Parliamentary Reform

Debate between Lord Haselhurst and Kate Green

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

My hon. Friend is in danger of stealing my thunder, because I was about to say that I regard myself as a reformer. If hon. Members look at the evidence that I have given to the Modernisation Committee over a period of years, they will appreciate that I have fizzed with ideas as to how we might change our procedures and practices. However, I remain a conservative with a small “c” as far as our institutions are concerned. Change should not be rushed—if it is, we tend to recant very quickly, as in the case of the Tuesday sitting hours, when we went one way before going back the other. We have introduced topical debates, but we do not think that they are a particularly great idea, and we have gone for topical questions, which we think are a good idea. We should think things through before we rush into them. The stability of our Parliament, in contrast to many others, is testament to the way in which we have gone about things.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that our absolute purpose, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has said, is to hold the Executive to account and to debate matters fully and properly, but that the way in which business is scheduled in the House militates against that? In that respect, I apologise for not being able to stay for the end of the debate, because two other debates, in which I am also keen to participate, are happening simultaneously. We have to look at allocating time, so that we can debate issues properly, because that does not happen now.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I am going to be slightly meaner in my disposition towards interventions; otherwise I shall never get through my argument. The hon. Lady’s point is absolutely relevant to something that I will say later in response to the proposals by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.

The House has renewed itself, and the fact that we are in this Chamber is one symbol of that. The fact that we are here at the behest of a Backbench Business Committee is further testament to the fact that we are capable of doing things differently. At first, this Chamber was greeted with suspicion, but it is now readily embraced and is ripe for further exploitation—a point that is also made in the Hansard Society paper. Why not use this Chamber for uncontentious Second Reading debates? Why not repeat the experiment with cross-cutting question sessions, which was cast aside too lightly? Why not table questions to the person representing the House of Commons Commission or the Church Commissioners in this Chamber, rather than in the main Chamber? We might also bring into the sequence the Chair of the Finance and Services Committee or the Chair of the Administration Committee—I mention the last of those modestly. The fact is that such things should be open to more questioning by hon. Members.