Strathclyde Review
Lord Beith Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, if I were to explain why I profoundly disagree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, I would lose the time I need to say what a wealth of experience came from the two maiden speeches that we heard today—experience of both the Treasury and the European Parliament. My noble friend Lady Bowles’s speech would repay careful reading in Hansard by anybody who wants to take these issues any further.
I am a new boy in this House; my experience is of the ineffectiveness of the House of Commons in dealing with delegated legislation. In her Statement, the Leader of the House said that,
“as a revising Chamber … we complement the work of the other place”.—[Official Report, 17/12/15; col. 2189.]
I have to say that there is an awful lot of complementing to be done. There is complete reliance on the extensive work carried out in this House on statutory instruments. That should remind us of the danger of weakening the ability of this House to question and challenge the Executive and require them to think again. The very rare instance of an order being defeated by your Lordships underpins the ability of this House to question and challenge ill-thought-out delegated legislation, particularly when it deals with matters of principle or policy, which should be dealt with by primary, amendable legislation.
I should add that my experience in the Commons includes the one occasion when a statutory instrument was overturned by the House of Commons. It related to paraffin oil price control, and it was a mistake. We shouted “Aye” in support of the annulment Motion, the Prayer, and the Government Whip forgot to shout “No”, as a result of which one of his colleagues had to go along to the Palace and come back in his tailcoat with his white wand of office and bring back a Message that the Queen was happy to comply with our Prayer. As I said, that was not intended to happen.
Indeed, in the previous Parliament, the average amount of time spent in the House of Commons Chamber debating delegated legislation was just over five minutes per day. You might say that it is all done in committees. One of the means by which late-night sittings were largely abandoned in the Commons in pursuit of family-friendly hours was by consigning almost all statutory instruments, which we used to have to debate between 10 pm and 1 am, to committees, but the situation in the committees is not much better than in the Chamber. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has referred to the press-ganged MPs who want to know whether it will be over in 10 minutes or whether they have to be there for 20. If there is a negative-procedure instrument, no meaningful vote can take place. Even if the committee votes that it has not considered the instrument, that vote is not reported to the House and no other procedure ensues or follows from it.
This is much more than a minor procedural issue. Governments of all kinds use delegated legislation to enact new policies and principles to change the impact of the criminal law, and amend the very legislation on which the instrument is based, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned. Committees of your Lordships’ House have produced egregious examples of this, such as the Childcare Bill 2015-16, which was described by the delegated legislation committee as little more than a mission statement. Yet even the mildest of the alternative proposals in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, rests on the utterly implausible hope that Governments will,
“take steps to ensure that Bills contain an appropriate level of detail and that too much is not left for implementation by statutory instrument”.
That will never happen. It would be like relying on an alcoholic promising to drink only moderately in future. It is just not realistic.
Why is that? There are several reasons. Often a Bill is introduced before enough work has been done on it. Departments like the freedom to rewrite and extend the legislation as they go along. Frequently the reason is that entirely new provisions are introduced into a Bill at a late stage without time to include key aspects in it. Opposition parties and campaign groups often feel obliged to accept this defective way of legislating, because it is a means of implementing a concession that they have sought and won from Ministers. How often have I heard it said from the Dispatch Box that the amendments are defective, but the Government will accept the principle and implement it by regulations? The phraseology gives it away. It is a matter of principle and importance, but it will be done by regulations and everyone says that that is fine. It is a victory, but one that undermines the effective scrutiny of legislation.
My conclusion is that we have to plan for the real world as we know it to be. The integrity of the legislative process and its ability to protect the rights of the citizen will always be threatened not just by the Executive’s fondness for power but also by the short cuts taken very often to promote quite good intentions. It will always be like that. We should therefore continue to develop the scrutiny role to which many of your Lordships devote a great deal of time and effort, and do nothing that could weaken the underlying authority for that role. There is lot wrong with House of Commons scrutiny of delegated legislation, and I believe that improvements could be secured and discussion between the Houses could well be profitable. However, the basis on which the House of Lords gives or very rarely withholds its consent for statutory instruments is basically sound. It is not broken and we should not risk weakening the work of this House by trying hastily to fix it.
Valedictory Debate
Lord Beith Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
When I took my seat in the House with a slender majority of 57 after the Berwick by-election, a state of emergency was declared at the same time. I do not think the two events were connected, but they were the beginning of a sequence which involved two further elections in the next 11 months. At the end of that I still had a majority of only 73. We then went into a referendum on British membership of the European Community—wait long enough and another one comes round. The difference, however, is that in that referendum campaign I was fighting alongside Tories in favour of British membership of the EC and most of the opponents we were dealing with were in the Labour party; the world has changed politically quite a bit in that time. Some 41 and a half years after my first day here, I can say that, with those majorities, I did not expect to enjoy the privilege of representing the people of north Northumberland for so long—longer than any previous Berwick Member of Parliament.
My primary concerns in that time have been those of my constituents in the over 100 towns and villages which make up the Berwick constituency. Like many Members, I have derived real satisfaction from helping constituents who have been ill-served by the bureaucracy of state or local government, or by powerful private businesses. In political life, there are things we know we have helped to achieve, and they are the things we know would not have happened but for our own efforts. In that category I place examples like the dualling of the A1, the new high school being built in Alnwick, and the fact that the RAF has kept its crucial command and control and training facilities at RAF Boulmer in my constituency. For that, I called on the help of an invaluable parliamentary tool: the National Audit Office. It is not often realised how helpful that body is to Parliament and MPs.
The first two examples were certainly made possible by Liberal Democrat involvement in the coalition Government, achieving what previous Governments had failed to do. I am proud to have been a supporter of the coalition, and in my view becoming involved in it was the right thing for the Liberal Democrats to do, in order to provide stability for the country at a time of crisis, to take tough but necessary decisions to reduce the deficit, to temper austerity with fairness and to maintain long-term investment. Many of those things would not have been possible had we not taken that decision to take part in the coalition.
Although I spent a lot of time in the leadership and management team of my party in this House and outside it, I want to concentrate finally on one aspect of parliamentary activity which is increasingly recognised as of real benefit to our constituents, and more rewarding to MPs who want to achieve something than the sterile shouting match, to which several Members have referred, which takes place on Wednesdays at Prime Minister’s questions. Select Committee scrutiny of how well or badly the Government are doing their job has assumed vastly greater importance during this Parliament. Committees are no longer chosen by party Whips; their Chairs are elected by secret ballot—a rather sensitive subject today, but it is crucial to the authority that now attaches to the chairmanship of a Select Committee—and Committee members are voted for by a ballot within their parties. There must be no going back on this vital reform. The next Parliament should build on that reform and should not in any way weaken or undermine it. I welcome the fact that the Liaison Committee, which I chair along with the Justice Committee, has secured, with your assistance, Mr Speaker, £800,000 from the resources of the House in the next Parliament to strengthen and support the work of Select Committees.
By its nature our system allows for a strong Executive, and they must be held effectively to account. We in the Justice Committee have done that, but we have also tried to create space for a more rational, evidence-based objective debate about criminal justice policy. In the Liaison Committee, we have focused our now more frequent question sessions with the Prime Minister, probing in detail the influence that he and the No. 10 staff have on departmental policy. I pay tribute to colleagues in all parties who, despite their different political views, have worked with me in the Select Committee system.
My final word must be one of thanks: to the staff in every department of the House, to the staff in my Westminster and constituency offices, to all those volunteers who have given me so much help over the years, to my colleagues and friends in the Liberal Democrats, and to the electors of my constituency. I hope they will take my advice and return another Liberal Democrat to maintain the liberal philosophical tradition and the Liberal tradition of vigorous local representation which I have sought to uphold in this House.
Devolution (Scotland Referendum)
Lord Beith Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hague
As I was saying a moment ago, it is of course true that there are a mass of connections in public service and transport, although it is also true that the NHS in Wales has not been performing as well as the NHS in England. Both points are true. There are a mass of connections, but I reiterate that that has never stopped the hon. Gentleman and others making the case for devolution in Wales and for greater control in Wales over, for instance, health and education services. It is therefore not surprising that English Members want greater control of health and education services in England, acknowledging that services on both sides of such a border must continue to serve those on both sides.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
May I point out to my right hon. Friend that we are having increasing difficulty accessing services across the border between England and Scotland, and that increasingly, barriers are being erected? I express the hope that the settlement that Scotland is staying in the United Kingdom will mean that people can continue to cross borders for the best health provision.
Mr Hague
Yes, that is important for all of us in the UK.
As is well understood in the House, the devolution settlement for Northern Ireland is different from the ones for Scotland and for Wales. It has emerged out of cross-party talks over a very long period. At its heart is power sharing between Northern Ireland’s two main traditions. The provision of additional powers to the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly would involve changes to the Belfast agreement. It is therefore essential that any changes to the settlement have the support of parties in the Assembly. One area on which we have had discussions is the devolution of corporation tax to Northern Ireland. As the Prime Minister has made clear, we will make an announcement on that no later than the autumn statement.
It is more important that the three devolution settlements I have discussed work in the best interests of the people of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland than that they are identical, but the nature of the development of devolution in the past two decades has left the UK with an asymmetrical Union.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I am very glad of the opportunity to say a brief word about how the north-east of England is affected in these circumstances. The first thing to be said about the north-east of England is that there was a real and palpable sense of relief when the result of the vote came through. That was particularly true in Berwick, where I live. I can walk to the border in a short time. That sense of relief then gave way to some further questions. The three points that arise, in roughly the order of the frequency with which they are raised with me, are the Barnett formula, the devolving of power and the West Lothian question.
The Barnett formula worries us not because we do not want the Scots to have adequate public spending, but because there is no similar protection of the amount of public spending that the north-east of England receives. As people are aware, in Scotland, public spending is 20% higher per head. In London as well, expenditure on transport is many times what it is in the north-east. Public expenditure on the arts is much higher. Therefore, there is a feeling in the north-east that we deserve some protection to ensure that the levels of public expenditure meet the needs.
Sir Alan Beith
I want to make some progress. The right hon. Gentleman may want to intervene later.
The second issue that concerns people in the north-east is about the further devolving of power. That region rejected the setting up of a north-east assembly and it will be some years before we go back to that possibility, but that has not dimmed the feeling that too many decisions are taken in London and that more things should be decided locally.
Mr Redwood
I intervene because I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman understands the Barnett formula. It starts with a percentage increase for England and bases the Scottish one on the English increase. Of course England is protected because it starts with England.
Sir Alan Beith
The north-east of England is not protected within that England formula. That is the point that I was making. I do indeed understand the Barnett formula, having been aware of it for many years and since Joel Barnett introduced it.
Let me return to devolving power. The likely vehicle for devolving power is the combined authority, the local enterprise partnership or some combination of the two. Every time we have devolved significant power within the UK, we have done so to a body we have designed in such a way that minority opinion is represented, including other political parties and rural areas. We have always used the proportional system in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London—in every case the Assembly is elected by a proportional system. However, there is a danger that, if we do not do something about the structure of combined authorities, we will have one-party states. In the north-east, neither Conservative nor Liberal Democrat opinion is represented in the leadership of the combined authority and rural opinion is under-represented, as it is in the local authority in Northumberland, where decisions are made for the benefit of the urban area, which do not work for rural areas—for example, decisions on transport for people to get to school or college. Therefore, further devolution of power within England is important to people in the north-east.
The third issue, which cannot be dismissed lightly, is the West Lothian question. English Members are not voting on matters of health and education in Scotland not because there is a sign over the door of the Lobby saying they cannot go in. It is because those powers are not dealt with here; they have been devolved elsewhere. The ideal solution to the West Lothian question is to devolve at least some of those powers within England, so that we are no longer trying to govern every detail of English life from the UK Parliament. Indeed we diminish its ability to serve as the UK Parliament if it spends a lot of time on that kind of detail.
There are exceptions to that. I do not believe there is an appetite to have different criminal law or property law in different parts of England, although there is a difference between England and Scotland in that regard. Therefore, there will never be a neat and perfect solution. Some devolution of legislative power may take place within the structure that exists in this place; some of the solutions that the McKay commission has put forward use that as a model. I suspect that there will be a combination—further devolution of power within England and a change in how we manage things in this House, so that, when it is behaving as a UK Parliament, it can focus its energies on that, and more English detail can be dealt with by English Members. However, in the minds of many people in the north-east, although that is important, it is perhaps not quite as important as ensuring that, in our region, we get some of the help that Scotland has had financially to deal with the problems we have both faced, and as ensuring that devolution for Scotland enables the north-east to engage fully in a partnership with our neighbours across the border.
Select Committee on Governance of the House
Lord Beith Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Tom Brake
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I will respond to it later.
It is in all our interests—Government, Opposition, Back Benchers and the House service as a whole—that this matter is resolved in a timely manner with due consideration. I do not seek in any way to pre-empt the work of the Committee, but there are certain principles that it will wish to bear in mind and issues that it will wish to to address. Let me flag up four. First, as Members, we expect to have access to the highest quality of advice. We rely heavily on the expert advice of the Clerk on matters of procedure and constitutional propriety. It goes without saying that the effective functioning of the House relies on the confidence of Members in its senior management and especially in the Clerk of the House as its principal procedural adviser.
Secondly, on a related point, it is vital that the Clerk is, and is seen to be, totally independent and not in any way dependent on the support of political parties or others. Advice must be dispensed without fear or favour. That is why the Clerk is appointed by the sovereign by letters patent and is not an employee of the Commission.
Thirdly, it is important that the House has a decision-making structure that is fit for the substantial challenges that we face, and is transparent. Members and the public must know who is accountable for decisions made.
Finally, any management structure must be cost-effective. Just as the Government have cut the cost of politics, the House has delivered substantial savings to the taxpayer since the last election, meeting its 17% savings target. Any new arrangements should support the efficient and cost-effective delivery of services to Members and to the public.
If the motion is agreed to, I hope that the Select Committee will be able to begin its work rapidly and conclude by the deadline. The Government will seek to ensure that the House has an opportunity to debate the Committee’s conclusions at an early opportunity, so that resulting appointments can be made as rapidly as possible.
In response to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), the election of Members to the Committee is a matter for the parties.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
My right hon. Friend has not referred to the interim arrangements that are being put in place. I want an assurance that it is difficult for him to give, because he is not a member of the Commission, that the Commission will invest the Clerk Assistant with sufficient authority to do all the things that are required of the Clerk, of the kind that my right hon. Friend has described, and to delegate such of his functions as make it possible to carry out those roles.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I welcome the motion and I welcome Mr Speaker’s announcement of the pause. I wrote to the Leader of the House in August because in my role as Chairman of the Liaison Committee I felt that members of the Committee would think that the House needed further discussion and to be able to exercise some influence over how the issue was resolved. An appropriate way of resolving it has been found.
As Chairs of Select Committees, members of the Liaison Committee have a lot of experience of Clerks at work. Indeed, I ought to point out in the light of some of the comments made that the idea that Clerks do not do management is seriously misleading. In the course of our daily work most of us see senior Clerks exercising management functions. They have of course been encouraged to do so and, in many cases, trained to do so as that is now a significant part of the role of Clerks.
I was on the House of Commons Commission when previous reports considered the issue of separating the roles of Clerk and chief executive and there are quite powerful arguments for doing so. I am sympathetic to a move in that direction, personally, but it is essential that the authority of the Clerk of the House must not be undermined. Some fairly obvious points follow on from that. For example, the nature of the appointment as a Crown appointment and the fact that the appointment can only be terminated on an address should remain the property of the post of Clerk of the House, not of any chief executive. There are some serious issues, which have been aired today, about where accountability lies and I would be worried by the thought that a chief executive could countermand the Clerk in a matter that affected the ability of Committees to carry out their functions, for instance. We must be careful and I repose confidence in the ability of the Committee that we are appointing to consider those issues very carefully.
The question of authority is important. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) mentioned the Committee he so carefully chaired on the involvement of the police in a search within the House. It was clear within those proceedings—I was also a member—that the loss of authority by the Serjeant at Arms contributed significantly to what went wrong. Whatever decision was made about where the responsibility should lie, the responsibility of speaking to the police should have had with it the authority that previously reposed with the Serjeant at Arms. We must be very careful that the authority that reposes in the Clerk of the House and is then, by extension, exercised by Clerks throughout our system is not undermined.
That leads me to another point, which I made in an intervention earlier but want to reiterate, about the arrangements that we have in the meantime. Let us bear in mind that that period could be a time of some very significant events, such as arguments about who should be voting on which Bills. We need to be sure that the person acting in the role of Clerk of the House from the position of Clerk Assistant has the authority necessary to serve the House in the way that the Clerk of the House would. He must also have the capacity and authority to delegate, sufficient to the functions of Clerk Assistant, and the time necessary to do the important job that he will be called on to do during this interim period.
The Committee may need more time, in which case it will have to come back to the House and ask for it, but the time scale is set by the fact that we are approaching a general election. I wish it well in its work.
Business of the House
Lord Beith Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Hague
The hon. Gentleman must know that Members across the House care passionately about this matter, but this is a decision being made by the people of Scotland. The debate is taking place in Scotland, among the people of Scotland and in the Scottish media. The Prime Minister pointed out yesterday how much the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland want Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom. That is something about which nearly all of us in this House, with the exception of the nationalist parties, are clear. But if we were to debate these matters next week in the House of Commons, the hon. Gentleman would no doubt ask why we are debating them when the referendum campaign is taking place in Scotland. I appreciate that he needs to ask a question, but it was not a very logical one.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I welcome the arrangements that the Leader of the House has announced to ensure that we have a foreign affairs debate, and that we also have a necessary debate after 7pm on what has been described as the way forward in the governance of the House. Can he say at this stage that the Government are not opposed to what the Backbench motion seeks to do?
Mr Hague
I will seek to speak in the debate and make my position clear, but let me stress that this is a matter for the House. Indeed, you, Mr Speaker, have emphasised the importance of consent and general agreement in the House, so this is very much a matter for the House of Commons. It is important to facilitate such a debate. The Backbench Business Committee particularly asked for additional time, so that this matter could be debated without reducing the time available to discuss all the other matters that hon. Members are seeking to raise. We have gone to some lengths to provide that additional time, and that is the right role for me to play at the moment.
Retirement of the Clerk of the House
Lord Beith Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
It is an unusual retirement occasion when the man we are honouring hears tributes from two of those who have worked most closely with him who have demitted office in the preceding 24 hours. I pay tribute to both the former Leader of the House and the former Chief Whip. It has been a pleasure to do business with them, as it is sometimes said. I look forward with the same pleasure to doing business on behalf of Select Committees with the new Leader of the House, following his distinguished service as Foreign Secretary.
When I came to the House in 1973, Robert Rogers was already here, and it would come as no surprise to any of those who knew him then that he would emerge as being a particularly distinguished Clerk of the House. The fact that he had those qualities of leadership was obvious to many people even then.
Reference has been made to the way in which the post of Clerk of the House combines that of being the chief procedural adviser to the House and to you, Mr Speaker, with that of chief executive, and it is not necessarily an easy match. But some people can do it, and Robert Rogers could do it very well. He led the House service very well, saw through changes—I will refer in particular to those that affect Select Committees—but continued to speak with authority on procedural matters and when giving procedural advice. It was very much easier to take his advice because it was rooted in such considerable knowledge and such wise judgment.
It is particularly Sir Robert’s work in relation to Select Committees that, as Chairman of the Liaison Committee, I want to mention. He served in the Select Committee role extensively from its earliest days. He was Clerk of the Trade and Industry sub-committee of the Estimates Committee, which was the nearest thing we had to a departmental Select Committee—or the House had, because it started even before my time. He was Clerk of the Defence Committee during the storm over the Westland affair. A colleague recalls that
“his efforts at this time kept the Committee on an even keel despite the political storms which threatened to capsize it”.
Some of us remember that well. He was Principal Clerk of Select Committees when the Liaison Committee produced the report “Shifting the Balance”, of which he wrote the first draft. That work began the process of strengthening Committees and foresaw the outcome—things that we have come to take for granted: pre-legislative scrutiny of draft Bills; confirmation hearings for major public appointments; an enhanced role for Chairs recognised by an additional salary; a more open system for choosing Committee members; and the creation of the extremely valuable Scrutiny Unit to support Select Committees. All these were envisaged in his earlier work, and he has led the House service during their implementation.
As several hon. Members have mentioned, Sir Robert has a hinterland both of academic knowledge and, over many performances, a formidable contribution to the bass section of the Parliament choir.
In his valedictory letter, Sir Robert referred to the House as
“the precious centre of our Parliamentary democracy”,
and, he said,
“with all my heart I wish it well”.
Promoting the work of the House, and making its work known to the public, has been part of the mission of a distinguished career. To the extent that we have been able to be successful in making the Commons more effective in its scrutiny of the Executive, we have built on the foundations that he put down, and we have enjoyed his continuing support and encouragement while we have done so. Those who follow him in this role, and those who follow us as Select Committee Chairs, will need to maintain that same determination to make this House effective. We thank Sir Robert, and as he has wished us well, we wish him well.
Business without Debate
Lord Beith Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I apologise to my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) for delaying his extended Adjournment debate, but given that he was expecting a half hour’s debate but can now have the best part of two hours and 15 minutes, I hope he will forgive me on this occasion. As somebody who no doubt has travelled a lot on the West Anglia rail line, he will be used to delays in any event.
I wished to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, because we have just had absolutely no explanation from the Deputy Leader of the House for why tomorrow’s sitting in Westminster Hall is to be changed. [Interruption.] The Chief Whip, who is just leaving, will be familiar with this argument, because we had this debate when he was Leader of the House. The Leader and Deputy Leader of the House are being too cavalier in simply excising three hours of parliamentary airtime. I take the view, and I hope other right hon. and hon. Members do as well, that the sittings in Westminster Hall are extremely important. If they were not, the House would not have decided to set them up in the first place. I am pretty sure that the Liaison Committee also regards them as important, because it regularly schedules important debates from the various Select Committees to be debated for up to three hours in Westminster Hall.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern for the Liaison Committee, but I can assure him that it wants to take cognizance of other events happening tomorrow adjoining Westminster Hall and that I have made provision for the debate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), the Chairman of the International Development Committee, was going to introduce tomorrow to take place on another suitable occasion soon.
Mr Hollobone
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is acting with the best of intentions, but he was sitting in his place, as I was sitting in mine, when the Deputy Leader of the House rose simply to move this motion formally, without giving any explanation of the circumstances tomorrow whatsoever. I think the House deserves a better explanation. I understand that tomorrow there is an important celebration in the main Westminster Hall relating to the death of Nelson Mandela. No doubt, that will be a wonderful occasion, and it is right for the House to celebrate the great man’s life in that way, but we have been given no explanation for why the sitting in the small Westminster Hall tomorrow afternoon is to be cancelled. Is it to do with security, logistics, staffing? I do not know. I would welcome an intervention from the Deputy Leader of the House, if he wants to apprise the House of the reasons, but as far as I can tell no one in the Chamber knows why the sitting is to be cancelled.
I have no doubt that the Chairman of the Liaison Committee is acting in good faith, but scheduled on the Order Paper, as we speak, are two very important debates from the International Development Committee. I see in his place the esteemed Chairman of that Select Committee, who has been good enough to attend this afternoon, no doubt also anticipating an explanation from the Deputy Leader of the House for cancelling the sitting. These debates would have been on the subjects of global food security and violence against women and girls.
Amendment of Standing Orders
Lord Beith Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is, as always, a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who has made some very arcane points, which were more entertaining than I could ever have imagined them to be. My disagreements with him are about bringing more powers to the House and what we do with those powers, rather than in judging what he has tabled in all good spirit against the Government’s wishes. I thank him and the Procedure Committee, and the previous Chair of the Committee, who undertook the review of the Backbench Business Committee. The Committee had been in existence for only one Session when it was reviewed and was therefore very much in its infancy. The report recognised an important truth about the Committee: it is a Select Committee in name only, and completely different from any other Committee of the House in what it does.
When the Backbench Business Committee was established, it was governed by a very basic set of Standing Orders. They said how many members there should be and the party make-up. They also said how many days Government were to allocate to us, and that we could not table any motions that affected the workings of the Committee, which was perfectly sensible. That was it—the day-to-day working and functioning of the Committee were not mentioned in Standing Orders.
When we started, there was nothing to stop the eight members of the Backbench Business Committee meeting in private session and deciding for ourselves what would be debated by our colleagues on one day every parliamentary week. Therefore, the very first founding principles we established were to ensure that any debate we scheduled came from our colleagues—came from ideas from other Back Benchers—and that we met in public so that everything we decided was open and transparent. These were very important founding principles.
We set some other founding principles, together with our excellent first Clerk, Andrew Kennon, one of which was that the Backbench Business Committee should take as many risks as possible as soon as possible, in order to see what worked and what did not. One of the risks we took, when the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) was a member of the Committee, was a new way of doing pre-recess Adjournment debates. That got mixed reviews and we have chopped and changed that around, but one of the more successful innovations, which is mentioned on the Order Paper, was enabling Select Committee Chairs to launch their reports on the Floor of the House. Interestingly, that did not work in quite the way we wanted it to. They used to have to do it by taking interventions from Members, without being able to stand up like Ministers and take questions from the Floor. We felt that that really required a change to the Standing Orders, and we welcome the motion on the Order Paper today in the name of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who chairs the Liaison Committee.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I welcome the hon. Lady’s and the Government’s support for this change. It has involved some discussion and there is an element of compromise about it, but it will be a much better procedure that will enable a Chair to table a report within five days of the Committee issuing it, and to take questions, rather than going through the contrived process of interventions that we have now.
Natascha Engel
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
We also wanted to keep to the principle of having as few rules as possible governing the Backbench Business Committee, in order to allow Back Benchers themselves to decide what they want to do within their own allocated time. Although we congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne on the paragraph in his motion that deals with allowing us to meet in public and to take representations from Members—as he said, it simply formalises current practice—we disagree with the points made in the following paragraphs. The honourable exception to that is the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who is a member of both the Backbench Business Committee and the Procedure Committee, and supports these changes. We are concerned that these changes impose rigorous rules on us that might have negative consequences. We have enjoyed the freedom resulting from there being no rules governing what we could and could not do.
The first point on which we really disagreed was the allocating of our time pro rata. At the moment, as the hon. Member for Broxbourne said, the Backbench Business Committee is allocated 35 days a Session. As he also pointed out, the first Session stretched to almost two calendar years. We demanded, quite vocally, that the Government extend our allocation of time pro rata, and they did. There was a slight dispute over one or two days that the Government had scheduled before we came into existence, but broadly, the arrangement worked very well.
At the moment, the 35-day allocation is a minimum; the Government are perfectly free to allocate us more than that. My worry is that if pro rata-ing is imposed, there is nothing to say that this allocation will become a fixed amount of time. By the same token, if a Session is shorter than a calendar year, there is nothing to say that the Government could not then pro rata downwards. As the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, I would not want that to happen. Given that the arrangement only happened because of the introduction of fixed-term Parliaments, for which we were compensating, and given that we now have fixed-term Parliaments, it is highly unlikely that this situation will ever arise again. I just do not think it is worth taking the risk of an unforeseen consequence.
Business of the House
Lord Beith Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
The statute says that it is a Select Committee of Parliament, but it is not analogous with parliamentary Select Committees. I understand that, Mr Speaker, and you understand it, but the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) does not understand it.
I must confess that I am not aware of the arrangements relating to the attendance of Members of Parliament at meetings of the Intelligence and Security Committee. They are a matter for the House authorities, and no doubt you, Mr Speaker, will advise the House further if necessary.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Has my right hon. Friend noted the reports of the Justice, Home Affairs and European Scrutiny Committees on the European justice and home affairs opt-ins? Is he aware that all three reports call for a debate to be held so that the Government’s hand can be strengthened in negotiations by the House having expressed its views?
Mr Lansley
Let me take this opportunity to congratulate my right hon. Friend personally on his 40 years in the House.
I have indeed seen those reports, and, as my right hon. Friend will know, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made clear our intention to enable the House to consider what the Government have proposed in relation to the opt-out and the measures in respect of which we think that it may be appropriate to opt back in, and to express its view.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Lord Beith Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I was listening to the hon. Gentleman with great interest, but is he seriously suggesting that at the last two elections the Woodland Trust engaged in expenditure that would be precluded under this legislation?
Mr Allen
I am not suggesting anything other than that the Woodland Trust and many other organisations are writing to the right hon. Gentleman, myself and every Member of this House. Today he will have received something from Oxfam and something from the faith groups and something from the RBL—and I am sure Members could remind me of other organisations who have passed representations to us today. They are concerned about this, and we should reflect upon that concern and say that in respect of clause 27 we are just possibly not getting it right.