Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

As regularly on these occasions, I say to the House that I have no particular knowledge of the individual concerned or any animus towards them, but I have huge concerns about the process.

I hope that, when the Leader of the House is looking at rigorous analysis and making tough decisions about IPSA, she looks, for example, at why it has expensive offices in the Strand in London when nearly all the staff seem to be working from home, and why the experience of individual Members in dealing with IPSA staff is that they are not facilitators of the work of hard-pressed and hard-worked Members of Parliament, but most of the time—with one or two individual exceptions, but certainly as an institution—are just incredibly obstructive. It creates a huge amount of unnecessary and bureaucratic work not just for Members of Parliament, but for our members of staff. I know that this is echoed across the Chamber from the number of Members who come up to me after speeches such as this to say so, many of whom may even have been watching in their offices while grinding through their IPSA returns.

I very much object to the process. The Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, which was brought in in haste and in response to a crisis—and in a panic, I would argue—specifies that at least one of the members of IPSA

“must be a person who has held (but no longer holds) high judicial office”.

Why? What does the requirement to have held high judicial office or to have been an eminent barrister have to do with deciding how efficiently to deal with people’s expenses? I would argue that somebody from one of the big corporations, who actually understands something about running a salaries and expenses scheme, might be a lot better at doing that, but such a person is not specified. I suspect that someone who has been a trade union official or a convener in a major company would have a much better idea about how to run such a system efficiently and effectively than someone who has never had such responsibility. I note that this individual has been a head of chambers, which would give them some understanding, but not of dealing with several hundred people in the way that IPSA has to do.

One of the problems we seem to have at the moment—this is what I want to highlight to the House—is that we have now erected a new priesthood. I find it very interesting that people complain about having bishops of the Church of England in the House of Lords, but almost everything now has to be allocated to a senior judge. These people have a lot of training and many of them are extremely intelligent, but that does not make them the only people in this country who have good judgment, are able to assess a case or are able to run something. Almost everything now seems to be delegated to the lawyers and to the judiciary. I find it really rather amusing, entertaining and slightly surprising from the Conservative party, given that its supporting newspapers are regularly castigating the judiciary on their front pages, that for everything that relates to this House, it somehow seems to allocate them a special place and a special privilege.

When we look through appointments not just to this board, but to the boards of so many public bodies that come before this House, time and again the only people who are chosen are the great and the good from various non-governmental organisations that get awards—that is another tick in a box—or those who have served on a number of quangos. It is not someone who is actually running a business day to day, someone who is doing the real job of working as a nurse or a doctor in a hospital, or a figure from the car industry, for example. None of those people gets a look in, because we hand over this process to search consultants who keep fishing in the same pool. We need to call that out and say that there is a great wealth of talent in this country. Our class system, time and again, ignores that pool of talent in all walks of life, and we have even institutionalised it in the legislation setting up the IPSA board.

So I end as I began—had we been closer to 10 o’clock, I might have felt the need to expand further, but we are not—by saying that this is nothing to do with the individual concerned. It is really to do with a self-perpetuating system that is basically about looking after chums, and it is about time we changed it.

Question put and agreed to.

Liaison Committee

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Since I objected to this motion going through on the nod the other night, I am surprised that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is moving it formally instead of trying to explain the background to this move. We have always had the system in this House that the Liaison Committee comprises those Members who have been appointed by the House to be Chairs of Select Committees, and those Chairs meet together to comprise the Liaison Committee.

The Liaison Committee is set up under Standing Order No. 145. An appointment was made in this Parliament by the former Member for Uxbridge, Boris Johnson, who as Prime Minister listened sympathetically to representations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), saying that he had not been appointed successfully to be elected to a Select Committee, and would it not be wonderful to break with precedent and create a new post for somebody who was not already a Select Committee Chair, but who would become Chair of the Liaison Committee.

I have no objection to the decision that the former Prime Minister took in appointing my hon. Friend as Chair of the Liaison Committee, but I am concerned that now, with his having been appointed to that Committee, we are engaged in a bit of mission creep. Standing Order No. 145 specifies:

“A select committee shall be appointed, to be called the Liaison Committee”,

and its role shall be

“to consider general matters relating to the work of select committees, to give such advice relating to the work of select committees as may be sought by the House of Commons Commission, and to report to the House its choice of select committee reports to be debated on such days as may be appointed by the Speaker in pursuance of paragraph (15) of Standing Order No. 10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall).

The committee may also hear evidence from the Prime Minister on matters of public policy.”

We know that that is essentially the high-profile role of the Liaison Committee—to try to hold the Prime Minister to account. My hon. Friend, as Chair of that Committee, played a significant role in trying to hold the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to account.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will correct me. Is it right that we have a joint strategic Committee—I cannot remember its exact name, but if I had known this subject was coming up I would have looked it up—which I think is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett)? Surely strategic issues, and strategic security and so on, should be within the remit of that Committee under our current structure.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are not short of Committees in this House, and the purpose of Standing Order No. 145 was to set up a Liaison Committee—whether that is a useful exercise is for others to judge. It was approved and set up in the Standing Orders, but now, without vigilance on our part, we will find that that Liaison Committee is becoming almost like a Select Committee in its own right, and carrying out its own inquiries—inquiries that could be carried out by any of the other individual Select Committees. Now, in the motion on the Order Paper, it is seeking funding for the appointment of special advisers to facilitate its work. It seems to me that the case for this measure has not been made. I am sorry, as I said earlier, that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House did not make the case at the beginning of this debate, instead of waiting to respond to the debate later.

Referring again to Standing Order No. 145, it states:

“The committee shall report its recommendations as to the allocation of time for consideration by the House of the estimates on any day or half day which may be allotted for that purpose; and upon a motion being made that the House do agree with any such report the question shall be put forthwith and, if that question is agreed to, the recommendations shall have effect as if they were orders of the House.

Proceedings in pursuance of this paragraph, though opposed, may be decided after the expiration of the time for opposed business.”

Sub-paragraphs (4) to (6) of that Standing Order state:

“The committee shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House…and to report from time to time.

Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it for the remainder of the Parliament.

The committee shall have power to appoint two sub-committees, one of which shall be a National Policy Statements sub-committee.”

The Standing Order then sets out what that sub-committee could be comprised of and what it would do. I am not aware of any such sub-committee on national policy statements having yet been appointed, but if I am wrong about that, I am sure I will be corrected by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. The Liaison Committee also has the power to set up another sub-committee if it so wishes. Each sub-committee has requirements about a quorum and the fact that it needs to report minutes of evidence and so on.

It is clear from reading that Standing Order that the Liaison Committee has a limited remit. It is particularly designed to ensure that, because the Prime Minister does not answer and will not give evidence to other Select Committees, he comes along regularly to the Liaison Committee and he is held to account there.

That is all very well, so why have we ended up where we are today? On the Order Paper, the motion states:

“notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 145”—

the one to which I have been referring—

“the Liaison Committee shall have power to appoint specialist advisers”—

in the plural—

“in relation to its inquiry on Strategic thinking in Government.”

It may well be that there is a shortage of strategic thinking in government and that that inquiry into the shortage of strategic thinking is required, but I am surprised that that inquiry is being conducted by the Liaison Committee, when any of the other Select Committees would be able to inquire into that issue in relation to their remits.

The Liaison Committee has set up that inquiry on strategic thinking in government, and it wants to have special advisers appointed, and I imagine paid out of the public purse, to provide advice to the Committee, which is, as I emphasise, a Select Committee in name, but not by nature. This is an example of mission creep.

I had the privilege of speaking earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, who drew to my attention the press release issued by the Liaison Committee on 22 June this year. It states:

“The Liaison Committee is launching an inquiry into select committee scrutiny of strategic thinking across Whitehall.”

In other words, it is trying to find out whether Select Committees are up to the task of scrutinising strategic thinking across government. That would be fair enough, one might think. However, when one looks at the small print, the Chair’s comments and the terms of reference, one finds that, far from being an inquiry into Select Committee scrutiny of strategic thinking across Whitehall, this is an inquiry into strategic thinking across Whitehall—nothing to do with the Select Committees, for which the Liaison Committee has been specifically established.

[John Spellar]

The hon Gentleman is generous in giving way once again. I have been listening to him expand on that point. Would it not be more appropriate for such an inquiry to be conducted by the Public Accounts Committee, which has inevitably undertaken similar studies into thinking because of the resource consequences that arise from strategic thinking, or the lack thereof? Was that not the appropriate route?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That, in my view, would be wholly appropriate. Why does the National Audit Office, which feeds into much of the Public Accounts Committee’s work, not get involved if it thinks that this is a big issue? Incidentally, today, the National Audit Office reported on the Government’s hospital building programme, and I found in the small print that Christchurch hospital is no longer part of the 40 hospitals being built—it has been withdrawn from the programme and will be added to a future programme. That is rightly criticised by the National Audit Office, and that is a current example of why we need proper scrutiny.

To return to what the Liaison Committee says it wants to do in this new inquiry, the Chair’s comments are:

“Major events such as Brexit, covid-19 and Ukraine demonstrate the need for long-term planning and delivery across multiple departments and across the duration of several Parliaments, as well as the importance of successful collaboration with our international partners. As the pace of events over recent years have shown, the Government needs to be more agile in its ambition—and it should also be coordinated across departments and sustainable over time.

Select committees provide a mirror to Government policy and practice. Their work has demonstrated the value of cross-party checks and balances on departmental strategic thinking. This inquiry by the Liaison Committee will consider how select committees can improve scrutiny of strategic thinking in government as the UK confronts the major questions we face in the near and longer-term future. Better scrutiny of strategic thinking by Parliament will contribute to better strategic thinking within Government.”

I am sorry that I was not able to précis that, Madam Deputy Speaker; that is one of the issues we have, as a Parliament and with the Government—there is too much verbosity in these sorts of announcements—but be that as it may.

I then looked at the terms of reference, expecting that they would be exclusively directed to strategic thinking in Select Committees and the Select Committee’s control over strategic thinking in government, but the call for evidence—Members and others are told that they must send in written evidence by Friday 15 September—states:

“The Committee is looking for evidence on: Examples of best practice of strategic thinking in Government, including: how well Government identifies strategic opportunities as well as strategic risks and threats; how effectively Government uses internal and external challenge; how feedback loops”—

whatever those are—

“are used to ensure that lessons from delivery are fully considered when developing future strategic plans;”

and

“how No. 10 and the Cabinet Office should best lead on these issues across government”.

That is one item. The second item is:

“What government should publish or explain about its overall strategic concept.”

[John Spellar]

Surely, the section that the hon. Gentleman has just read out—there may be more of it—is in the remit of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. I do not know—perhaps we will find out later—the extent to which the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has been consulted on this and has agreed that, on Government strategic thinking, it will have its role usurped by the Liaison Committee. I am sure that all will be revealed in due course. If my hon. Friends want to intervene on these issues, I will be happy to take interventions.

The next item of the terms of reference is:

“What additional machinery of Government, knowledge and skills are necessary to support strategic thinking and effective strategy and delivery, both within individual departments, and across two or more departments, and how strategy and strategic thinking can be sustained by building consensus between the main parties”.

The fourth item on which evidence can be given is:

“Which governments around the world demonstrate best practice in strategic thinking”.

That is an opportunity for some overseas visits, no doubt, to go and see which Governments across the world are demonstrating best practice in strategic thinking.

The next item of the terms of reference—the sixth—contains the first reference to Select Committees:

“How Select Committees consider strategic questions, including any recent examples of scrutiny of Government strategic plans and/or their delivery; and elements of Government strategy- and delivery that are repeatedly identified by Select Committees as effective or as deficient”.

At least that item on which evidence is sought is relevant to the purported nature of the inquiry. The next item in the terms of reference is:

“The engagement of individual departments, and Whitehall as a whole, with Select Committees on strategic challenges, including through the provision of information necessary for effective scrutiny.”

The next one is:

“What additional resources”—

more taxpayer’s money is going into this, I can see—

“parliamentary procedure, knowledge and skills are necessary to support effective Select Committee scrutiny of strategic thinking and effective strategy-making, as well as monitoring implementation of any Government action in response”.

This is a great one:

“How other parliaments around the world are engaging with the strategic thinking of their respective governments.”

Well, what an inquiry. It could take years, could it not? Woe betide whoever is appointed a special adviser under the terms of the motion before us. They will need to be handsomely remunerated, will they not, for the time and effort they put into the inquiry? They will have a global remit.

I speak as a member of two Select Committees—the Procedure Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee. The Environmental Audit Committee is cross-cutting and looks at the effect of the Government’s environmental policies across a whole range of areas. The Liaison Committee seems to be creating a new cross- cutting Select Committee covering public administration, strategic thinking, oversees democracy and so on. I want to hear the justification for that, what the cost is likely to be and how this idea ever got a start. Was it discussed by the Liaison Committee? Did it agree those very wide terms of reference? Did it think through the implications? In supporting the motion, has the Leader of the House thought through exactly what that strategic thinking is all about?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. That is why I am worried about the mission creep. We have the Liaison Committee proposal set out in the press release to which I have been referring, but it bears little resemblance to the motion on the Order Paper, which states that

“the Liaison Committee shall have power to appoint specialist advisers in relation to its inquiry on Strategic thinking in Government.”

Its inquiry purports to be on the ability of Select Committees to scrutinise strategic thinking across Government, which is completely different. As anybody who has been listening to the terms of reference will know, it is not limited to strategic thinking across our Government, but restricted to strategic thinking across all Governments that are members of the United Nations. So it has an enormously wide remit.

I must say that I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chair of the Committee, on his imagination and breadth of vision. He could have a job for life fulfilling this important role. But our job in questioning matters like this, which are put on the Order Paper and would otherwise go through on the nod, is to say, “Well, hang on a minute, what are we about? Have the members of the rest of the Select Committees thought about the implications, the costs and the dangerous precedent that is being set?” It is only in this Parliament that we got the exception to have a Chair of the Liaison Committee who is not already a Chair of another Select Committee, but how will the members of the Liaison Committee be able to give their time and devotion to this particular subject?

[John Spellar]

For example, I am a member of one of the Committees that very much deals with strategy and strategic thinking: the Defence Committee. I am not aware—I may have missed it—that there has been any reference to that Committee on whether it thinks this move is appropriate or not.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Well, there we have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. And I see my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chair of the Liaison Committee, at the Bar of the House. I do not know whether he intends to participate in this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am all in favour of more strategic thinking, and I know that my hon. Friend is a great exemplar of it. He has deployed that talent over many years in the House, and continues so to do. But I am disappointed, in a sense, that in his intervention he did not address the issue of mission creep, and why this subject cannot be dealt with by the Public Administration Committee or by other Select Committees that have already been set up under the rules of the House. He did disclose to us that he is a member of the Liaison Committee, although he did not say how enthusiastic he is about being able to participate in the evidence gathering and the consideration of the evidence that is gathered in conjunction with this particular remit of setting out the inquiry on strategic thinking in Government.

It often happens that towards the end of a Parliament the Government are trying to think beyond the next general election, and perhaps, in proposing this motion, my hon. Friend the Chair of the Liaison Committee is thinking beyond this Parliament to the next. Perhaps he is thinking that the Liaison Committee in that Parliament may have some unfinished business in relation to its inquiry on strategic thinking, and that the specialist advisers will be champing at the bit, wanting their remuneration to be extended to an inquiry that will continue—dare one say, ad infinitum? Maybe; I do not know. But I think that something like this should not go through the House without Members having been alerted to its potential consequences and implications, which is why I have spoken about the motion in this way.

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again; he is being very generous. According to his reading on the background of the Committee, does it intend to hold hearings and evidence sessions, and would that mean that all the Select Committee Chairs would have to attend weekly sessions in order to hear the evidence and then prepare the report?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That is a very good point. The Committee is specifically calling for written evidence. Normally, when Select Committees call for written evidence and that evidence comes in, they decide that the most compelling evidence should probably be supplemented by oral evidence from those who have submitted the written evidence. It is, I presume, implicit in the fact that the Committee has invited written evidence that it will also receive oral evidence and will cross-examine, or question, some of the people who have submitted that written evidence, whether it be from Members of the Australian Parliament, the Canadian Parliament or the Hungarian Parliament. Who knows, but I imagine that they will be holding oral evidence sessions. As the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) implies, if an oral evidence session is not within the remit of the one of the specific Sub-Committees of the Liaison Committee, to which I referred earlier, there will be a need for a quorum and for people to be there paying close attention to the evidence.

Where are we going? This is essentially a new Select Committee that is being expanded to cover everybody else’s areas of responsibility so that it can have a grandiose role. It is not sufficient for it to be able to hold the Prime Minister to account and allocate questions to the Prime Minister among Liaison Committee members—now we are getting into the whole area not of the role of Select Committees in holding the Government to account on their strategic challenges, but of the strategic challenges in toto.

In summary, what I am really saying is that I despair. I despair that this proposal has reached the stage it has. I look forward to hearing an explanation from the Leader of the House about why she thinks this is a good move. I hope that she will be able to explain how our fears and concerns about dangerous precedents can be allayed. Strategic thinking is perhaps just the start of a takeover bid by the Liaison Committee of almost all the other subjects that are the remit of individual Select Committees at the moment. Who knows? In the absence of any contribution from the Chair of the Liaison Committee himself, we depend on the knowledge that the Leader of the House has gained from the briefing that she has no doubt received, as I did, from the Liaison Committee.

I am all in favour of strategic thinking and of scrutinising the Government’s strategic thinking, but I do not think that this is the right way forward.

Business of the House

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The manner in which the hon. Gentleman has asked his question prompts the exact response that I shall give. I am afraid that he has just provided us with a prime example of why the SNP has no credibility on these matters, why it always stokes division and why, even though there was a slight degree of humour creeping into his question, it was still rather obnoxious.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Earlier, the Leader of the House rightly commended the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill of the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and the Government’s support for it. That Bill was carried by this House on 17 March, and had its First Reading in the House of Lords on 20 March, but has made no further progress since then, giving rise, I am afraid, to concerns that it is perhaps being delayed and undermined by Tory backwoodsmen down the corridor. Through the usual channels, can she get this welcome and much anticipated Bill moving forward and becoming law?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Bill is continuing to make progress. A lot of work has been going on in the other place on any outstanding concerns that people have. The Bill will make progress.

Tributes to Baroness Boothroyd

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I was sitting in this spot, behind Betty Boothroyd, when she was elected as Speaker. A picture of that day has gone round, which unfortunately reminds me that a lot of colour has gone out of both my hair and beard in the meantime. Imagine having to share a borough and the local media with an international star!

It is sad to lose a long-standing good friend, but really we should be celebrating an extraordinary groundbreaking life. She brought the Speaker’s role into the modern world. She respected tradition, as has been said, but did so with style. It was a role made for the televising of this House. One could almost have described it as traditional values in a modern setting.

Betty controlled this place with firmness and humour, but without either patronising or belittling colleagues—a tradition, I am pleased to see, Mr Speaker, that you have restored. With that mixture of charm and toughness, she was a mailed fist inside a stylish velvet glove. That served her well inside the Labour party, where she was a formidable figure in restoring the Labour party to common sense, battling away, hour after hour, in national executive and committee meetings. She provided the venue for the moderate group’s pre-meeting before the NEC meeting. Food and drink may have been involved as well. I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) or your father, Mr Speaker, were on the invitation list for those gatherings. That was all good training for her time in the Whips Office, during the years recently recreated in the play “This House”.

We also have to consider how she even got to this place. The battle for a seat—a number of seats—was enormously difficult for a working-class woman without some of the resources that were available to trade union candidates, for example, in those days. She fought in Leicester South East, Peterborough, Nelson and Colne and Rossendale before becoming the Member for West Bromwich.

Betty showed that perseverance and grit can win through. She broke barriers so that others who followed would not have the same struggles. She was one of a kind and a real pioneer. West Bromwich, Sandwell, the Labour party, the wider west midlands, Parliament and the public will miss her, but will remember how she changed this Parliament and this country for the better. May she rest in peace.

Committee on Standards (Lay Members)

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am sorry at this hour to bring a note of dissension to proceedings. Colleagues who have braved these debates before will not be surprised, but basically what we have here is same old, same old. I notice we always employ recruitment consultants. I do not know why, really, because we still get people from the same old group moving around from quango to quango, but from a narrow basis. Of course, the recruitment consultants work on their criteria. What we are not getting in respect of either party is people who represent that vast part of the country that is not metropolitan—I include perhaps some of the metropolitan centres in Scotland and possibly in Northern Ireland—and who are not part of the great and the good. It is the same, by the way, with health authorities.

Going back a number of years, we had local businessmen and council leaders—people who were running businesses day to day and with real-life experience. We had trade union leaders—people who had come up from the shop floor and had real experience. We are dealing with the Committee on Standards; we are dealing with human behaviour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call John Spellar.

[John Spellar]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We therefore do not have that breadth of experience and understanding coming in, one could often argue, in many cases.

I do not know any of these individuals; I take the word of Members who have actually met them that they may be quite estimable individuals. However, among that particular social set, there is contempt for the political process and for politics. We can see that coming through on many occasions and in the huge delays that take place when dealing with individual cases, as though this does not have an impact on the political process, political confidence or the individuals themselves.

The reason I raise this issue particularly in this debate, as in many others, is because this attitude is now endemic in the public life of this country. Real-life experience is denigrated. Political experience is particularly denigrated. I think that politics actually is a noble profession. Politics and politicians are absolutely necessary in order for the democratic will of the people to be brought about.

Therefore, by side-lining them and taking them out of decision making, and by claiming that they are non-political, when the nature of things, the conflict in society and the resolution of that conflict are inherently political, we are saying that these matters should not be entrusted to the people who actually put themselves before the public and get their vote—it should be taken away from there. This is just an example, but so much of life in this country now is done by a small set that is self-selecting and, these days, self-perpetuating. There is increasing evidence that the chances of people coming from an ordinary family and moving up through the system are diminishing. We are seeing that in a whole number of areas in this country, such as in the arts, where the opportunities for working-class youngsters to break through in theatre or music have been much diminished.

These people not only do very nicely out of all these quangos, but do so with a warm glow from feeling that they are doing a public service. However, what they are actually doing is leading to the stratification of society, the net result of which, such as in previous debate, is that the public feel frozen out until they have an opportunity to actually say, “We think we ought to be heard.” I urge elected Members on both sides of the House to take that on board seriously. We cannot change all of this immediately, but we can deal with it within our own affairs and say that Members of Parliament should, if I can use a phrase, take back control.

Business of the House

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

The issues raised in the independent report on the behaviour of the former Speaker that was published earlier this week risk dragging the reputation of this House into the mud. The continued support of some Members on the Opposition Benches is a source of shame—

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

He was a Tory MP.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

You could have fooled me!

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I will give the Leader of the House the time to recover from the other duties that he has been undertaking during the course of what has undoubtedly been a busy day.

I know nothing of Ms Lea Paterson, either favourable or unfavourable, although it is a reasonable CV. However, once again, the appointment is from a very narrow band of our society. Let us look at the document that specifies who can be on IPSA. By the way, all these experts that it has have not led to a better service for Members of the House. Quite frankly, it is absolutely shocking. The administrative burden on Members of Parliament gets worse and worse for what should be basic, simple jobs.

Let us look at the jobs. At least one Member must have held high judicial office—that has kept the lawyers happy, with a sinecure. Another one must be an auditor, so we have looked after the accountants. Another one is a person who has previously been a Member. This vacancy, however, is not specific; it is a general vacancy. Once again, did they go out and look across the broad spectrum of our society, for people with experience? Well, they went off to recruitment consultants Veredus, to scour beyond a mile of Westminster to find somebody who fitted the bill. I think that is extremely unlikely. I do not think they went to the north, the midlands, Scotland or Wales. They tried to reach out, by going to The Times appointments adverts, which does not actually have a very high circulation in Smethwick or, I expect, many other constituencies. It is an excellent newspaper, but it is not the way to reach many people in our society who have great experience.

Interestingly enough, many successful firms are far more adventurous in their recruitment processes. Who do they often look for to bring into the ranks of management? They look for capable shop stewards. Sometimes, in my experience they were the worst ones to deal with because they knew the ropes. These are people who really know how industry and society work: people who are running hospitals; ward sisters who are running wards; people who are managing our transport and logistics system. Those are people who understand how life works.

We are supposed to be running an expenses system, yet we are only recruiting, once again, from the great and the good. That is a problem across Government appointments and society. Then we wonder why government in this country is so badly managed? It is because we draw from such a narrow pool. I regret that the Opposition go along with that. There ought to be a root and branch examination to look at where we draw people from and what their work and life experience is. I hope that the Leader of the House, in dealing with the specific, will also address the general point I am making about how we should broaden our society.

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I apologise for my momentary delay. The motion proposes that an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will appoint the person to the office of ordinary member of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for a period of five years, with effect from 14 March 2022.

The Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority produced a report that is tagged to the motion—its first report of 2022. I have no doubt that Members—the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) is certainly one of them—will have studied the report carefully before agreeing to the motion. I thank Philippa Helme for running the selection process diligently.

I would like to try to respond to what the right hon. Gentleman said, because it is important that people are drawn or apply from as wide a background as possible. That is something that he has tirelessly encouraged, and it goes along with the Government policy of trying to move Ministries outside SW1 to other parts of the country, to ensure greater involvement of people up and down the country from various degrees of experience. I know that Mr Speaker is keen to encourage applicants who do not necessarily fit the entirely traditional bill. I have to say, I think he thinks that only applicants from Lancashire would be suitable for most posts, whatever that post happens to be.

[John Spellar]

Can I put it to the Leader of the House that time after time we get recommendations to appointments, and they all come from the same narrow social circle? It is not even, as it was with the traditional Tory party, that they come from industry. We almost never have anybody from industry; they are always from the professions and the City of London. The person we are being recommended was a journalist and then worked at the Bank of England. Could we not have somebody who worked for Jaguar Land Rover, either as a convenor or as the manager?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point. I think we do want to fish in a bigger pool, and I think we should always be very concerned about what might broadly be called the quangocracy. We do not want this country run by people who pass and bounce from quango to quango, and pick up nice appointments along the way.

Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

I echo what has been said and offer my thanks to those involved in the recruitment process and to those who have given their service. I also pass on our best wishes to Ms Middleton, who seems to be an eminently suitable appointee for the role.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Richard Thomson]

I had just finished, but I will find something else to say.

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I have no knowledge of or animus towards the individual concerned, but once again it is the great and the good. She is someone who has just recently retired from HMRC. How cosy that they all slot into these positions. It is never truck drivers who are keeping the country going, or nursing sisters who are keeping the health service going, or those from a whole range of occupations—it is always out of the quangocrats and retired civil servants. I would hope that the Scottish National party and our own Front Benchers would be saying, “We need a broader range of people in public appointments, and not just the same merry-go-round of the great and the good”—however good they may be, and who knows whether they are great.

[Richard Thomson]

I feel like I have been given an unexpected opportunity to hold court, which I shall not take. Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman is correct: we are very much of a bias towards the good, rather than the great, and it is perhaps unfair to load all those concerns on to this particular appointment. I am sure the Leader of the House will have plenty to say in response to that. All public appointments, in our opinion, should be drawn from the truest possible breadth and depth of the talent that is available.

Question put and agreed to.

Business of the House

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think it is clear that external meetings that relate to Government business are minuted and that is routine civil service practice. But I think the hon. Gentleman has received replies from a large number of Ministers, including from my own office, although I am afraid that my office said that we followed the practice of the Cabinet Office because the Office of the Leader of the House technically comes under the Cabinet Office. But we do take minutes. It is what the civil service does and does very effectively.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Next Friday, I am bringing in a Bill to ban the importing of hunting trophies. The public and all parties, including the Leader of the House’s party, agree on this issue. Last month, I raised it at Prime Minister’s questions and he replied that the Government were going to introduce legislation, but there is still no sign of it. So will the Leader of the House either urgently bring a Bill to the House or tell his Whips not to block my Bill next week, so that we can get a law as soon as possible and end this vile trade once and for all?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The right hon. Gentleman has asked the Prime Minister and is now asking me. He has asked the organ grinder, and I do not quite know why he has come to the monkey. None the less, the monkey will do his best to say that it is Government policy to ban the importing of hunting trophies and that legislation is likely to come forward in the fullness of time, but there is no specific introduction date.

House of Commons Commission (External Members)

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am mindful of the concerns of colleagues that they do not want to be delayed for too long. I have no animus against, or indeed any knowledge of, either of the two individuals being appointed, and they may well fit the glowing descriptions that we have heard. I certainly hope so, and no doubt the Leader of the House will be pleased to sit alongside them as well, but I have huge problems with the process. What seems to have happened here, as so often—in fact, almost invariably—with our selection processes, is that we determine and narrow the outcome by the criteria that we use. It is like any algorithm: if we set the criteria for it, it will predict the outcome that we are going to get.

So let us look at the criteria. They include the need for:

“Senior executive leadership experience within a complex organisation”.

Already we are saying, basically, that we want the corporate suits. Male or female, it is the corporate suits we want, not people who have gone out and created and run a business themselves; not people who have actually worked in industry or maybe run a factory and really know about running things; not trade unionists who have had to engage with complex issues; not people who have worked in hospitals—not in senior management but maybe running a ward; and not those who are running a school. Those people do not get considered.

Every time we have a list of nominations, it nearly always consists of those who have been in big corporates and who have then sat on the boards of quangos and charities. It is always the great and the good. We keep appointing them time and time again, then we are surprised that this country ends up being so badly run. Basically, we are drawing from a very narrow cast, and we are constantly enabling them to perpetuate themselves —and not only them as individuals and their narrow range of experience, but their general ethos and that narrow self-perpetuating culture, which I am surprised, frankly, that the Leader of the House so readily accepts.

I have another problem with this. Paragraph 14 of the report from the Commission to the House says:

“In the case of both candidates, the selection panel was satisfied that neither had undertaken any political activity within the last five years”.

I am absolutely fed up with this assumption—again from this self-perpetuating elite that I have described—that party political activity is somehow reprehensible, shabby and shoddy, and that it is only those who will not engage in politics who are fit to be engaged in running public life. That is detrimental both to politics and to public life. I will continue to raise this issue on all such occasions when this same rotten process occurs, because, as we have seen many times, the public see through this arrogant metropolitan intellectual and cultural elite and the way they are running this country. But yet again, all the time, we are playing our part in perpetuating its malign grip. As I have said, I have no animus against the individuals concerned, but I have huge objections to the process.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

I would understand if the right hon. Gentleman were arguing, for example, that a political leader of a council might change the balance of the Commission, but if we are trying to get expertise, they would also be used to running large organisations. He rightly said that the Commission tends to work with a degree of consensus; it is not divided. Many other countries managed to encapsulate that. They appoint people to public bodies in the full and public knowledge that they have been politically active. I still do not understand why the right hon. Gentleman thinks that should be a major debarring factor.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

As I hope I was making clear, I think it debars from the Commission, where politicians are already appointed. It inevitably does not debar from other public sector appointments, where that may be perfectly reasonable, and where people may be appointed because of their connection to a political party if we are seeking a political balance. As I said, I have particular confidence in the two people we are appointing today. I think they will be first class and make a considerable contribution to the Commission and the work of this House.