Procedure of the House

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who delivered an extraordinarily moving and powerful speech, and I would like to put on the record my unbounded admiration for my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), who knows the high regard in which I hold him on a range of important issues. I am disappointed, however, that his last act appears, on the surface at the very least, to be underhand. I have to ask myself, “What is the point of having a Procedure Committee, when it is completely ignored on an issue of procedure?”

For my part, I am conflicted. I can see very strong arguments in favour of the motion, but I want to hear those arguments, and I want to hear them from members of the Committee, who have looked into this issue at great length. With just a few hours’ notice and just one hour of cramped debate, that simply will not be possible. So we have what looks like an ambush and the sense that we are not resolving a procedural issue of Parliament, but punishing the incumbent.

For the record, I fully understand the Government’s impulse. As a Back Bencher trying to hold the Government to account over the past four and a half years, the incumbent has made my job much easier. He is a reformer and a champion of Parliament. If a new Government form after 7 May, I suspect they will find the Speaker just as awkward as this Government have done, and that is as it should be. So Mr Speaker, in opposing the motion, I am opposing not the motion but the manner in which it has been brought to the House. I hope it will be returned after the election.

Amendments to Bills (Explanatory Statements)

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

Those hon. Members who recall that I used to sit where my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House now sits, long into the night discussing similar matters, may think it an act of sublime masochism for me to be standing here prolonging proceedings this evening, but I feel strongly about this issue. I do not want to detain the House for long, but I wish to express my support for the position of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), because I simply do not recognise the arguments adduced against what has been suggested. I well recall the pilots, because I was the Deputy Leader of the House who proposed the pilot scheme. I was also one of the Ministers for one of the two Bills—the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill—involved in the pilot. On the part of Government, I did not see it as an excessive burden, and nor do I believe that the civil servants who supported us found it an excessive burden simply to state the purpose of Government amendments for that Bill.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I am not surprised to hear that my hon. Friend supports the amendment, which I will also be supporting if it comes to a vote. Does he agree that even if it does add an extra burden and its requirement leads to extra work, it is a small price to pay for improving the legislative process? The one thing we are all paid to do here is to legislate, and people often have no idea what they are voting on. Surely that is a scandal and it requires a bit of investment to address it.

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I agree that it is better to have clarity, so that not just Members in this House but others looking at our proceedings can understand what we are debating.

There are other benefits to be had. I have always had this romantic view that we can improve the procedures of this House and do things in a more effective, focused and timely way. That would help everybody who has come to a debate on amendments and found that the purpose of the proposer of an amendment was quite different from what they had imagined when they first read it. That applies not only to Back Benchers, but to the Government. Very often Ministers have learned screeds of paper telling them what the civil servants who support them in the Bill believe the Opposition Member was intending by their amendment, only then to find that that was absolutely a wrong guess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I will not comment on how many friends I have in the House.

In conclusion—

[Zac Goldsmith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Thomas Docherty]

I want to wind up to let others get in.

A Select Committee has considered the issue at great length and brought forward a procedure. It is slightly ironic that we are now hearing so-called Parliament First parliamentarians saying that we should reject the wishes of the Select Committee which was tasked with examining the issue. I look forward to hearing other views.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make a very short speech in support of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). There is no job description for Back-Bench MPs, but if there was it would be to hold the Government to account on behalf of their constituents. That is very hard to do, given the busy schedule, with Select Committee meetings and all the other obligations MPs have, if the likelihood is that when the Division bell rings we will not know what the amendment we are being asked to vote for actually represents. I would be interested to hear whether the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) can tell us honestly—he is welcome to intervene—that he has never voted for an amendment that he did not understand. I would be very surprised if he can.

[Thomas Docherty]

I have never voted for an amendment and later regretted doing so.

[Zac Goldsmith]

That sounds more like luck than anything else. If he did not know what he was voting for, there is every chance that afterwards he might have regretted it, so he is very lucky that has not happened.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be very interesting to call a Division now to see how many Members arriving in the Chamber could tell what they were voting for?

[Thomas Docherty]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. One at a time. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman wants to respond to the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) first.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting observation. It would be a beautiful irony and I would love to see it happen.

[Thomas Docherty]

I do not want to detain the House, but I should make it clear that if I have ever been confused in advance, I have asked one of my parliamentary colleagues, or perhaps those friendly Whips, about what was going on. Also, it would have been really helpful if there had been an explanatory statement for this amendment.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I take the point. There have been many occasions in the short time I have been in the House when I have had to seek advice on votes I was being asked to cast. I have asked many Back Benchers on both sides of the House and the Whips but have still been unable to understand them or get any kind of clarity. I have had to abstain in Divisions because I simply did not know what the amendments I was being asked to vote for were about.

[Wayne David]

Is the hon. Gentleman confident that he understands every explanatory statement he reads?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I think that we would stand a much better chance of understanding what we were voting for if the amendments had explanatory statements.

I reject the argument that this would place an undue burden on Back Benchers. I accept up to a point that an extra burden would be placed on Opposition parties because, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said, for Members tabling 100, 200 or 300 amendments that amounts to quite a lot of minutes, but I believe that they should be given the administrative support they need to achieve that. However, that does not apply for Back Benchers, because they rarely table more than a small handful of amendments, unless they have set out to become parliamentary pests. They will have spent a lot of time understanding how to table them, so the extra five, 10, 15 or perhaps 30 minutes required to explain them is not much to ask. If a Back Bencher is not willing to invest those 30 minutes in the explanatory notes, perhaps they ought not to be wasting our time with the amendments in the first place.

This is a very small measure—a very small price to pay—that would undoubtedly, unavoidably and unarguably improve the legislative process in this place. I believe that people are appalled by some of the things that have happened here over the past few years, not least the expenses scandal and the more recent issue relating to fuel, which could be described as a scandal. The far bigger scandal is the fact that the one thing we are paid to do, we do not, on the whole, do anything like as well as we should, because we often simply do not know what we are doing. That is a scandal that can be rectified so easily with this small measure proposed by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

That is certainly one of the issues on which we have taken evidence, including this morning, and we will come forward with proposals that will reassure the hon. Lady. Whether those proposals find favour across the House now the tramlines are set, rather than having a special Committee that could have attempted to reach consensus, is another matter. Fundamentally, however, there is another big-picture problem because this issue is not just about the House and how it does its business, but about the public.

The public wanted a Bill on lobbying not because of some finesse about 1% of lobbyists or a couple of categories —Ministers and permanent secretaries—of people who are lobbied. The public wanted a Bill because they felt that we did not have the credibility, or the political classes the ability, to produce something that would tackle the scandals that appear in our newspapers and on our television. Nothing in this Bill addresses that concern: “You lot in Parliament, once again you’ve ducked it. You have avoided the big issues.” We have heard cases involving all parties—this is not a partisan point—but not one of those issues is addressed by the Bill. People watching our debates at home will say, “There they go again. There is an esoteric little thing about a few details, and the only thing we know is that they are attacking our charities.” I do not say whether that is right or wrong, but that is the impression the public are being given by our inability to create an effective lobbying Bill.

Briefly, if someone wanted to do O-level politics on how to produce or not to produce a Bill, I am sorry, but this Bill would be an F—a fail, big time. Unfortunately, they need to have people on their side—political parties where there could be consensus, the big society, charities, the voluntary sector. Read the evidence from the Electoral Commission when I publish it in 48 hours’ time. It is damning evidence from people who should really all be on the same side to ensure this provision will happen. We should listen to people. Let us have some consultation; let Parliament do its job, smoke out some of the issues and attempt to resolve them. I have a fantastic all-party Committee and we could do that job for Parliament, yet those things have been resolutely held at arm’s length. Perversely, we are trying to make a Bill that divides rather than keeps people together.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that the real—the biggest—lobbying scandal is that of big business with in-house lobbying divisions having a disproportionate impact on policy as a result of privileged relationships with Government Departments? That is what needs to be addressed.

[Mr Allen]

Yes indeed, and it is not addressed. Neither is it easy to address. By combining their wit and capability, however, 650 Members of Parliament could design the amendments to make this Bill work, if Members in all parts of the House are prepared, for once, to rise above the dogfight and accept some of them. I wish we were not discussing this Bill now and that it was in a special Committee. However it is not, but there will be possibilities on an all-party basis for Members to try and make it work, and I will mention a couple of them.

I say gently to my very good Friend on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), that it is no good attacking the Government for not having pre-legislative scrutiny, and for the Opposition not then to say that we will have such scrutiny as of right and as in normal process, so that in future, when the Labour party sits on the other side of the House, our Bills will command much wider support and not come back. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who I have known for many years, that it is not about just getting the ball rolling. This is an opportunity to do the job well, and it is perfectly within our ability to do that.

As we know, there are three main sections to the Bill. All I will say about the lobbying Bill—I will speak if I am called as the Committee stage progresses—is that it is very limited, not what we expected and, even more importantly, not what the public expect of us. We will seek to redefine issues such as those concerning who is lobbied. People who lobby the civil service do not go to the permanent secretary but talk to the desk officer or the director general. Those people are outwith the concept of the Bill. Let us also redefine who the lobbyists are. At the moment, estimates vary that between 1% and 5% of lobbyists will be caught by the Bill. Surely nobody out there will accept that as the basis of a lobbying Bill.

I have a pertinent and specific question for all Members of the House about their role and function as lobbyists. I hope we are the best lobbyists that can be found, particularly on behalf of our constituents. However, we should tread in that area carefully because as soon as we start putting the rights of Members of Parliament in statute per se, we allow justiciability to take place and people to say, “You did or you didn’t perform under your legislative duties.” That could have severe consequences, and we must explore that in great detail in Committee.

On part 2 of the Bill, one of the most wonderful parts of my life experience as a Member of Parliament is when we come towards a general election, and all those different bodies start to get hold of us, lobby us, knock on our doors, phone us and send letters—“Come to our meeting. You will not get our vote unless we know exactly what you are doing on this.” Someone on the opposite side then says exactly the same thing: “What do you do? How do you think those issues through? Let’s understand those issues.” That is the lifeblood and rich diversity of our democracy, and we should be doing everything we can to improve and increase it, not to diminish and cast a shadow over it.

I do not believe for a moment that the Leader of the House is trying to chill the voluntary and charitable sectors. However, in this case, I speak as a trustee of a charity. I will not put the money in that charity, which is for doing great things for kids, at risk. I will not authorise anything that even remotely possibly could risk that money—we are not sure what the Government mean or what they are trying to do. I will not do that, which dampens and inadvertently chills.

Business of the House

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I explained in response to the shadow Leader of the House how I feel about this. It is all very well Labour Members trying to make political capital out of this, but we support the police. We are getting on with that job, and the Chief Whip is getting on with that job and doing a grand job in doing so.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

More or less everyone, whether opponent or advocate of the third runway, agrees that delaying the decision until after the election is both cynical and disruptive. Will the Leader of the House allow us time to debate the timing of the Davies review?

[Mr Lansley]

Clearly, my hon. Friend may seek opportunities for a debate, but it would be inappropriate for the Government to do so when we are in the midst of the further review undertaken by Howard Davies, which will provide an interim report next year and a final report in 2015. As my hon. Friend and the whole House knows, these are immensely complicated issues that it is not easy to resolve in a short period of time.

Procedure Committee Reports

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I want to make some progress.

There is an ongoing pilot in Public Bill Committees, which is permissive in that it allows Members to table explanatory statements to amendments if they wish. What is now needed is to make that pilot permanent and to extend it, so that Members can table explanatory statements in Committee of the whole House and, crucially, on Report.

Given this state of affairs, it beggars belief that a Government who say they want more transparency and a healthier democracy were so negative and obstructive in their response to the Procedure Committee recommendation for explanatory statements on the Floor of the House. Why are the Government doing their utmost to block this simple move, which seeks to make sure that MPs are not just rubber-stamping legislation and to prevent the Government from sneaking things through on Report without any scrutiny whatever?

The Government try to use the low take-up of the Public Bill Committee pilot as an argument against changing the status quo on the Floor of the House, but that argument does not stand up to scrutiny. First, as the Government well know, MPs serving on Public Bill Committees will all be thoroughly engaged in the detail of the Bill, and the 20 or so members of a PBC voting on an amendment that they have all thoroughly discussed in minute detail is quite different from a Division on the Floor of the House, where 650 Members are called to vote, the majority of whom have no idea of the specifics of what they are voting on. So explanatory statements would be there not for those who had tabled them but for those who are voting and, thus, the suggestion that a lack of action from people tabling them equates to a lack of demand simply does not stack up.

If the Government really want to measure demand, why do they not simply survey MPs running down the escalators from Portcullis House to the Lobby all asking each other hurriedly, “What’s this on? What’s going on? What are we voting on?” Furthermore, the Government should have been leading on this pilot. If they had made the effort to provide explanatory statements consistently themselves, they could have created a culture where such provision was expected. Instead, they did nothing to participate in or assist with a simple pilot of a mechanism to increase transparency.

When I tabled explanatory statements alongside my amendments in the Energy Public Bill Committee, MPs from all parts of the House told me how helpful they found it. This is about leading and working to change the standards that Members expect, and have expected of them, when they try to change legislation.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I understand that this proposal does not require the Government or anyone tabling an amendment to provide an explanation, but merely allows them to do so.

[Chris Bryant]

The Government have to.

[Zac Goldsmith]

So it requires the Government to— I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention on my intervention.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think that we will have the debate carried out through the Chair.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. Does the hon. Lady agree that this should be a requirement on anyone tabling an amendment in order to boost slightly the chances of people having some idea of what they are voting on when they go through the Lobby? I absolutely concur with her view that most people have no idea what they are doing when they vote.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I agree with him. It should be the case that not only the Government, but all Members should provide a short explanatory statement explaining the purpose of any amendment that they table. That would help everybody.

The Government’s complaint about these explanatory statements, as set out in their response to the Committee’s report, was that the statements would be a “burden”. Their idea that providing the statements would be too burdensome for them displays an incredible arrogance. If they want to change the law, they have to accept the work involved in making their intentions transparent. They should be more respectful of the right of this House to scrutinise the laws they want to pass.

In conclusion, this proposal is about redressing the balance between Back Benchers and the Executive. The Executive are riding roughshod over the rights of Back Benchers to scrutinise them. The Government have put up obstructive objections, which demonstrate their desire to maintain a massive imbalance in their favour. This is bad for Back Benchers, bad for democracy and bad for the legislation that we must live by. So long as MPs are not told what they are voting on and Government amendments go through without debate, our system merely delivers an illusion of scrutiny. I can think only that the Government are trying to protect a system that serves to keep MPs as Lobby fodder and to keep the public in the dark. We are talking about secretive and opaque processes that serve against transparency and are reminiscent of the processes preserved for so long to try to hide the expenses scandal. I can assume only that the Government are taking this approach with some deliberate measures in mind. The fact that MPs have no idea what they are voting on is a scandal. It has been going on for years, but as the public find out more about it, as with expenses, they will be rightly horrified.

Eight months have passed since the debate on parliamentary reform in Westminster Hall, and I am disappointed that it has not been possible to effect greater change more quickly. I hope that the motion on explanatory statements will go through today. If it does, it will be a quiet but significant win for transparency and democracy. But if the Government force a vote, whipped or not, I hope very much that Back Benchers will stand up for themselves to address a glaring fault in our parliamentary democracy and correct the appalling imbalance that currently favours the Executive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and if that were to happen, I would decry it. The purpose of my amendment is to say that electronic devices should be used for the purposes of the matter under debate and no other purpose. If the Chamber was seen to be full of people blogging, tweeting and surfing the net, it would risk bringing the Chamber into disrepute.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that one of the reasons MPs exist is so that people can lobby them with a view to influencing Parliament?

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, I was a professional lobbyist for a number of years and so have no difficulty with that whatever. It is of course right that all sorts of interest groups around the world, from journalists to lobby groups, should be able to make their views known to us, but I am not certain about the propriety of a lobby group, the Whips or anyone else getting in touch with us during the course of a debate or a Select Committee evidence session to say, “Here’s an interesting point you ought to raise.” Would it really be right for outside interest groups to get in touch with us via electronic devices during Select Committee cross-examinations, for example of the Murdochs, and say, “Here’s something you ought to say”? I think that that would be an unreasonable intervention in our internal debates by outside influences.

Business of the House

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I welcome the work that the hon. Lady does on her Committee. We have, of course, allocated a day next week to the Backbench Business Committee for the pre-recess Adjournment debate. Of the 35 days to which we are committed, we have so far provided 32, which I think is a good record, considering that there are many months of the Session still to go. She asked about a regular, weekly slot. She was a member of Wright Committee, which looked at the matter. It recognised the idea of a standard day every week, but also that leaving the matter to negotiations would avoid the rigidities of a set-day approach. The Committee’s alternative was a set number of days per Session, provided for in Standing Orders. That is the approach that we have taken. However, I take the point that the hon. Lady makes, and at the end of the Backbench Business Committee’s first year, I think we can review how it has worked and come to some conclusions on how we allocate time in future.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will have heard encouraging remarks from the fisheries Minister—in the previous item of business. He will have noted the wide interest across the House in the issue of common fisheries policy reform, and particularly the interest in the plight of the under-10-metre fleet and the crucial issue of the 12-mile sovereign territory limit. Will the Leader of the House agree to put aside substantial time for a proper debate on the issue, in time for the House to influence negotiations on reform of the CFP?

[Sir George Young]

That, in a sense, follows on from the two earlier questions about the responsibilities of the Backbench Business Committee. Previous debates on issues such as fisheries, defence and the EU were provided for by the Government, in Government time. The recommendation of the Wright Committee was that all those days, which would include days for debates such as the one to which my hon. Friend refers, should be put in a pot and allocated to the Backbench Business Committee. That is exactly what we have done, so responsibility for finding time for the debate to which he refers falls to the Backbench Business Committee, using, in the rest of the Session, one of its 35 days plus.

Parliamentary Reform

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are more fundamental matters to do with the power of the Executive. I am starting modestly, but shall come to those in due course. There are bigger issues, but after six months here, and with a degree of humility, I was trying to see whether there are ways in which the efficiency of this place could be improved. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that there are bigger issues, and I know that another hon. Member will talk about those shortly.

I return to some of the smaller points. Because they are smaller, it ought to mean that they are not resisted so much. We ought to be able to speed things up and get some of this stuff done. We would then have the time and space to get our teeth into the bigger, more fundamental issues. One of the small things that we could do is to include an explanation of the design or purpose of an amendment. It is particularly difficult for people outside Parliament, and sometimes for Members themselves, if they are not following the legislation in minute detail, to understand the implications of an amendment that states “clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out subsection (1)”. It takes a lot of time to unpack what it really means; we need the Bill and the amendment, and we need to know some of the background. A simple explanation of two or three sentences would substantially increase transparency. MPs themselves would also have a better idea of what they are voting on, which might not please the Whips very much, but it would increase democracy and accountability.

It is a modest proposal and one that has been made before, but providing explanatory notes would, none the less, make a significant difference. It would give more power to Back Benchers and take a little more from the Whips, and enable constituents to follow better the proceedings of the House.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I echo what the hon. Lady says about explanatory notes. More often than not, Members have no idea what they are voting on. If the first 20 MPs leaving the Lobby later on today were asked what they had just voted on, I suspect that 19 of them at best would have no idea at all. Nevertheless, the big issue is not lack of knowledge about what we are voting on but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) has pointed out, the fact that Parliament itself absolutely fails to hold the Government to account. I hope that we will cover that issue later on in the debate.

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree, and I look forward to having another debate on exactly that subject. Let me raise a few more issues before other Members speak. Obviously, this is a well-subscribed debate.

I want to say a few words about the talking out of private Members’ Bills. The Bills, which are introduced by MPs who are not Ministers, are relegated to Fridays, the day when attendance at Westminster drops as most of us go back to our constituencies. Why not move private Members’ Bills to a mid-week slot so that they are better attended? We could then consider the implications of making Fridays a formal constituency day. I do not accept that it is beyond our wits to find adequate time for private Members’ Bills earlier in the week without displacing other legislation. Hon. Members will be well aware that our current system allows Back Benchers deliberately to waste the time allotted for debate on a private Member’s Bill in order to delay it. The vote takes place when there are likely to be far fewer Members present to support it as people leave to get to far-flung parts of the country.

The talking out of private Members’ Bills is an insult to other Members who want seriously to debate the Bill, to the Speaker and, most important, to the electorate who do not want to pay to run a debating chamber that is being mocked by its participants. There should be explicit rules that prevent the practice of talking out a Bill. The Wright Committee stated that “merely procedural devices” should not be able to obstruct private Members’ Bills, but again, we have not seen much change in that respect. That Committee also referred to the popular proposition that a maximum of three hours should be given for the Second Reading debate on any private Member’s Bill, which should be in cumulative and successive sittings, after which the question would be put to the Chamber on whether the Bill should receive Second Reading. In a sense, that would render pointless the act of filibustering. I shall take the fact that there was no intervention on that point as agreement, and I shall proceed with great speed.