House of Lords: Domestic Committees

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. I particularly agreed with the point that he made on the working relationship between the two Houses, which I will come to.

I will be very brief. I very much support this report and congratulate my noble friend Lady Shephard and all her colleagues on the substantial work that has gone into this over a six-month period. It is precisely work such as this that too often, and quite wrongly, goes unnoticed outside this House. Perhaps not even everyone inside this House is interested in the governance of services and facilities—at least not until something goes wrong or we are confronted with an issue, such as the future of this building, that we can scarcely avoid. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, said, this is a crucial time and we should regard it as such with the kinds of decisions that we all know are coming up.

I will concentrate on two underlying themes in the report: the mystery that surrounds some committees, and the difficulties in consultation and accountability to Members generally. At paragraph 33, the report states:

“The operations of domestic committees appeared shrouded in mystery to many members who had not served on them”;

and, not surprisingly, that some Members complained about “insufficient accountability” to the House. Perhaps I may give an example of both the difficulties and the solution from a committee which is not part of this review, because it comes under procedure, but which nevertheless illustrates the point exactly.

Ten years ago, a number of colleagues and I wanted to set up a communications select committee. We were summoned to a meeting of the Liaison Committee to put our case. I for one had never come across the Liaison Committee—indeed, I am not altogether sure that I knew there was a Liaison Committee. Having met it, it seemed to me that its main function was to knock down the bright ideas of Back-Benchers—which, I am bound to say, it duly did. However—this was the instructive part—the committee was required to report to the House. It was up to the House to approve.

It became clear that in the preparation of the report, at the very last moment, unknown to us, the then chairman of the Culture Select Committee in the other place had submitted a letter which said, roughly: “Keep off our pitch. These are not matters for the likes of you”. Frankly, all I had to do at that stage was to read out the letter. The House rose as one and the committee’s recommendations were totally overruled. In celebration of the letter without which we would not have succeeded, we subtitled the new committee the Whittingdale committee, for it was John Whittingdale who had signed the letter. Given some of the later reports of our committee, in his new role as Secretary of State, he probably feels that his reservations were entirely justified.

The point is this. Without accountability to the House built into the system, the proposal of a committee shrouded in mystery would have held sway. What is important is to ensure that there is utmost transparency and a route whereby Members of this House can have their say. As the committee states, the best way to ensure that is to have a structure which is as clear and straightforward as it possibly can be. For my money, the organisation set out on page 20 achieves that.

I know that there are questions about the position—indeed, the title—of the Chairman of Committees, and we all know the recent problems, but we should acknowledge that it has been a role, certainly during my time in the House, carried out by noble Lords with extreme distinction, as it has by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, when he generously stepped into the breach. It seems to me that there will be a small gap before this part—certainly the title of this part—of the report is implemented. We might also want to see the result of the referendum and how the title of chair of the European Union Committee fits in to that.

I just point out two further points. The first is the previous report of the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, and his later review, together with my noble friend Lord Hunt. They had intended the domestic committees to act as user groups. Committee members were expected to report to their party groups on the activities of their committees and then feed back their views to the relevant committee. That is an extremely good idea but, frankly, it has not happened. Indeed, many committee members were unaware that that was expected. If that is what we want—I suggest that it is—we must, as the report suggests, make the role of committee members extremely clear.

The second point I pick out is a very basic one. Members of committees in this House are both Members of the House and, often, clients for the services provided. Decisions involve the use of public funds, and it is important that there should be no perception of conflict of interest. Therefore, good non-executive directors would have an important role here. My guess would be that we would have no difficulty in recruiting some very good men and women. All my experience as chairman of four or five companies is that the role of the non-executive is vastly important and essential for this House, if we are to demonstrate outside the importance that we place on that.

When I was reading the report, I was struck—this point was made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—by the amount of joint working in services between the two Houses. In so many ways, we are 200 yards from each other but operating in different worlds with, at times, little knowledge of what is happening in the other world. That was certainly my experience and, I think, that of many others when we were in the House of Commons, so it is undoubtedly good news that about two-thirds of the resources of the two Houses is already spent on shared services. The committee now reports other areas of shared services, such as Hansard, internal audit and several others. Of course, the really big issue for joint decision is the restoration and renewal programme, which involves a decision of immense importance and an immense amount of money. For a Member like me, who has worked in the Palace of Westminster for the last 45 years, it is particularly difficult, but I am only glad that we will have the guidance of a Joint Committee, which will be reporting on the position and which I hope and know will maintain the interests of the House of Lords.

On one last point, looking down from above, the late Lord Roper would not forgive me if I did not mention the position of the Library. Like me, he thought it rather eccentric that we had two different Library organisations; like me, he benefited from the exceptional service we received in the Commons and Lords alike and, like me, he totally supported the staff here in the service that they give. What we missed, and miss, was the ability we had to phone an undoubted specialist in something like social security to explain an apparently unintelligible measure in words that could be understood. They were truly excellent—and we need to look at that particular area. I realise that I could be accused of some bias here in that my wife worked as a clerk in the Library department for many years, in the House of Commons, just like the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews—they worked together. But there is a potential for an increase in service to the benefit of everyone concerned.

The report is excellent and first class. I congratulate my noble friend and the other members of the committee and hope, above all, that it will be implemented in the new Session.