Nomination of Members to Committees

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that as Chairman of the Procedure Committee, I am not afraid to cross swords with my Government. I have been the Chairman of that Committee for five years, and we have had several run-ins. For the record, I will go through them. We had a run-in over amendments to the Queen’s Speech and the bouncing of Parliament over the election of the Speaker—a particularly raw moment in my political career. We had the impenetrable and unnecessary complexity of English votes for English laws—although the Committee made excellent suggestions, they fell on deaf ears, as the Government chose to ignore them. We have had the Government’s belligerence regarding the reform of private Members’ Bills, but I shall continue in my efforts to reform that bit of nonsense. Most recently, Opposition Members will remember that I stood up and berated the Government for not giving Opposition days in a timely fashion to Her Majesty’s Opposition. I said that the Government were being ungenerous and that they should be generous.

I am, therefore, no friend of the Government Front Bench. I trash them and I lash them—thwack, thwack, thwack—on a regular basis. [Laughter.] Have I broken with parliamentary convention, Madam Deputy Speaker? If I have, let us put it before the Procedure Committee.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is being wonderfully dramatic; that is perfectly within parliamentary convention.

[Mr Walker]

Politics is show business for ugly people, and I am a frustrated actor.

Try as I might, however, I cannot work myself up into a lather about this. I would love to be furious with the Government—I really would—but I cannot be. I get angry very quickly and blow up, and I make some spectacular apologies, but I cannot get too wound up about this.

If the House will indulge me, may I go back in time and revisit the 1970s? From March 1974 until April 1979, the Wilson Government, despite being a minority Administration at times, had a majority on the Committee of Selection for all but three months of their five years in office.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Wilson and Callaghan Governments.

[Mr Walker]

Of course; forgive me. I was only a small child at the time—I was in shorts.

The only time the Wilson Government did not have a majority on the Committee of Selection was when the Labour Chairman, Hugh Delargy, died. From 4 May 1976 Labour’s majority on the Committee was restricted for three months, until 6 August. The majority was then restored after the House wrung out the concession that, when appointing Members to Standing Committees, the Committee of Selection would appoint even numbers.

[Hon. Members]

Aha!

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I give way, but there is an “Aha” here.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The House of Commons Library has provided an excellent briefing for the debate. According to my reading of it, during that period in 1976, the then Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, vehemently denounced the trickery of the Labour Government. Was she wrong?

[Mr Walker]

Lots of things are said, but we are looking at what happened, and the fact of what happened is that for the entirety of the Wilson/Callaghan Governments—well, for all but three months, so not quite the entirety—the Government of the day had a majority on the Committee of Selection: when they were a majority Government and when they were a minority Government, at times.

It is worth hon. Members reading the motion because there is nothing to prevent the Selection Committee from choosing to have an even number of members of Standing Committees. What the motion says is that when Selection Committee decides to have odd numbers—if indeed it ever decides to have odd numbers—the balance will be in favour of the Government. However, it could well be—

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Walker]

I will in a moment, because I have a lot of time for my friend opposite.

It could well be that the Selection Committee, under the chairmanship, I suspect, of my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), that noted free spirit, will decide on many occasions that the balance should be equal, so I still do not understand why we are getting so exercised about this. I now give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe).

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He talks about wringing out concessions. Is he suggesting that the concession we should demand is that the Selection Committee agrees to even numbers, and we can then accept that?

[Mr Walker]

That should absolutely be for the Committee to decide. It is not impossible that its Chairman, who will want to work with all Members, may decide that there should be an even number of Members on Bill Committees. That cannot be ruled out, and it is entirely possible.

Let me say, in conclusion, that there is a lot of sound and fury around this issue. I know the Opposition Chief Whip, and I think he is a genius, but he is a—with a small “c”—conservative Whip. I suspect that some of my exotic plans to reform private Members’ Bills have been thwarted by not just my own side but the Opposition Chief Whip. I merely say that, I suspect through a half smile, the Opposition Chief Whip entirely understands why the Government are doing this, and can accept it.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

Unfortunately, a serious point was not picked up by either the Leader of the House or her shadow: the published deal between the Conservative party and the DUP is confined exclusively to confidence and supply. The serious issue for people in Northern Ireland, and for the House, is that the insistence of the Leader of the House that the Government have a majority on the Floor of the House gives rise to speculation that secret side deals have been done with the DUP. Surely the hon. Gentleman should be insisting that those deals are revealed to the House.

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady knows that that is far above my pay grade. I do not think that secret deals have been done, but I do know this: the Government have commanded a majority in the House on the basis of the 17 votes connected with Government business.

I have been good-natured this evening, because I want the debate to be good-natured. I take being Chairman of the Procedure Committee incredibly seriously, and if at any time I felt that the Government were doing something untoward, I would hold them to account, as I have done time and again in the House. I say genuinely to Opposition Members that I really do not understand what the upset is.

[Mr Carmichael]

May I presume from what the Chairman of the Procedure Committee says that he will join us in the Lobby to support my amendment? If it were passed, the Government would of course still have a majority on the Selection Committee, but would just have to use it in accordance with the procedures of the House as they have always been accepted. Why is that objectionable?

[Mr Walker]

Nothing that the right hon. Gentleman has said is objectionable. I will not be joining him in the Lobby, but not because I find what he is proposing objectionable—I just happen to disagree with it.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Let me make it clear to the House what the deal between our party and the Government is. First, there are no side deals; it is a confidence and supply agreement. The important point for this debate is that the purpose of the confidence and supply agreement is to ensure stable government over the period of this Parliament, and that requires the Government to be able to get their Bills through and to have the requisite numbers on Committees as well.

[Mr Walker]

I am glad this debate is providing us with an opportunity to revisit the agreement. I suspect that I would not be in order if I were to respond to that intervention, so I think the best thing for me to do is to thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the House for being so generous, and to sit down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I entered the Chamber this evening thinking, like my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), that this was a lot of hot air—that this was a fuss about nothing because, self-evidently, the Conservative party has a working majority on the Floor of the House of Commons. Not only has the Conservative party won every single vote in this House since the election and demonstrated a working majority, but it has won each vote by more than the number of additional supporting votes we garner from the Democratic Unionist party. There can therefore be no question but that the Conservative party has a working majority on the Floor of the House of Commons. If that is the case, there can be no question but that, in the eyes of the public, the Conservative party would be expected to have a working majority upstairs in Committee.

What are those of us on the Government Benches arguing for this evening? We are arguing against a Labour proposal that would turn every Committee decision back to this Chamber, gum up this Parliament, and throw a functioning Government into a state of paralysis on the Floor of the House. Yet the Labour party argues that we are seeking to do something undemocratic. It argues that a paralysed Government who can do no business on Brexit or anything else is somehow more democratic than the working majority that this Government have demonstrated every week in Parliament.

We have to ask ourselves what is the aim of opposing tonight’s motion. Is it some pretence of outrage about protecting democracy, or is it in fact an attempt to make sure the Government grind to a halt? There can be no question that Labour is seeking to grind the Government and the whole country to a halt, and that cannot be a democratic or sensible way for us to respect the wishes of the people who voted in the general election in June. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said there was something about democracy that was not always convenient. We could not have a better case of the pot calling the kettle black, because if we voted against the motion, democracy and the Government would be frustrated at every level. The idea that this is anything other than a naked power grab by an Opposition seeking to frustrate Brexit and this Government is absurd. Who is it who is seeking to frustrate democracy? Is it a Government who have a working majority here simply seeking one upstairs, or is it an Opposition party seeking to grind us to a halt?

[Mr Charles Walker]

This entire debate is a dead letter because the best the Opposition could hope for is an equal number on a Bill Committee, and in the event of a tie, which most votes would be, the Bill would remain unamended anyway, so none of their proposals would be carried.

[Matt Warman]

I want to agree with my hon. Friend that we should not get too wound up and should just carry on, but I cannot when we are being accused by Opposition parties of seeking to fundamentally subvert democracy. What subverts democracy fundamentally are Opposition parties of whatever flavour that want to use this as a pretext to grind the process of leaving the EU to a halt and to grind the Government’s entire business to a halt. I dare to say to my hon. Friend that Government Members should not be so relaxed as to not make a fuss about this. We should be passionate about getting the will of the British people through, both in Committee and on the Floor of the House. We should be passionate about the Government getting their business done, with the will of the people as expressed in the referendum reflected, and that is what the motion seeks to do.