Select Committee on Governance of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I am the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee and as I listened to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), I thought about how this debate is a microcosm of the debate that is going on in Whitehall about how to get Whitehall machinery to operate in a much more open, accountable and transparent way. I use the word “accountable” because I think a lot of this debate has arisen because there is a sense, particularly among younger and, dare I say it, more impatient Members—like myself, of course—that there is an opacity, a sort of Victorian mystery about the way in which this place works.

This whole episode has been painful for the House of Commons. I commend those on both sides of the House who have spoken, but particularly the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), who made a dignified and conciliatory speech. We need to avoid dwelling on what has gone wrong; we can learn from that, but we need to move forward.

I spent much of my summer worrying that this issue would divide the House and, because of the controversy, almost poison the office of the Speaker. The purpose of my asking for the motion to be drafted in the manner that it has been drafted, and of suggesting that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) chair the Committee, and of gingerly tip-toeing around the various—increasingly angry—people on all sides of the debate was to try to find a method of resolving the issue in a manner that will not result in a terrible and divisive row about a particular individual. I join the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough in sympathising with the individual who has been exposed in this episode.

My role as Chairman of the Public Administration Committee was to suggest that the ultimate modernisation of the process of appointment of the Clerk would be to make it subject to a pre-appointment hearing. Constitutionally, that matter rests within my Committee’s remit. We will keep that on the table for whichever candidate emerges as the final candidate, because whoever it is should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing. The right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, does the same for the appointment of the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is an Officer of the House. My Committee does the same for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, who is also an Officer of the House. The idea that Officers of the House should not be subject to pre-appointment hearings seems to me anachronistic and old-fashioned.

The remit of the new Committee is not about going back over the past, but looking to the future. It is about throwing light on the dim recesses of how this place operates. I say to hon. Members in all parts of the House that change is coming to this place whether we like it or not and—perhaps speaking to Government Members—if we want things to remain the same, things are going to have to change, but this is not about throwing babies out with the bathwater. If there is to be a chief executive, the role must be properly thought about, properly defined and properly embedded within the structures and accountability of the House, and within what the House is for, which is the scrutiny of legislation and the holding to account of the Executive.

We want more involvement for Members, more openness and accountability, and more listening and working together, plus less tearing chunks out of each other over this particular subject, if you please, because that does the House nothing but harm. I think that the proposed Committee is the solution.

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[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

This is a crucial decision and we need to make it in a timely and sensible way.

We stand on the threshold of momentous constitutional events. We might even lose a country from our United Kingdom, or we might go into a period of fundamental constitutional change with a massive devolution of powers. We will need good professional advice and leadership to complement the crucial work of the democratically elected politicians.

The Speaker is the servant of the House. Mr Speaker has shown, by the way he has said that there has to be a pause and a reconsideration, that he knows that he is the House’s servant. In turn, the House has to be fair to Mr Speaker. It is our duty tonight to set in process a way of resolving this problem in the best interests of everyone and in a good spirit, knowing that Mr Speaker also wishes the best for our House of Commons and will be guided by the House. It is our duty to come up with competent and sensible guidance for him. He undertook a process with a series of senior Members and an outside adviser in good faith and they came to a judgment. Apparently, that judgment does not suit the House. That is the House’s privilege, but we now need to find a better way of resolving the matter.

This situation has consequences not just because we need good guidance, and especially so at this time, but because if we want the best talent from around the world to apply for jobs in this place, we need to show that we are professional in handling such matters and that there is no danger of an unsuccessful candidate having their name revealed or trashed in the process. That is completely unacceptable.

I am therefore drawn to the view, which some are expressing, that we need to examine quickly but thoroughly the idea that there are two functions and that there need to be two different roles. There are many fine things about this House, but I think that we could be better at some of the things that come under the chief executive’s remit. We have many able, hard-working and talented staff and I do not wish to imply any criticism of them. However, a good chief executive would look at the way in which we handle guests. Are we happy with the queues and the way in which security is handled? We wish to be safe, but we wish to welcome people. They are our guests or our constituents. I do not think that we always get it right. We need to ensure that our catering provides what people want in a timely and sensible way. There might be opportunities to improve that. We certainly need to look again at technology and the how we communicate with those who communicate about us and with the wider world.

Those are all time-consuming tasks and I am not sure that they can be carried out by a constitutional expert living through a constitutional crisis, who needs to be up to speed with everything that happens in this Chamber and with the long history of our traditions, our law codes and our constitution, written and unwritten as it is. Somebody needs to provide that guidance.

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend’s description of the importance of the role of Clerk of the House is absolutely right. I heard the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) say that he did not understand why the Clerk was paid on a different scale from the Speaker and a higher amount. The Clerk is paid on the same scale as a High Court judge, because he is the arbiter of the law of Parliament across the entire Commonwealth. The independence of his remuneration is part of his independence and has to be preserved.

[Mr Redwood]

I quite agree. It is a crucial role for a very senior lawyer and has to be rewarded accordingly, and at a level that means that they do not have money worries, because they need to spend all their time concentrating on the job. I am quite sure that the Clerk’s role is senior to and more crucial than that of the chief executive, but I also believe that we need to do our guests and ourselves a favour by having the best possible management. We need someone to come in and look again at our standards, our quality, the choice that we offer and the way in which we handle guests, technology, information and research, and our messages.

That is the spirit in which we should enter the debate. We should get behind our Speaker and give him the right instructions, and then we will have a better answer.

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[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for refreshing the House’s memory of that particular Tebbit recommendation. If we had two co-equals, they could play Members off against each other; indeed, Members could play them off against each other too. That has to be taken on board.

[Mr Jenkin]

I do not prejudge this question, but if we went for a chief operating officer under the Clerk, the really important thing is that the chief operating officer should be directly and visibly accountable, in a way that the present officers under the Clerk are not visible and accountable.

[Sir George Young]

I think the Commission could make that happen in the terms of reference if we go down that particular route.

I agree that some of the considerable burdens on the Clerk’s shoulders should be removed. In the meantime, I think the appointment process should not be paused; I think it should be aborted. If Carol Mills, with whom I have some sympathy, wanted to show that she understands how this place works, she would withdraw her application, resolve a constitutional impasse and generate some good will among colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made a good point about there being robust interim arrangements in place.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) said, we have to take on board the interface with the other place, where there is a Clerk of the Parliaments, who has a unified command. How would he interface if one separated the jobs down this end?

I have two final points. I am slightly worried about the ambitious time scale for the Select Committee. Nominations for the proposed Select Committee do not close for over a month and then there are but three months to complete the task, including Christmas. The House may have other things on its mind by then. Braithwaite and Tebbit took many months, with people doing nothing else. We may need an interim report in January, if the ground is to be thoroughly covered, and a final report later.

I end by gently asking a question. What would have happened in this case had we not had the safety valve of the Backbench Business Committee, enabling the House not just to make its views known, but to pass a resolution, in a way that was not possible before—a resolution that I am happy to support?