Select Committee on Governance of the House

Debate between Baroness Hodge of Barking and Meg Hillier

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I have deliberately kept my counsel over the past few weeks as a member of the panel, because I thought that was the proper and right thing to do. Although I support the motion and pre-appointment hearings, the way we have got to tonight’s debate shows the House and all of its Members in a very poor light. The often ill-informed and critical comments made by some Members who simply do not know how the process was conducted have been mistaken and misguided. The personal attacks on Mr Speaker have been unwarranted and plain wrong. As somebody who believes fundamentally in the importance of modernising Westminster as part of our endeavour to restore confidence in politics, I think Mr Speaker has made an immense contribution in his work to making us more open, more relevant and more interesting.

The task of the appointment committee was not simply to appoint a Clerk of the House; the post was advertised for both Clerk and chief executive of the House of Commons. The post holder fulfils two functions. That is enshrined in the law, as we have heard, and was recently confirmed by Sir Kevin Tebbit. The Clerks themselves have resisted any change, and the Government too have resisted change in the past. I tell the House that the entire appointment process was extremely thorough, totally professional and very open. Criticisms of the process are entirely unfounded.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my right hon. Friend not agree that if Members believe that this place is a world-class institution, we should seek to advertise internationally for people to run it?

[Margaret Hodge]

As a member of a committee that promoted an international candidate, of course I agree with that.

We were very mindful of the importance of the procedural duties associated with the job. There are, however, well over 100 people working in the House who are knowledgeable about and familiar with procedure. We were also mindful that the post holder is responsible for spending more than £200 million of taxpayers’ money and employing 1,750 people. This palace lies at the heart of our democracy, yet the way it is run is wasteful and shambolic. We are asking our constituents to bear substantial expenditure cuts and cuts in services, and while they suffer that we are swimming in inefficiencies. Yet, because some Members concern themselves only with what happens in this Chamber, they are willing to downgrade the vital job of ensuring best value from the expenditure of more than £200 million of their constituents’ hard-earned money.

Things are so shambolic that, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, it can take our constituents an hour to get through St Stephen’s to see us. We overspent massively on the building of Portcullis House, yet managing capital projects seems less important than who is sitting in a chair in the Chamber. It is as important to our democracy to run this place well as it is to have somebody in the chair who is knowledgeable about, and experienced in, procedure. However, because we were mindful of the importance of both roles, we held two rounds of interviews. It proved impossible to find a single individual capable of fulfilling both roles, but several of the members of the panel thought that Carol Mills was the only appointable candidate.