpful if all Members kept that in mind when talking about Standards Committee reports. I hope that the House will accept this report.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I should make it clear that Patrick Mercer is my friend and that I admire many of the things that he has achieved in his professional life. He was the first to admit that he had behaved badly in this matter. I condemn his behaviour and wholly endorse the report that has been produced by Parliament, painful as it is.
I raised the possible leaking of the contents of the report because it undermines the authority of the Standards Committee. I do not share the confidence of the Committee’s Chairman that it was just speculation, because there was too much certainty in what Mr Mercer was told. Although the Committee might not have concluded its proceedings, there may well have been drafts that informed the speculation, as the Chairman referred to it.
I do not envy the Chair and members of the Standards Committee. They have a very difficult task, but they have produced a good report and one that Mr Mercer accepts. Indeed, he said how ashamed he was of his own behaviour. That is testimony to the honour of the man.
We need to learn from this experience and see how we can improve our procedures to maintain their respect, impartiality and integrity. It does Parliament no good if the media feel that they can hunt down the contents of a report before it has been published—it undermines Parliament and it undermines the integrity of the proceedings of the Committee.
I have nothing further to say, except that I very much welcome the fact that there will be a new Member of Parliament in the constituency, as there should be. Mr Mercer took the right decision and the courageous one in doing what he did.
Business of the House
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Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her questions. Today is an opportunity for many Members to say farewell to Tony Benn at St Margaret’s and I was very glad that we were able to do so formally in the House last week. Indeed, many Members were able to do so individually in the Chapel during the course of yesterday evening.
The hon. Lady asked about the big six. The Secretary of State will make a statement to the House immediately after questions, but it is clear that the Government are taking action. In its announcement about the price freeze, SSE said that the Government’s decision to cut the taxes that add to energy bills was the
“principal factor in SSE being able to make this price commitment”.
There is a world of difference between an effort on the part of the Opposition to try to buck the market, as they always want to do, and an effort on the part of this Government to get a competitive market that delivers the greatest possible benefits to consumers. In that context, I was staggered that by voting against the Budget the Opposition voted against measures that would cut energy costs for energy-intensive industries, including in some of the areas that Labour Members represent where jobs depend on the competitiveness of manufacturing. Those same measures will help in the long term to reduce energy bills for consumers in this country.
The Wales Bill will have its Second Reading next week, and I will announce when its Committee stage will be. As it is a constitutional Bill, however, I hope that we will find time, before too long, for it to be considered on the Floor of the House. We are anxious to bring forward the Wales Bill—that is why we have introduced it in this Session—and the debate next week will allow us to hear from the shadow Secretary of State for Wales whether he is in fact, as he appeared to be in the Welsh Grand Committee, against the devolution of powers relating to tax to Wales. This is an astonishing position: the Government are in favour of further devolution to Wales, and the Opposition are against it. They will have to explain themselves.
I agree with the Lord Chancellor in relation to prisons. There is not a ban on books. There is, on the part of the prison authorities and the Ministry of Justice, a determination to act to make sure that security in prisons is maintained. There are libraries in prisons and there is access to books. We have to make sure that the security is appropriate.
I would say that the hon. Lady was attacking the Budget, but her approach was a bit limp to be described as an attack. The Budget is clearly a success. The fact that Labour Members voted against the Budget will, I am afraid, return to haunt them. What happened in the last couple of days has been very curious. When challenged yesterday on whether Labour Members had in fact voted for higher taxes on business, the shadow Chancellor was busy denying it, having the day before voted for exactly that to happen. Then yesterday, they voted for—at least most of them did—the cap on welfare, while at the same time in private the shadow Chief Secretary was busy trying to tell everybody,
“It will be much better if we can say all the changes that the Government has introduced we can reverse”.
So Labour Members are voting against the Budget and denying it, and voting for the cap on welfare and denying that. I do not know where they are coming from or going to; what I do know is that they will have to explain themselves. In particular, they cannot vote against a cap on housing benefit, against the overall cap on the benefits a household can claim and against plans to limit the annual increases in benefits, and at the same time vote overall for the cap.
I hope that we will raise a glass to those who are entering into marriage this weekend—for the first time, those who are entering into same-sex marriages, as well as the no doubt thousands of others who are entering into marriage. I was pleased to note that in 2011, there was an increase in the number of people getting married in this country. I hope that the measures that we have taken on same-sex marriage will help to promote, as my support was intended to do, the lifelong commitment that marriage represents.
On the justice and home affairs debate on Monday week, which I announced in provisional business, I hope the House will welcome the fact that we committed to returning to the House for a further vote. We will do so later this year, before formally applying to rejoin the measures we are seeking to rejoin, following the House’s support for the opt-out. We are grateful to the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee for their reports on the matter. The planned debate on 7 April will provide Parliament with an opportunity to debate those issues and the Select Committees’ reports, in order to seek the views of the House, as we have always made clear that we will, prior to any specific measures being rejoined later in the year.
Finally, in the course of the debate yesterday evening between the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of the UK Independence party, I was slightly staggered by what Nigel Farage said about Ukraine and Russia. Actually, in the House of Lords yesterday, in response to the statement that was repeated from this House, Lord Pearson of Rannoch also made a remark to the effect that the cause of the crisis was the EU’s relationship with Ukraine, and not Russia’s. I think it is outrageous that UKIP should be behaving as apologists for President Putin. I hope that they will withdraw the comments.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend tell us what the point is of the Osmotherly rules? They require the Government to respond formally to Select Committee reports within two months of their publication, or six months at the very latest. It is with great regret that I must tell him that the Public Administration Select Committee has today published a report criticising the Government for failing to respond to our report on the business appointment rules, which are very controversial and not very satisfactory, for 20 months. We published the report in July 2012 but are still waiting for a response. We feel that we have been extraordinarily patient. Does he agree that his Department ought to have a system for chasing Government Departments on behalf of the House to ensure that they respond to Select Committee reports on time?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question. I see it as part of my role to represent the House in the Government as well as to represent the Government in the House, so I will of course ask my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office to respond to the report that the Committee published this morning. The purpose of the Osmotherly rules is to give civil servants guidance on how they should make themselves accountable to the House.
Amendment of Standing Orders
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Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee, who have tabled these motions. I thoroughly support the changes to the arrangements for Select Committee statements in this House and in Westminster Hall. They will be much more practical, there will be much more discipline and flexibility and Select Committees will be able to make far more statements about the reports we produce, which can only be good for the profile of Select Committees and for understanding in the House of the work that Select Committees do.
On the other matter before us, it pains me that the most reasonable and sensible proposals that are brought forward—for example, on the House’s ability to manage its time in its own way—are still rejected by the Government. I will be very interested to hear what my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House says about that. When it comes to any proposal that started with the Wright Committee, getting people to accept reform has been like pulling teeth. We have come so far from the days when the House really controlled its own time.
The principle of the Wright Committee was that the Government are entitled to be able to obtain their business. I do not know why the Government have to micro-manage the time of the House to such an extent when there is no threat to their ability to obtain their business. So capable are modern Governments of obtaining their business that the House sits shorter days than at any time since before the first world war. The idea that the House sits for too many hours, or too late into the night, or that debates go on for too long, is an absolute travesty. We now have so many timed and curtailed debates, and so many truncated speeches. [Interruption.] I make no apology for provoking my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House into pointing at the clock, because it is rare for us to debate something that is important to the House, rather than the Government.
The authors of the Government amendments are standing against the tide of history. The British people want the House to have more, not less, power. They want more, not less, accountability. This is a tiny change to enable the House to ensure that things are debated in good time and in good order. I am interested to know the arguments against the proposals, which were unanimously supported by the Procedure Committee. I rather suspect that on both Front Benches, there is something of a reflex action against the Backbench Business Committee obtaining more discretion and influence over the way in which the House is run.
Mr Jenkin
I suspect that if I moved on to the question of the introduction of a House business Committee, Mr Speaker, you might begin to twitch and suggest that I was straying beyond the remit of the motions before us. I see absolutely no sign that the Government will fulfil their commitment, written into the coalition agreement, that after three years, a House business Committee would be established. Perhaps the Front Benchers could say today when they plan to table motions to do that.
It is worth reminding hon. Members that we in this House have no power to lay a motion before the House to change Standing Orders. We are entirely dependent on the Front Benchers’ beneficence in tabling motions to make such changes. That power was lost much more recently than people imagine; I cannot remember the exact date, but it was long after the beginning of the timetabling of business at the time of the Home Rule debates in the 19th century.
Mr Hollobone
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Indeed, item 21 in today’s Order Paper is a helpful list of adjournment dates for the House going all the way through to the end of 2014, but it is an item about which there is no debate allowed whatever. It has been put on the Order Paper by the Executive, and the House is not even allowed to debate it.
Mr Jenkin
I have some sympathy with the idea that we do not debate everything that is on the Order Paper, because there is so much on a modern Order Paper that we would be here 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, if we did. However, it should be for this House to decide what is debated and what is important. It should not be stitched up between the two Front-Bench teams, or laid down by the Government of the day. We respect and fully understand the principle that any Government must be able to obtain their business, but the ability to manipulate the Order Paper in their interests is surely not right for a modern Parliament in a modern democracy in which people expect more accountability and more debate on important matters.
Finally, I counsel my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, in whose name the motion stands, that he would be well within his rights to beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. The Backbench Business Committee will continue to sit in public regardless of whether or not a Standing Order requires it to do so. This exercise has therefore become rather otiose, because of the Government’s amendments. If he begs to ask leave to withdraw the motion, I think that he will be making the point that the Government have made this exercise rather pointless.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)
I rise to speak on behalf of the Government in support of the motion relating to Select Committee statements and to speak to the motion on Back-Bench business moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), to which I will wish to move the amendments standing in my name and that of the Leader of the House. I thank him for opening the debate as he did and for clearly setting out the effect of and the thinking behind his motion and for explaining that his moment has not come as the Tea Room was deathly silent in pledging support for it.
I agree with the first paragraph of the motion on providing the Backbench Business Committee with the formal power to hear representations from Members of the House in public. As my hon. Friend explained, this merely brings Standing Orders into line with the Committee’s existing practice. As a regular attender of its public meetings, I can say that they work very well. It is a real advance in this House for Back-Bench Members to be able to bid directly and openly for time to debate subjects of their choosing.
Turning to the rest of the motion, the House will be aware from the Backbench Business Committee’s evidence to the Procedure Committee and the Government’s response to that Committee’s report that we both oppose the proposals for a pro-rata increase in the number of days allocated to the Backbench Business Committee in a parliamentary Session lasting longer than a calendar year and for the Committee to have the power to table business motions. We have tabled amendments to remove these provisions, in support of the Committee’s stated views.
I listened carefully to the arguments put forward by the Chair of the Procedure Committee. While I understand the rationale behind the proposals, I do not believe that either is necessary. The first arose partly as a result of the unusually long first Session of this Parliament. We have now passed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which ties us, other than in exceptional circumstances, to five-year Parliaments with an election in early May. As a result, a spring-to-spring one-year Session should be the norm, and I do not expect a repeat of the two year Session. If there is one—one can never rule it out—or if a Session extends slightly beyond one year, I assure the House that business managers will take account of the interests of the Backbench Business Committee and the House to ensure a balanced spread of business.
In fact, that is what happened during that long first Session. The Government did not seek to stick to the Standing Order requirement of 35 days, but allocated the Backbench Business Committee 58 days, which was—contrary to the point made by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone)—well above what a simple pro rata increase would have delivered. Members may recall that it took several weeks at the start of the Session for the Backbench Business Committee to become established, during which time the Government provided time for debates that would otherwise have come from their allocation. That demonstrates, as the Chair of the Committee has said, that an element of flexibility is helpful to the House in the unlikely event of future long Sessions.
I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne will be able to accept those arguments and the Government amendment. Indeed, he has indicated as much. Should it come to a vote—although I understand that that will not be the case—I hope the House will support our position and that of the Backbench Business Committee and vote in favour of amendment (a), to leave out paragraph (2) of the motion.
On amendment (b) and business motions, I understand the case made by my hon. Friend but, again, the Government do not believe it is necessary to provide the Backbench Business Committee with the power to table business motions governing Back-Bench business days. There is already flexibility for the Committee to indicate on the Order Paper the amount of time it expects each debate to take. In these circumstances, as the Committee Chair has said, Members are generally very good at exercising restraint when necessary and respecting the interests of others wishing to speak in subsequent debates. The occupant of the Speaker’s Chair is also able to encourage Members to lengthen or shorten their speeches or even to impose formal time limits, having regard to the interest shown by Members in contributing to debates. That arrangement has worked very well. It provides maximum discretion for the Backbench Business Committee to organise the business as it sees fit and avoids the rigidity of a business motion.
The House may recall that there have been occasions nearer the start of the Parliament when the Government have provided a business motion at the request of the Procedure Committee and the Backbench Business Committee. It is also true that this Government have never refused a request for a business motion from either Committee. Furthermore, I can assure the House that we will continue to respond positively to similar requests from both Committees in the future.
Mr Jenkin
Has not my right hon. Friend defeated his own argument? If that is always going to be the case, why not let the Backbench Business Committee table the motions itself instead of having to ask his permission? Why does the Backbench Business Committee need to ask the Government’s permission for a business motion?
Tom Brake
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has heard from the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee why she is not seeking that power. The risk is that if it were available, Members would start to exercise it, which would do away with the flexibility she has said is such an advantage to the Committee.
The Chair of the Backbench Business Committee has already said in evidence to the inquiry that she does not think the power is necessary and she cannot see the problem. I agree with her. Again, I hope that, given my assurances and the views of the Committee Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne will accept the Government’s amendment—for the moment at least—until things move further and more quickly in the direction he seeks.
I will now turn to Select Committee launches and the motion standing in my name and those of the Leader of the House and the Chairs of the Liaison and the Backbench Business Committees. The motion provides for a new Standing Order governing the procedure relating to Select Committee statements. The Procedure Committee, in its second report of Session 2012-13, supported a new Standing Order for that purpose, an idea proposed by my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip when he was Leader of the House. I am sure he will be pleased that his good ideas continue to come to fruition.
Before briefly describing the effect of the motion, I would like to add that it has been tabled on the basis of much negotiation and discussion. I am grateful to the Chairs of the Liaison and the Backbench Business Committees for adding their names to the motion, signifying the degree of consensus achieved on it.
The Government agree that the present procedure, under which Members may contribute to the short debate by way of intervention only, is rather cumbersome. The launch of a Select Committee inquiry or report is more akin to a ministerial statement than a debate. It therefore makes sense for Members to be able to ask questions of the Member making the statement, rather than by seeking to intervene during a single speech. That will prove a more natural and convenient way of proceeding.
The proposed new Standing Order gives the Backbench Business Committee full discretion in allocating a specified amount of time to Select Committee statements, which can be set down on any of its allocated days. The Liaison Committee will enjoy a similar discretion in respect of its allocated days in Westminster Hall.
I want to respond to two points made by the hon. Member for Kettering. First, I want to reassure him that paragraph (1)(a) assumes that an application has been made by a Select Committee to the Backbench Business Committee for a statement, so the Backbench Business Committee cannot require one. I hope that he is reassured that the Backbench Business Committee will not force Select Committees to make statements that they do not intend to make.
Secondly, Select Committee launches can last any period determined by the Backbench Business Committee or the Liaison Committee, but they are not obliged to specify a time, and if they do not do so, the launch would be open-ended, and there would not be the constraining mechanism about which the hon. Gentleman expressed concern.
It is important that the House remains able to respond rapidly to new developments so as to be at the centre of political debate. That is why I believe that any Select Committee statements should be made no later than five sitting days after the day on which the report is published or inquiry announced, as provided in the Standing Order. I encourage Select Committees, wherever possible, to continue the current practice of launching reports on the day of publication.
The Select Committee statement provides Select Committees with an excellent opportunity to publicise their work either by launching their inquiries—that practice has found favour in the Scottish Parliament, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House found when he visited—or by explaining the contents of their reports to the House.
So far, 13 Committees have made a total of 14 statements. Committees now have the chance to ensure that their work becomes a staple feature of Back-Bench business, although they will have to compete with many other demands for time. No doubt Committees will wish to review how the new arrangements work in due course.
I hope that the House will find that the new Standing Order provides an improved procedure for this innovation. I welcome the support of the deputy shadow Leader of the House and that of the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee on a common position with the Government on these issues this evening. I hope that the House will support that motion when I move it.
Finances of the House of Commons
Bernard Jenkin Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Thurso
I can confirm both those points. Indeed, this was going to be my first substantive point. I suggest that I come right on to it and make my points; if the hon. Gentleman is not satisfied with them, he can intervene on me again.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Allowing for ins and outs, the global reduction on House expenditure is 17%. Does the same apply to expenditure by, and on behalf of, Select Committees? Will the same reduction in expenditure be achieved for Select Committees?
John Thurso
I intend to cover resources to Select Committees as one of my five main issues. The 17% figure applies to the total, but there are variances within it. I believed it was important to approach this from the beginning not by saying, “There is the budget; let’s just slice it and take 17% off everything”, but by looking at areas where bigger savings or fewer savings might be made. The objective was to deliver the appropriate service that we as parliamentarians require to do our work. That was certainly what lay behind the work that was done. There is an issue relating to Committee resources, and I promise to come on to it. Again, I invite my hon. Friend to intervene on me later if he is not satisfied by what I say.
John Thurso
I will give way to the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and then I want to move on.
John Thurso
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. For most of last year I had the honour of serving on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. We had the opportunity to engage senior counsel, junior counsel and experts from a wide range of areas. We worked at breakneck speed and in a year came up with what has generally been accepted as a pretty comprehensive and far-reaching report that the Government are now putting into legislation—not enough of it, some commissioners believe, but most of it. The report was paid for by the Government because they had asked for it. That is an indication of how one might consider working in future.
I do not want to prejudge anything, nor do I wish to open a can of worms. It might be possible to say that a Select Committee should or should not travel or that it should spend more money on this or that. It is a debate that Committee Chairs and others involved in Committees need to have. They should do it in a thorough way and put forward something that is really robust, and then, at the financial end of things, we consider it based on fact rather than their saying, “Please give me 20% more.” The days when people just said, “Let’s have 20% more and go and do X, Y and Z with it”, are gone. The right approach is to work out what we want to do and how scrutiny can best be achieved, and then look at how best to deliver the resource.
Mr Jenkin
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) was referring to the lack of flexibility in the budgets—the fact that, for example, a Committee cannot forgo its right to go on a foreign trip and use the money to buy, say, part of or a whole extra member of staff. Obviously some Committees have very big travel commitments, but I do not see why those that do not have travel commitments cannot spend their allocation on something different.
John Thurso
The hon. Gentleman puts forward the interesting proposition that instead of having a series of silos that each Committee can dip into, each Committee has a budget and then decides how best to use it. That is quite a departure from where we are today, and I therefore could not comment on it other than to say that I find it an attractive intellectual possibility to pursue. My point in raising this was to suggest to people such as him who are considering these matters that a process is needed, and I think the Liaison Committee is the best place for it to be kicked off.
Before anybody else has a chance to intervene, may I say that I think I have now carried out a tour of everything? I apologise for occupying the crease for so long—it is not my habit—but I wished to take all the interventions that were offered as best I could. I commend the motion and the estimate to the House.
Thomas Docherty
The Dining Rooms also have events that are paid for by companies. My hon. Friend keeps saying from a sedentary position that they are sponsored, but that will not change; it is just that it is the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden, in his capacity as Chairman of the Administration Committee, who will be the sponsoring Member. In the same way that individual Members currently sponsor events during sitting times—it is up to hon. Members to make those decisions—the Administration Committee seeks to do so during recess.
I honestly do not see the difference. If my hon. Friend is genuinely saying that private organisations should not be able to hold breakfast, lunch, dinner or drinks receptions, that is a legitimate position, although I do not agree with it. I think that saying that it is okay for an individual Member to do it, but that it is not okay for the right hon. Gentleman to do it, is a false divide.
Mr Jenkin
I am entirely in agreement with the hon. Gentleman and I disagree with earlier comments. In fact, it is surely much less compromising of the integrity of Parliament that if commercial organisations want to rent facilities in the House of Commons, they should not need to sweet talk a particular Member in order to do so, but instead make a straight commercial arrangement. Has he thought about having a different scale of charges for, say, a merchant bank that wants to use the facilities to promote the flotation of a stock market company, compared with a charity that does something that is recognisably for wider public benefit?
Thomas Docherty
We are indeed proposing that there be different rates. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) has said, charities that are registered either with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator or with the Charity Commission will receive a 25% discount, for the very reason given so eloquently by the hon. Gentleman.
I want to make progress, because I am conscious that there is another debate to follow. My second point is about the new MPs who will arrive in 2015. Labour Members hope that we will welcome a very large number of new MPs, but others may be less keen on that. The Administration Committee took a thorough look at the process that took place over the past couple of Parliaments. It is important to place on record our thanks to the House service and in particular to the Clerk of the House for the work he did with you, Mr Speaker, to prepare our induction in 2010. Those colleagues who have been in the House slightly longer have told us just how chaotic—I put it politely—the process was for them. Perhaps that was your experience when you entered the House only a few short Parliaments ago, Mr Speaker, but the process has improved dramatically under your chairmanship and as a result of the Clerk’s work.
We very much welcome the plans for the future, but they will clearly have cost implications. We recognise that it is important to get Members up and running as quickly as possible. As we all know, constituents—not unreasonably, having in their wisdom voted us into office—expect us very quickly to be able to take up their cases. The lag of six or perhaps eight weeks because of the general election has meant that MPs have not been able to take on new cases. I know from my experience three and a half years ago that deserving cases that need time get lost. The Administration Committee therefore proposes a series of sensible steps to ensure that when a Member arrives, even before they have been sworn in, they will be able to begin to tackle their casework.
That is why Members will be issued with tablets along with their pass as soon as they arrive on their first day. They will get them going and they are also a way of trying to reduce costs, because, frankly, we waste a huge amount of paper every day. I certainly hope we will never get to the point where we wave our tablets during Prime Minister’s questions, but do we honestly need the vast amount of paper we generate every day? Surely we can do much more through electronic devices such as tablets and iPhones. The move that you have championed with the Order Paper is hugely welcome, Mr Speaker, and the move towards greater use of the cloud in the next Parliament is also important.
My third point follows on from the excellent opening remarks by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross about restoration and renewal. We are spending a huge amount of money just to keep the place running. The building is now about 160-something years old and the piping and wiring are about 60 or 70 years old. The building has not had an overhaul since the restoration work that took place at the end of the second world war. It is not fit for purpose. Colleagues in both Houses who have difficulty getting around have told me how difficult it can be to get to Divisions because of the building’s lay-out.
I think everyone knows that I am of the view that we need to make the very difficult decision to decant, not only because that will allow us to overhaul this place, which appears to be the cheapest option, but because it will allow us to upgrade our facilities. We really need to make sure that we have a Parliament fit for the 21st century. As has been said, there is an opportunity to do it in one go. I used to work for Network Rail, which was pretty efficient in the end at doing what is called a blockade, whereby it would shut a section of line and do everything—the signalling, wiring and track maintenance—at once. We need to use this opportunity, in the next decade, to have a thorough overhaul so that this place is fit not only for Members, but for the illustrious Press Gallery and for visitors who want either to see Parliament in action or to participate in our democracy.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I think I can give my right hon. Friend a definitive answer. There are aspects of the tiles that would make them an unacceptable item for sale. Some of them are to be re-used. We are examining the possibility that reproductions of the original be considered for sale. They will not contain any noxious substances or sharp edges. It might be a very good sales item. I assure my right hon. Friend that I take his point.
Mr Jenkin
I have raised the matter in correspondence with Mr Speaker. An opportunity to market tiles on which Disraeli, Gladstone and Churchill walked has more appeal than selling a new tile. We buy bits of the Berlin wall, for goodness’ sake, which have sharp edges. I do not know what noxious substances there are in the tiles, but the precautionary approach seems to be taken to an unnecessary extreme in this case, with the result that we are not exploiting this resource for the House.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
The issue is the asbestos element, because we do not want to be seen to encourage people to buy something that is not the safest item to have. We are prepared to consider whether a replica would have any sales value or would be of interest to people, but not to do anything reckless. Equally, we wish to save money by reusing some of the tiles, if we can, so there is not necessarily a bounty to be had from them.
Sales in retail went up by 11% in the year to October 2013, and in the visitor shop by 18%. A new range is being developed, and new marketing and design skills are being brought to bear, with the potential to go much further in that direction.
We are doing everything we can to increase availability for Members’ tours. At times of the year when it is appropriate to have paying visitors—as opposed to people who come in at the behest of Members and, of course, do so for free—we received 161,000 visitors in 2012-13, a number that we aim to double by 2014-15, which could raise an extra £1.2 million.
Another suggestion made to the Administration Committee, which came as a great surprise to me, was the possibility that film makers would pay to use certain locations in the Palace that we were prepared to make available. That could yield a considerable income, and would be done when the House was not sitting. It has been done in the Treasury, for example, so if a Department can do it, there is no reason why this House of the legislature should not consider doing so.
Bringing greater numbers of people into the House raises the question of access. The Palace is an iconic visitor attraction, and if we recognise that people want to come here—whether they be visitors from overseas prepared to pay during the summer months and at other times when we make tours available, or people who have asked their Member of Parliament to host a visit—we should do everything possible to maximise their opportunity to do so.
We must also do so in a way that makes those visitors seem welcome, as I am not sure that we achieve that as much as we should. I am extremely concerned, as is the Committee, which did a report on this, about exactly how we get people expeditiously and comfortably into the building. Because of the understandable dictates of security, the access points become very congested, with people kept waiting for a very long time, which is bad in all circumstances. The queue for the Cromwell Green entrance is unprotected against the elements, and general inconvenience is caused to Members waiting for people to come in, and to those who need to get in urgently but are caught up in a crowd who have just come for a visit rather than to give evidence to a Select Committee or any specific purpose.
For our young visitors, I believe it is important to develop the education centre. Although I understand the views of right hon. and hon. Members about the capital and security cost elements, the fact is that we ought to recognise the importance, from the point of view of a parliamentary democracy, of doing everything possible to encourage young people to come here.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
In the interests of brevity, I hope the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) will forgive me if I move on to different themes. I rise not to criticise the motion, which has my support, but to appoint myself unofficial shop steward of the Select Committee Chairs, in the absence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Liaison Committee.
There is universal acclaim for the progress Select Committees have made as a direct result of the Wright reforms implemented by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), now Chief Whip, at the outset of this Parliament. The Conservative party pledged to implement those reforms, and I am proud that we are following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, who established the comprehensive system of Select Committees, and continuing in the tradition of strengthening the House and the scrutiny of the Executive. We have done that and improved Select Committees, despite a 10% reduction in expenditure so far, and will continue to do so, despite a continued squeeze on our expenditure, to achieve what I believe will be a 17% reduction in Committee spend over the planned period.
To reinforce that point, I refer the House to comments made by Oliver Wright in The Independent under the headline, “Once mice, parliamentary select committees have finally learnt to roar”:
“Some will argue that, at present, Parliament should not be spending more. But holding those in power to account is exactly what Parliament should be doing, and would be worth every penny. It might lead to less heat. But it would shine a lot more light.”
James Forsyth in The Spectator refers to you, Mr Speaker, somewhat erroneously as an “accidental reformer”. I do not think there is anything accidental about your reform agenda. Perhaps unfairly, he argues that you should have fought harder to protect or increase the resources of Select Committees. I do not feel that you have been reticent in your support for Select Committees, but asking you to magic money out of a thinning overall budget would have been quite a big ask. Nevertheless, the challenge has been laid down to you, and I will leave you to respond in your own inimitable style, Mr Speaker, rather than defend you. The point is that Select Committees should be getting more money, not less.
Like many others, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay)—a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which, backed by the National Audit Office, is richer in resource than any other Select Committee—suggests constructively that we could do more to tap into external expertise. I agree that we could do that; I think we are doing that. Indeed, he might underestimate how much Select Committees now draw on secondments and staff loans, not just from Departments, but from the NAO, outside firms and so on. It is something we should be encouraging.
What have Select Committees done to save money and make ourselves more efficient? I am told that we carried out a “lean process review”—a term recognisable to management consultants—which has led to many practical steps being taken. When I was first appointed a Select Committee Chair, I noticed that we got all our press cuttings on wads of photocopied paper that the Clerks had got from the Library. I said there were ways of doing it electronically. I hope that all Select Committees now have electronic cutting services. There are some glitches in the system—understandably, it took some time to get electronic copies of the Financial Times—but the Committee Office and the Library have been assiduous in ironing them out and delivering a much better electronic “digital first” strategy for Select Committees.
Controversially, of course, that includes our being given iPads for our work. It should be put on the record that our iPads mean that our staff no longer spend hours photocopying, collating and sending out vast quantities of paper in the post. All evidence is now electronic. Giving iPads to Select Committee members, apart from a few colleagues who understandably find it difficult to adapt to new technology, has probably saved about £1 million a year. That can be devoted to scrutiny, instead of photocopying, saving an enormous amount of staff time, freeing them up to do more interesting and rewarding work. Given the high quality of Committee staff, it is absurd that so much of their time is spent on this unproductive work.
The Committee Office also decided to establish a web and publications unit. Painfully, that will take resource out of the direct control of Select Committees. For example, the Public Administration Select Committee will have to share a Committee assistant with another Committee. I would have preferred it to have been paid for by additional resources, but the unit will make our websites and publications more usable for the public and more up to date. A new web portal has also been created for the submission and publication of evidence by electronic means. PASC was one of the early pilots. Now all but one departmental Committee—my briefing does not say which is the miscreant Committee—have moved to accepting submissions in this way. We have also switched off the printing of written and oral evidence altogether. Therefore, although I was against accepting a savings programme initially, I have to admit that it has succeeded in accelerating innovation and new ways of working that have improved what Select Committees do.
Looking to the future, the Liaison Committee reported a year ago on the effectiveness of Select Committees and their resources and powers. That report was rather voluminous and contained lots of work on practical things that Select Committees could do. I particularly commend the training of MPs in the art of cross-examination. We all think we are frightfully good, until we are confronted by somebody who points out our tics and habits. Would you believe it, Mr Speaker? It was pointed out to our Committee that we all liked talking rather a lot and asking questions that made our points, rather than seeking information from our witnesses. I hope we have improved as a result of our training, and we will have another away-day of training later this month. I commend that to other Select Committee Chairs.
The Liaison Committee said in its report a year ago:
“Now may not be the best time to argue for increased resources, but it should be the long term goal of the House to build up the capacity of select committees, to improve their effectiveness and status, to increase their powers and influence, and to improve their efficiency by providing chairs and staffs with accommodation and infrastructure to enable them to hold Government to account.”
I am bound to say that it puts us on the moral high ground that we can look Departments in the face and say that we have taken our cuts as well, as we scrutinise their expenditure and efficiency. That long-term goal reflects the shifting nature of the work of Parliament. Less and less can we control the detail of legislation from this Chamber and the old-fashioned Standing Committees. It is clear that the public are more and more engaged with the cross-party, consensual approach adopted by Select Committees in the scrutiny and exposure of inefficiency, wrongdoing or whatever else is going on in Departments. As we monitor the recommendations of Select Committees, we see that, although the Government so often reject them in their formal responses, they recognise increasingly that Select Committees generate ideas and analyses that lead to changes in Government policy.
The Liaison Committee report went on to say:
“One clear message from this work is that chairs of committees are under considerable pressure to attend events, make speeches and respond to media inquiries above and beyond what used to be expected of a committee chairs. This means that a higher proportion of a chair’s time is spent on work related to the committee, compared with other parliamentary and constituency duties. In many cases part of this extra work is borne by the Member’s personal staff.”
Select Committee Chairs are now paid the equivalent of what an Under-Secretary of State is paid. Personally, I think that is extremely welcome. It means that I have willingly turned down offers of outside interest, because not only does my Committee absorb all my available time, but it reflects the additional responsibilities, particularly now that Select Committee Chairs are elected by the whole House to deliver a service to the House. I cannot describe to hon. Members how different it must feel from the old days. Indeed, I remember a senior Select Committee Chair, who had previously been effectively elected by his party’s Front Benchers, telling the Liaison Committee at the outset of this Parliament how much the terms of trade of Select Committee’s engagement with their work had changed.
The points that need to be addressed by extra resources include additional support for Chairs in all the extra work that we increasingly take on—as we take on a higher media profile, more and more demands are made on our time. That could mean providing either an additional member of staff for each Chair’s office or more staff in Committee teams to assist the Chair with his or her wider duties. I have no illusions. That is not going to happen very quickly. We have also pressed for more media support. It is extraordinary. I do not know how many press officers Departments have, but they run into the hundreds and hundreds. Each Select Committee shares a single media officer with several other Select Committees. The media that are generated are almost self-generated. However, when we issue a report, the entire Government media machine might be deployed in deflecting the criticisms made in it. This is an unequal battle. The need for a larger pool of shared media officers is something that Select Committees are focusing on. I pay tribute to our media officers. They work incredibly hard, are very enthusiastic and help us to put Select Committees on the map effectively, even with their limited resources.
There are other, obvious things. My office is at the top of Portcullis House and my Committee staff are in 7 Millbank. I do not know how long that is, but by the time one has bumped into a few colleagues on the way, it is at least a 15-minute walk. Would Ministers running Departments accept not having an office in their Departments? Again, that puts us at a disadvantage. The co-location of Committee Chairs with their Committee staff would be an instant efficiency gain. Indeed, Parliaments in other parts of the world would be aghast that a Chair of a Committee was not co-located with the staff of his or her Committee. That will clearly need to be thought about in the future, if Select Committees are to continue to develop their status and effectiveness.
Personally, I think the long-term game must be to do what we did with the Derby Gate Library—we acquired a building and put all the Library staff there to create a corporate centre for the Library—and have a similar building for Select Committees. I have in my mind’s eye the Canon row police station. I cannot believe that the police will be there for ever or that when that building becomes available, the parliamentary estate will not wish to acquire it. It is already in the public sector and would be an ideal building in which to co-locate Chairs of Committees, their Committee staff and their constituency staff, so that they are not separated. That would be a major step forward in the effectiveness of Select Committees. It would also mean that we could vacate 7 Millbank and release it from the parliamentary estate, because it is largely occupied by Select Committee staff.
Incidentally, in thanking the staff of the House, we should add our thanks to the Library staff, whose work for my Committee and others has been invaluable. I know that it was a bit counter-cultural for the House of Commons to do this—there is a sense that the Library staff work for all Members, not Select Committees, whose own staff should deliver for them—but the ability to lend Library staff to Select Committees for particular inquiries has been extremely useful and very welcome. Personally, I am extremely grateful for the good will and enthusiasm that the Library staff have shown in that work.
In the vision for the future, our aim is that Select Committees should be respected, listened to and, indeed, feared by Departments and Ministers for the quality of our investigations, the rigour of our questioning, the depth of our analysis and the value of our reports. Our influence should go beyond the subjects that we choose to inquire into. I am reminded of an anecdote by a special adviser in a new Government, who told me, “You have no idea how much the attention of a Select Committee on a part of a Department galvanises the civil servants in that part of the Department, because they know they’re going to come under intense public scrutiny.” The benefits of Select Committees doing more of their work, producing more reports and doing more inquiries are obviously beyond doubt. Our ability to do our job cannot be limited by constraints on access to information or on the witnesses from whom we want to hear, and we must be able to draw on expert advice and research.
Select Committees will be seen by our stakeholder communities as important players, influencing Government and public opinion, and as the natural place to go with concerns or ideas. On Tuesday, my Committee held a hearing about crime and the recording of crime statistics, which demonstrates the role we can play in public life in empowering individuals whose ability to give evidence is being stifled. We can provide them with a unique opportunity to explain their concerns, protected by privilege. The role of these Committees and the powers they can draw on will need to become better understood by the public. Then we can engage with the wider body of people and evidence to improve the quality of our work. Our work will be respected for its integrity and relevance to people’s lives, and can contribute to reviving faith in the value of parliamentary democracy.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to have been here to listen to the vast majority of this extremely important debate. I am glad the House of Commons Commission decided that having annual debates on this topic on the Floor of the House would be a good use of time, and I am delighted that the Backbench Business Committee agreed, because that has allowed us to have a very enlightening debate. I also want to thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) for opening the debate and for summing up the issues that the House’s various administration Committees—particularly, in my case, the House of Commons Commission—have been wrestling with.
The savings programme that the House has been working towards since 2010 has been managed efficiently, as has been demonstrated, and I should like to add my voice to those Members who have commended the work done to find the £16.1 million of savings needed in the coming year. It is right that we have a savings programme, and that we not only play our part but are seen to play our part in the general belt-tightening that has to go on across the country. However, it is vital when finding savings and efficiencies that we are constantly mindful of the knock-on effects on Parliament and its role. These savings must not impact on the House’s ability to scrutinise the Executive—a theme of today’s contributions —or on Members’ ability to represent and serve their constituents.
While this House is cutting its budget by 17% over five years, the other place has no formal savings programme. I am told that it has achieved savings of 15%, which is wholly welcome, but its having a formal process that could be held to account, in the way we are doing here, would have been desirable. We must ensure that the standing of the House of Commons in relation to the other place is not weakened because of our savings programme, and that we maintain an appropriate balance between the two Houses.
When a large savings programme is put into effect, it often tends to be done at the expense of the lower-paid members of that organisation. That is the lazy way of conducting efficiency and savings programmes, and I am delighted that we have taken steps to avoid falling into that trap. We must ensure that we are seen not to fall into it, which is why I welcome the assurances the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross was able to give us on zero-hours contracts and the London living wage. I welcome the lead that you have taken, Mr Speaker, on the latter, and the ambition that has been shown and set out in our discussions today. I hope that by Christmas the House will be accredited as a living wage employer for our directly employed staff, and by next April for our contractors. If we can achieve that—from what the hon. Gentleman said, it sounds as though we are on track—we will all be rightly proud, and it will demonstrate to others who have savings to make that they do not have to make them at the expense of their lowest-paid workers.
As you know, Mr Speaker, I have been explicitly and particularly exercised to ensure that we do not use zero-hours contracts as part of our employment terms. I therefore welcome the tantalising early look the hon. Gentleman gave us at the advice which will be coming to the Commission on Monday, which allows flexibility but ensures mutuality of expectations. I warmly welcome the commitments we heard from him today and I hope we will have minimum hours guaranteed, and not have to resort to the easy and unfair expedient of zero-hours contracts. I look forward to considering the advice he hinted at in his opening remarks when the Commission meets on Monday.
I also want to take this opportunity to recognise the great work and expertise of the staff in this place—a constant theme of all who have contributed to this debate, and one I warmly endorse. Often, we are the people who are seen, talked about and given credit when we achieve good things, but this House could not operate without the fantastic work of the staff who keep us going, whatever their level or grade. I always find them enormously helpful.
I also want to address the potential for further savings and efficiencies, and suggest something that could be done to deal with the important points that the Select Committee Chairs who have contributed to today’s debate have made about their own resources. It is time we explored the potential for further savings and efficiencies by merging the administration of this House and the other place. There is no reason why, in the 21st century, we should have separate administrative bodies for each House. For example, Parliamentary Information and Communications Technology, known as PICT, which has operated as a bicameral service since 2001, provides Members with an excellent service. Perhaps its advantage is that it was created in 2001 and not 1801. Moreover, security, visitor services, estate management, outreach, broadcasting and other such services are run on a joint basis. Procurement will also be run jointly.
Mr Jenkin
Of course we must be ready to explore anything in these times of austerity, but I honestly believe that the hon. Lady will find that some of the lessons of those joint services are not comfortable ones. Running a single organisation with dual governance is difficult. An example is running Committee staffs when there are already complicated personnel issues, such as trying to support them with flexible staffing arrangements. There is good exchange between the two Houses and Clerks Departments, and it would be absolute madness to consider merging the Clerks Departments of both Houses.
Ms Eagle
I think we need to look at how we can run this place, with two legislatures that are not the same but coexist in the same building, in a far more effective and efficient way. That does not mean making them completely co-operative in the way the hon. Gentleman suggests, but it does mean that we should see what efficiencies and savings we can get from running joint services. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot make large administrative savings from doing so.