Business of the House

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I pay tribute to the great deal of work my hon. Friend has done on this issue. As we head towards winter, it is terrifically important that we look after communities. That is one reason why I was so pleased in the past week to see the announcement of some 149 successful projects that are being supported by the Department of Health’s warm homes healthy people fund this winter, following the successful work last winter. This is in partnership with local authorities, Age UK and other charities, and I know that my hon. Friend and others across the House have been active proponents of that kind of community-based support for people at risk.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

In her excellent report last week, the Children’s Commissioner identified missing episodes, visits to sexual health clinics and use of mental health services as strong indicators that a child may be being sexually abused. However, current Department of Health guidelines on sharing such health data with other agencies are creating a postcode lottery because of different interpretations at both the local and national level about what data can be shared. The situation is very concerning because some children are not being identified as being at risk, and are therefore continuing to be abused. Will the Leader of the House make time available for a debate on the Children’s Commissioner’s excellent report and the data-sharing issues it raises?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that. I read the report, as I know many hon. Members will have done. They will have been alarmed by some of the things that the deputy Children’s Commissioner had to say and will feel it is very important that we follow up on it. The House recently had an opportunity to debate child sexual exploitation, but that is not to say that there is not a case for further such opportunities. The subject she discusses is an area where the further progress we are making on the role of local safeguarding children boards in local authorities should enable us to have, among other things, better sharing of information to protect children.

Business of the House

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

As my hon. Friend will appreciate, the debate scheduled for next week on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will no doubt afford an opportunity to demonstrate that the Government are on the right track, as demonstrated by the GDP figures. Quarterly figures have been, and will be, choppy, but it is important to establish the right framework for the longer term. That is about achieving investment in infrastructure, and instilling confidence so that we can see that investment coming through. It is about deregulation and ensuring that business has a lower-cost environment, and recognising that we are in a global race and must ensure we are competitive in terms of tax, regulation and skills. The Government are making positive progress on all those things.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The children and families Bill will be a significant piece of legislation in a complex area, and I fully support its aims. Will the Leader of the House ensure that when it reaches Report, sufficient time will be made available so that hon. Members who may not have been on the Bill Committee have a full opportunity to discuss the legislation’s complex provisions?

[Mr Lansley]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, since the election we have been able to timetable more opportunities for debate on Report, and I pay tribute to my predecessor and the Whips for ensuring that. Often, not just one but two days have been allocated for the Report stage of major Bills. As the hon. Lady says, the children and families Bill is very important. It has not yet been introduced, although we look forward to that.

Sittings of the House

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I shall stick to five minutes for my speech, Mr Speaker.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) for the work he and other members of the Procedure Committee have done. I have no nostalgia for the old hours at all. Sitting into the small hours and going on until 11.30 pm was absurd. I also strongly support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) said about Friday sittings. We should not move private Members’ business to a separate ghetto after normal business. There should, for example, be 13 days allocated to private Member’s Bills in the normal sitting week, which the business of the House committee that would be formed would allocate according to need, and there should be proper knives coming down for that business, as with any other business.

We would be in grave error if we moved to a 7 o’clock finish on a Tuesday, however. We tried that, based on the 2001 Modernisation Committee report, and it was found not to be workable. In the words of one of my hon. Friends—who is not known as a neanderthal—in the Tea Room earlier, it was a “nightmare to operate.”

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

When it came to the vote, 225 voted to retain the early hours and 292 voted against, so 225 Members of the 2001-05 Parliament thought the hours did work.

[Mr Straw]

My hon. Friend makes my point. The vote was decisively lost—[Interruption.] It was lost.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I was a member of the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill. We sat from July 2011 to March 2012, for about 90 hours in total. We heard from many witnesses, who had very different and sincerely held opinions. The Committee members also held divergent views. There were those who thought that we should have sat for longer, but I am not sure that those divergent views would have been reconciled, however long we had sat.

I do not intend to go into every detail of the reasoning behind every recommendation, but I want to draw the House’s attention to one important division, on a recommendation that the Committee agreed by 16 votes to six: that if there were to be elections, there should be 80% elected and 20% appointed, as a means of preserving expertise and placing the mandate of the Lords on a different footing from that of the Commons. That proposal has been criticised. However, I would point out that it will retain the best features of the existing Lords, with room for independent experts from outside politics. There will be 90 independent Members, which is more than currently turn up to contentious votes in the present House. The evidence is that the electorate favour an elected House, but there is also evidence that they value independence in their representatives. I am sure that if there had been a proposal to have a 100% elected second Chamber, there would also have been strong criticism from parts of this House. In fact, it is difficult to foresee any proposals that would not be subject to criticism.

Some of the proposals in the Bill are not new. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) made similar proposals on size, appointments, powers, remuneration and long, non-renewable terms in the 2008 White Paper, which said:

“Provision that members of the second chamber could serve only a single term would help enhance the independence of, and reinforce the distinct role for, members of the second chamber…There is widespread consensus that elected members of the second chamber should serve a single, non-renewable term of 12-15 years.”

The White Paper did not become a Bill.

[Mr Straw]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the proposal that we agreed for long single terms of between 12 and 15 years derived from the recommendations of Lord Wakeham and his royal commission back in 2000? It might be wise for hon. and right hon. Members on the Government Benches to look at what Lord Wakeham had to say in support of that.

[Ann Coffey]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend.

That White Paper did not become a Bill. There was a banking crisis at the time, and, as we have seen over the past 100 years, it is never the right time to reform the Lords. There is always a good reason not to change. However, the present House of Lords is unsustainable, simply on a practical level. If the current pace of patronage were to continue, its membership would rise to about 1,100. There would be so many peers that, soon, every town in the British isles would have its name in some Lord’s title. There is also a health and safety issue, with so many bodies in such a limited space, all trying to squeeze through the Division Lobbies.

Some say that the answer is to limit the numbers, but I have little confidence that the House of Lords could do that. For example, there was a debate recently in the Lords on a proposal to change the way in which their lordships address each other. One peer said:

“I think it is a retrograde step to start changing an age-old custom, particularly when it comes to ‘noble and gallant’, ‘noble and learned’ and ‘noble friends’. As I said on an earlier occasion, a right reverend Prelate shall ever be a ‘right reverend Prelate’.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 November 2011; Vol. 732, c. 160.]

The motion was lost. Change comes hard to the House of Lords. At some point, however, the numbers will have to be dealt with. Does anybody seriously believe that numbers can be dealt with, and patronage not?

Reform of an unelected House in which some Members sit by virtue of their birth and others sit courtesy of their friends is inevitable. Reform of the House of Lords is as inevitable as reform of the expenses of Members of Parliament. Then, as now, this House thought that it could hold back reform, but it could not do so. This issue is not about us preserving our privilege and our position; it is about what is in the public interest and what makes for good governance. The electorate are changing. Social media are changing the way in which we interact with our electors, and their expectations of us are changing.

I am in the same position as many Members of Parliament, in that more people voted for other candidates in the last election than voted for me, but I represent the constituency of Stockport: those who voted for me and those who did not. In this House, we value that constituency link, and many of the issues that Members pursue are pursued on behalf of constituents. Indeed, there are many examples of excellent cross-party co-operation on issues that do not, and should not, divide the parties. Part of the frustration for Back Benchers in this House results from getting Ministers to listen to those issues and to make sensible amendments to legislation.

I believe that, if Ministers knew that they faced a more assertive House of Lords, they would be less inclined to dismiss the genuine concerns of Members of this House about particular aspects of policy or legislation. They would know that, even if they could dismiss the concerns in the Commons, they would face the same concerns in the Lords, but without the same willingness of the Lords to back down as they do now. Ministers might also consider giving this House more time to discuss Bills. That might put a stop to successive Governments making amendments in the Lords that they have refused to make in the Commons, thus sending out a message that the Commons is ineffectual.

There are many excellent Members of the House of Lords whose opinion and expertise I value. This is not about the power and privilege of the House of Commons versus the power and privilege of the House of Lords; it is about improving governance in the public interest, and improving the way in which we fulfil our role as representatives of the public. It must ultimately be about the people we serve.

Business of the House

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I commend my hon. Friend’s initiative in Kidderminster to bring together employers and those looking for work. He may have an opportunity during the debate on the Budget to develop his point further. With the Work programme, which is helping more than 3 million people, the more than 400,000 apprenticeships this year, the youth contract and the work experience programme, there are a lot of initiatives that the Government are taking. It is up to each Member of Parliament to ensure that the benefits of those programmes filter through to their constituency. I commend him for the initiative that he has taken.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The Chancellor announced yesterday that the Government plan to legislate to suspend the Sunday Trading Act 1994 for eight Sundays to coincide with the Olympics. There is concern that that is less to do with the Olympics than with testing the water for a permanent repeal of the Act. Will the Leader of the House confirm that it will be limited legislation, as announced by the Chancellor yesterday?

[Sir George Young]

I confirm exactly what the hon. Lady has said. Any legislation will have to pass through both Houses and will be subject to discussion through the usual channels. It will apply only to the Sundays during the Olympics and Paralympics, so it will be strictly confined to that period. It is not our intention at this stage to go for the wider reform to which she referred.

Parliamentary Reform

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely agree. It would allow us to organise our business and our timetables much more effectively. I do not know what happened in days gone by. Perhaps MPs did not have so many meetings with outside bodies but I know that it is embarrassing, in the middle of a meeting with quite important people, suddenly to have to say, “I’m really sorry, I’m going to have to go. I have no idea how long I will be. I hope to get back to you some time soon.” That is not a good way to do business.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady asked what happened in days gone by. Perhaps I can try to answer that. One of the proposals of the Select Committee on Modernisation was to introduce programme motions. Those were introduced following a recommendation of that Committee. The idea of such motions was to give more certainty to MPs about when votes would take place, so that they could better organise their day.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Natascha Engel]

Absolutely. I would throw all these ideas into the pot. I simply repeat that Select Committees are the thing that works best in this place and I would love to see their role expanded, not only because they work so well and because they develop the expertise of individual MPs but because they could become a forum for us to be, as the Speaker always says, “ambassadors for Parliament”, by going out and engaging with people on individual issues that are not party political, just as Select Committees are not party political. We could go out there and really engage with individuals.

[Ann Coffey]

May I make a quick suggestion? One way that Select Committees could engage Back-Bench Members more would be to accept oral evidence from us more often.

[Natascha Engel]

Absolutely. The Backbench Business Committee is a perfect case in point. We receive oral evidence from Members every week. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that suggestion. In that context, I would also love to see the work of the Procedure Committee develop now that it has taken on so much extra work, especially after the Modernisation Committee was effectively merged with it. What the Procedure Committee does, in terms of parliamentary reform, is interesting to most people, not only to those in this room but across the rest of the House. I would love to see that kind of work much more widely debated and extended, and for people to be given the opportunity to participate, especially the people we represent in this place. That is my one little suggestion: looking at widening the role of Select Committees within parliamentary reform.

I really hope that this is not the end, but rather just the beginning of developing ideas on how we can reform this place to make it work better, and on how we, as individual Members, can much better represent the people out there who send us here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

Yes, sometimes. Congestion is a problem—perhaps we should have a congestion charge in the Lobbies.

There are obvious arguments in favour of occasional deferred voting. However, there are also problems with sequential amendments, which were outlined by the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). We need to look at how that problem might be managed if occasional deferred voting is to proceed, but that is another matter for the House to consider.

Regarding abstentions, it has always struck me as odd that we have no way of differentiating between an abstention and an absenteeism. There is no way of knowing that a right hon. Member or hon. Member is here in Parliament but has chosen not to vote for the options before the House. Of course, the results of votes are now recorded electronically and are sent around the country. Constituents believe that their MP simply was not there rather than that they were there, had listened to the arguments made in the debate and were not persuaded by either of the positions that were taken.

I hope that we will make progress on private Members’ Bills. As has already been said, the Procedure Committee is looking at that issue.

Regarding explanations for amendments, we had the experiment in Committee and I am certainly happy, as far as the Government are concerned, for that experiment to proceed. Perhaps we ought to look at having such explanations on Report, too. I have argued that occasionally there is room for rubric on motions, including the type of business motion that appears late at night before the House that is completely inexplicable to most Members of the House but is actually entirely benign. I think that we can speed up our progress, but I have been told by the Clerks that we cannot possibly put a bit of rubric on the Order Paper to explain why we are doing it. I do not know why that is the case.

Parliamentary language is an issue that we could debate all evening and I will not enter into it other than to say that we have heard the arguments on both sides.

The additional use of Westminster Hall is an important issue. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden was one of the pioneers of its additional use. He is not an old fogey. He pioneered real innovation in this House in helping to create this Chamber, and if we can use it more effectively we should do so. We ought to look at that issue.

Regarding the legislative process, pre-legislative scrutiny is important, and this Government are committed to it. By the end of this Session, we will have subjected far more Bills to a process of pre-legislative scrutiny than the previous Government did in the final Session of the previous Parliament. It has not happened yet simply because we are a new Government, and inevitably with new legislation one has to start somewhere, otherwise the whole system grinds to a halt. However, we are certainly committed to that process, as we are to the process of post-legislative scrutiny. Indeed, some of the levers for that are already there in the hands of the Select Committees, if they choose to use them.

The issue of commissions of inquiry was raised by the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher). He might remember that, before I was in my present not-very-exalted position, I introduced a Bill to allow commissions of inquiry. There is a strong argument for them, and I am engaging with Ministers to see whether there will be a legislative opportunity for doing exactly as he wishes.

Regarding scrutiny of expenditure, we have already had the clear line of sight programme from the Treasury, which is important and which has allowed a degree of co-ordination in scrutinising expenditure, but we can go further in allowing the House to scrutinise Government expenditure more effectively. Again, however, the Select Committees have an important scrutiny role, which they have not fully exploited. As for lobbyists, we intend to introduce legislation shortly to deal with their registration. I agree that that is an important issue, too.

I will start to wind up now, Mr Benton, because the hon. Member for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby), who will speak for the Procedure Committee—I am so sorry that the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chairman of the Committee, is indisposed today and is unable to be here—wishes to speak.

The problem that we had with the previous Government was their attempt to lead the House’s modernisation agenda themselves, by using the Modernisation Committee, chairing it and then effectively abandoning it in the final months and years of the previous Parliament. We are making real progress on a wide front in reforming Parliament, and where there is a need for legislation we will introduce it. The procedure and processes of the House are a matter for the House itself, and we are keen that the House takes the lead on those issues. We might have clear views, and we will express them, but as a Government we should not impose processes on the House.

[Ann Coffey]

Will the Deputy Leader of the House give way?

[Mr Heath]

Very quickly.

[Ann Coffey]

Part of the issue is that it is only business managers who can put motions before the House. Is the Minister saying that when the Procedure Committee comes up with recommendations, those recommendations will go to the House to be voted on?

[Mr Heath]

We have a new procedure that involves the Backbench Business Committee, which is why we are having this debate today and which is the really significant advance. However, I accept that there are different foci for reform in Parliament at the moment. There are the business managers, the Leader of the House and myself, the Backbench Business Committee, the Procedure Committee and the Liaison Committee. There are a number of people who have an interest in this issue, and there is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether the House has the right vehicle to take the debate about the issue forward. However, I am absolutely convinced that the debate needs to be taken forward and we, as a Government, will certainly make every attempt to support that view.