Information for Backbenchers on Statements

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Mann

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who made a thoughtful speech about the need for a modern and well-informed House. On her remarks, it is indeed our ambition to have a legislative programme that is well prepared when the Bills are introduced and that is of a size that the House can easily digest, and it is our intention that the House should have an opportunity, which it did not always have in the last Parliament, to consider the legislation seriously and without undue pressure.

It is a pleasure to intervene briefly in the first debate initiated by the new Backbench Business Committee. This is the first time that the House has had an opportunity to debate a substantive motion on a subject tabled by a Back Bencher since the old system of private Members’ motions was abolished in 1995. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) went a little further back in history to the Jesuit, Robert Parsons, to identify the source of the Backbench Business Committee. I do not want to prejudice the consensual nature of the debate by complaining too loudly of the last Government’s failure to set up that Committee. It would be uncharitable to blame even the last Leader of the House for making slow progress on an idea that appears to have been some four centuries in the making.

I pay tribute to the energetic way that the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has set up the Committee and hit the ground running. I said in the last Parliament that I wanted the Backbench Business Committee to set the first topical debate of this Parliament. In fact, it has done better than that and chosen a subject for a full three-hour debate, and I am delighted that progress is being made. Restoring public confidence in Parliament is one of the ambitions of the coalition. Enabling Parliament to do its job effectively is a key part of that process, and giving the Backbench Business Committee its agenda-setting powers is a major milestone in doing that.

Turning to the motion, allegations that the Government make announcements to the media before making them to the House are not new. This is my 10th Parliament, and I can remember occasions in every preceding one when one of the six Speakers who have sat in the Chair, beginning with Selwyn Lloyd, have rebuked Ministers for continuing that practice. As we have heard, Mr Speaker, you made it clear in your very first statement that

“when Ministers have key policy statements to make, the House must be the first to hear them, and they should not be released beforehand.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 797.]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on a first-class speech in moving the motion. If I may say so, he was a little bit tough on those who sit on the Treasury Bench in implying that every Minister in the coalition Government should resign because they had all leaked information to the press, but otherwise, he made his case forcefully and convincingly. There is little doubt that, over perhaps the last 13 years, we have seen a more cavalier approach to the way in which announcements are made than previously. In 1998, the then Speaker felt strongly enough about the Labour Government’s consistent and deliberate leaks that she gave a BBC interview outlining her frustration that, although successive Governments had briefed the press before Parliament, it was being done

“far more subtly and professionally”

since the 1997 election.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and, indeed, other hon. Members have said, Parliament pays a price for that process. We devalue ourselves if the news is being made elsewhere. We therefore risk losing our position as the centre of British national debate. That is surely why the principle that we are debating today is important. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston touched on that principle. Again, it was well put by Speaker Boothroyd who said in her farewell address:

“This is the chief forum of the nation—today, tomorrow and, I hope, for ever.”—[Official Report, 26 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 1114.]

We are elected here to scrutinise the Executive and to hold Ministers to account on behalf of our constituents. It is therefore crucial that Ministers explain and justify their policies in the Chamber in the first instance.

[John Mann]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for generously giving way. Does he agree that, if the motion is passed tonight, the scale of the offence of any Minister who transgresses is significantly higher than it would have been in the past?

[Sir George Young]

It was a serious offence before this debate and it will remain a serious offence afterwards.

The Government await with interest the recommendations of the Procedure Committee, especially in relation to the ministerial code, which has already been cited. Among other things, the code provides:

“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”

Since the start of this Parliament, the Government have made 20 oral statements and 189 written statements, which is an average since the Queen’s Speech of nearly three oral statements per sitting week and nearly seven written statements per sitting day. On top of that, we have answered five urgent questions. In this Parliament, there have already been a total of 214 announcements to the House over 30 sitting days, so I hope that the House accepts that as evidence that the Government take the code seriously.

Even with the best endeavours, as we have heard, leaks to the media can occur before announcements are made to the House and without the connivance of Ministers. For example, as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) said, the whole of the 1996 Budget found its way to the Daily Mirror. The then Chancellor decided that there was nothing much that he could do about it and took his whole team to an Indian restaurant—a characteristic response from my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said, when things have gone wrong in this Parliament, Ministers have come to apologise.

The code says that the “most important announcements” should be made first to Parliament, but as we heard earlier, that gives rise to the question of what the most important announcements are—perhaps the Procedure Committee would like to address that point. However, it is worth pointing out that the code should not prevent Ministers from making observations or comments about policies that have already been announced, and nor should it mean that we cannot make speeches or give interviews outside the House. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was criticised last week for comments that he made about the graduate tax in a television interview, but as I told the House last Thursday, there was no policy change because the question of a graduate tax had already been referred to Lord Browne’s review by the previous Government. In my view, my right hon. Friend was taking part in the entirely legitimate debate that is developing outside the House.