Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso]

The hon. Lady puts her finger on an extremely important point, which is that the merits or otherwise of commissions and Committees are a matter for the House, or for the two Houses in the case of a parliamentary commission. Should a commission or Committee be appointed, it would be for the House authorities, including the House of Commons Commission, to make the arrangements for it to be properly resourced.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Would it not be sensible if the House of Commons Commission were involved in the preparation of the note to be prepared by the Clerk of the House about the costs of such a parliamentary commission, so that it could give its view on the matter? Is it not the case that the additional net cost to the House of Commons of about £175,000 is pretty much de minimis in our budget of £215 million? After all, spending money on scrutinising the Executive is what the House of Commons is for, and cost would be a poor excuse from the Government not to have a parliamentary commission.

[John Thurso]

I do not quite share the hon. Gentleman’s definition of de minimis. Standing Order No. 22C would take de minimis as below £50,000, and I think that saving, or spending, £175,000 would be above de minimis. However, his point that the resource required would be well within the scope of the resources provided is a good one. As I say, it would be for the House and its relevant Committees to make the necessary decisions, following which the House of Commons Commission would undertake the necessary work on resources.

Finances of the House of Commons

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso]

I can confirm both those points. Indeed, this was going to be my first substantive point. I suggest that I come right on to it and make my points; if the hon. Gentleman is not satisfied with them, he can intervene on me again.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Allowing for ins and outs, the global reduction on House expenditure is 17%. Does the same apply to expenditure by, and on behalf of, Select Committees? Will the same reduction in expenditure be achieved for Select Committees?

[John Thurso]

I intend to cover resources to Select Committees as one of my five main issues. The 17% figure applies to the total, but there are variances within it. I believed it was important to approach this from the beginning not by saying, “There is the budget; let’s just slice it and take 17% off everything”, but by looking at areas where bigger savings or fewer savings might be made. The objective was to deliver the appropriate service that we as parliamentarians require to do our work. That was certainly what lay behind the work that was done. There is an issue relating to Committee resources, and I promise to come on to it. Again, I invite my hon. Friend to intervene on me later if he is not satisfied by what I say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

rose—

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[John Thurso]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and then I want to move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. For most of last year I had the honour of serving on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. We had the opportunity to engage senior counsel, junior counsel and experts from a wide range of areas. We worked at breakneck speed and in a year came up with what has generally been accepted as a pretty comprehensive and far-reaching report that the Government are now putting into legislation—not enough of it, some commissioners believe, but most of it. The report was paid for by the Government because they had asked for it. That is an indication of how one might consider working in future.

I do not want to prejudge anything, nor do I wish to open a can of worms. It might be possible to say that a Select Committee should or should not travel or that it should spend more money on this or that. It is a debate that Committee Chairs and others involved in Committees need to have. They should do it in a thorough way and put forward something that is really robust, and then, at the financial end of things, we consider it based on fact rather than their saying, “Please give me 20% more.” The days when people just said, “Let’s have 20% more and go and do X, Y and Z with it”, are gone. The right approach is to work out what we want to do and how scrutiny can best be achieved, and then look at how best to deliver the resource.

[Mr Jenkin]

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) was referring to the lack of flexibility in the budgets—the fact that, for example, a Committee cannot forgo its right to go on a foreign trip and use the money to buy, say, part of or a whole extra member of staff. Obviously some Committees have very big travel commitments, but I do not see why those that do not have travel commitments cannot spend their allocation on something different.

[John Thurso]

The hon. Gentleman puts forward the interesting proposition that instead of having a series of silos that each Committee can dip into, each Committee has a budget and then decides how best to use it. That is quite a departure from where we are today, and I therefore could not comment on it other than to say that I find it an attractive intellectual possibility to pursue. My point in raising this was to suggest to people such as him who are considering these matters that a process is needed, and I think the Liaison Committee is the best place for it to be kicked off.

Before anybody else has a chance to intervene, may I say that I think I have now carried out a tour of everything? I apologise for occupying the crease for so long—it is not my habit—but I wished to take all the interventions that were offered as best I could. I commend the motion and the estimate to the House.

Professional Standards in the Banking Industry

Debate between Viscount Thurso and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

Actually, it is the Liaison Committee on which I serve as a Select Committee Chairman. I am personally looking into the matter and will report to the Liaison Committee next week; that will be part of our report on the powers and effectiveness of Select Committees, which we hope to produce before the end of this term. It greatly ill serves the House to denigrate the powers of Select Committees.

I am going to support the Government motion. I am not in favour of a judicial inquiry; I think it would be completely dotty to plunge us into such a lengthy procedure. However, I want to sound some warnings about the dangers that might befall a parliamentary Select Committee inquiry as proposed in the Government motion. We must be mindful, not least, that if Ministers or ex-Ministers were to be called to give evidence to try to sort out the absurd row that we have seen this afternoon, the Committee could not possibly function. Indeed, it could not possibly function if Opposition Front Benchers were determined to undermine its authority and operation.

It was highly irresponsible of the shadow Chancellor to fail to answer my question or that of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor about whether the Opposition will go on non-speaks if the motion is carried. I commend the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who said that even if the Opposition lose the vote, Scottish National party Members will co-operate with the inquiry. How is the House meant to make a judgment about whether to vote for the motion unless we have a clear view from the shadow Chancellor?

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester mentioned the Marconi scandal. That occurred when Ministers—Liberal Democrat Ministers, I hasten to add, just for fun—were accused of buying and selling shares for profit—

[John Thurso]

I want my hon. Friend to tell us all about the Marconi scandal, but we were Liberals then.

[Mr Jenkin]

I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon. Of course—rebranded to cleanse the history.

Lloyd George’s Government were deeply embroiled in what we would call an insider dealing scandal. A Select Committee was very contentiously set up. It divided on party lines, it divided on whether to call Ministers as witnesses, it divided into party groups during the questioning of witnesses, and it divided along party lines in the writing of the report. In fact, it produced three reports—the official report, the Chairman’s report, and a minority report. Interestingly, the introduction to the 23rd edition of “Erskine May” says:

“Such highly visible failure condemned their successors”—

Select Committees—

“to a very limited role for almost half a century.”

I place great faith in my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester that he will draw stumps on the exercise if there is any danger that the Joint Committee is going to collapse in such a welter of recrimination. First, it could not produce a decent report under such circumstances; and secondly, it would damage this House in a very serious manner.

I do not wish to give succour to Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, but I note that the consequence of the Marconi scandal was the passing of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 when, following a subsequent scandal that engulfed the Government, it was decided that there had to be an alternative means of conducting a judicial inquiry outside Parliament with a judge, and that is how that format came into being.

The report by the Salmon royal commission on tribunals and inquiries, which was produced in the 1960s and is still the bible of how tribunals and inquiries are conducted, said that it would be “a retrograde step” to resurrect the format of a judicial inquiry within Parliament. Among the drawbacks listed by Lord Salmon were that Committees were composed of Members representing the relative strength of parties in the House, that parliamentary Committees do not hear counsel—something that has been suggested today—that some of, if not all, their members will have no experience of taking evidence or cross-examining witnesses, and that witnesses might not enjoy the same absolute privilege as in a tribunal set up under the Act. Those are the dangers that we have to guard against when we vote for the motion.

As I say, I am going to support the motion, but I add one other caveat. I would be grateful if the Minister will confirm that the Government will not present any objection to providing the resources—the money—that the Joint Committee will need to carry out its functions. We cannot have this new Committee raiding the staff and resources of other Committees. I think that if the inquiry is confined to matters of policy and recommendations for legislation rather than trying to settle the internecine disputes that we have seen on the Floor of the House this afternoon, then it can function with the support of the Opposition, but if the Government want it to happen it must have the necessary resources, which may be substantial. I would also recommend recalling a senior Clerk who has recently retired instead of raiding a Clerk from another Committee, because otherwise all our work will be disrupted.