Liaison Committee Report

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, these are extremely welcome proposals, and we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McFall, and his colleagues for the review that they have undertaken of the committee system in the House and the proposals that they have made. Rather belatedly—but at long last we are getting there—noble Lords are essentially introducing a proper systematic arrangement of committees in respect of domestic policy. Until now we have had a committee system only really in respect of European affairs. It is my view, which I have expressed in the House before, that we have been overweighted. It was good that we had the European Union Committee, but we gave no scrutiny whatever to the great generality of domestic policy, which is hugely important. As I have noted in the House before, in my five years as a Minister, including a period as Secretary of State, I was never once summoned to appear before a House of Lords committee, even though I am a Member of the House of Lords, which is a pretty serious condemnation of the way in which this House has conducted its scrutiny.

In respect of the proposals themselves, essentially we are playing catch-up with the House of Commons. The noble Lord said that our committee on European affairs was 47 years old, which is somewhat older than the Select Committees of the House of Commons. But of course the House of Commons had all the departmental committees in respect of domestic departments in 1980, and it has taken us 40 years before we finally got to a system which, in a very intelligent way, taking domestic policy areas in a cross-cutting way, has given us the capacity to do the same.

The House of Commons has made two big changes in the past 40 years in respect of its committees. The first was to introduce systematic departmental committees, but the second—and I am surrounded by former Members of the House of Commons who might have views on this, but it seems to me to be just as important a development—is that the chairs of those committees are now elected by the House at large. That great outbreak of internal democracy in the House of Commons has, I am told, had a very beneficial effect, not least that it has given much greater prominence to the MPs who chair those committees, and it has given them a strong mandate on behalf of the House as a whole. Indeed, because they are no longer beholden to the Whips, because they are not appointed by the Whips or through a process that involves the usual channels, they are also likely to be—how can I put this delicately?—less subject to persuasion from Ministers as to what they should say in their reports.

I want to ask something of the noble Lord, Lord McFall, a very distinguished former member of the House of Commons Treasury Committee. Now that we have domestic affairs committees worth the name, I encourage the Liaison Committee to adopt the second of the reforms that the House of Commons has adopted and have the chairs of these new committees elected by the House as a whole, as we elect the Lord Speaker, and not continue to be appointed essentially by the Whips in dark recesses of the House through processes which most of us have no knowledge of or capacity to influence. I ask the noble Lord to tell the House whether that is under consideration by his committee.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I rise very briefly to pay the same tribute as the noble Lord, Lord McFall, not only to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, but to the chairs of our other committees, who do the most extraordinary work. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. Where I disagree with my noble friend Lord Adonis is that I do not think that they do it for prominence. The great shortfall in what he has just said is exactly that MPs do it for their own prominence. One of the many strengths of our system is that our chairs actually do not get prominence; that is not why they do the job—they do it for good hard work and the quality of what they produce.

The funniest thing, though, is the idea that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, would in any way be open to persuasion by Ministers. We have seen him jumping up on almost every occasion to get at his own Government’s Ministers for having done not very much about the report he has produced, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. That is a strength of the sort of people in this House. They do not owe their future to the Whips and they show it. My noble friend of course is a brilliant example of that. He does not owe his future in this House to the Whips and he shows that by his many contributions.

Having mentioned the report from the noble Lord, Lord Forsythe, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said. On page 8 of today’s green pages there is a list of the reports that are yet to be discussed, of which his is not even the oldest; there are some older than that. I do hope that we can take forward the comments that have been made about timely reports from Ministers—I am glad to see some nods—and speedy debates. For the moment, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McFall, for all that he has done in making this report possible.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith) [V]]

I thank my colleagues for their comments. In fairness to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, the European Affairs Committee will certainly have a lot to do in the coming months. That is one of the reasons why, in discussions with the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, we decided that the present committees would extend until the end of March, so that we can view how the land lies. At the end of the day, that was quite a wise decision.

The issue of government reports has been raised in the chairs’ forum. I have written to Ministers and engaged with the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip on this in my regular meetings with them; it is a live part of the agenda. This is an issue about which the committee chairs in particular feel strongly. We will continue that process, so that there is maximum engagement with the House. I take the point that there is no use having a report that is not debated in the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned a “proper, systematic arrangement” for our committees. I am grateful to him for those remarks, but the essence of our committees now is their flexibility, larger footprint and cross-cutting nature. We can respond to challenges as we see them. For example, we established the COVID-19 Committee specifically to look at the issues of Covid-19. We have also established a Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee. Only yesterday, I had a meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on that point. These committees are working well, and having this systematic arrangement is important.

The issue of the election of chairs was reviewed quite a long time ago, but it was felt by the Liaison Committee, and those who provided evidence to it, that this was not the time to do it. It is still on the agenda and I am happy to receive any representations on such issues as we go forward, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

That touches on the issue of increased powers. I am in touch with the current House of Commons inquiry into Select Committee powers, along with the Leader of the House, regarding greater government participation and Ministers giving evidence. One feature of the review of committees was that the Liaison Committee of the House of Lords would engage with the Liaison Committee in the House of Commons at an annual meeting. That has not yet taken place, but I have written to the chair of the House of Commons Liaison Committee, Sir Bernard Jenkin, to make him aware of what we have been doing. I have no doubt that we will shortly be meeting him, and others, to ensure that there is coherence in our approach to this area as we go forward.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on her participation in the Liaison Committee and her interest in everything that the committee has done, notwithstanding her very heavy workload on the Front Bench. I take her point about the work of all the committee chairs, and I congratulate them and their staff on their work and application. An awful lot of work goes on in the background and there is fantastic staff input to our committees—our work would not be possible without them, so it is important that we congratulate them as well. I will finish on that celebratory note.