Parliamentary Reform

Debate between Chris Bryant and Lord Haselhurst

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I am going to be slightly meaner in my disposition towards interventions; otherwise I shall never get through my argument. The hon. Lady’s point is absolutely relevant to something that I will say later in response to the proposals by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.

The House has renewed itself, and the fact that we are in this Chamber is one symbol of that. The fact that we are here at the behest of a Backbench Business Committee is further testament to the fact that we are capable of doing things differently. At first, this Chamber was greeted with suspicion, but it is now readily embraced and is ripe for further exploitation—a point that is also made in the Hansard Society paper. Why not use this Chamber for uncontentious Second Reading debates? Why not repeat the experiment with cross-cutting question sessions, which was cast aside too lightly? Why not table questions to the person representing the House of Commons Commission or the Church Commissioners in this Chamber, rather than in the main Chamber? We might also bring into the sequence the Chair of the Finance and Services Committee or the Chair of the Administration Committee—I mention the last of those modestly. The fact is that such things should be open to more questioning by hon. Members.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I want to press on, because many hon. Members want to speak.

A lot of change has taken place in my time. Radio and TV have come in, and broadcasters have progressively achieved more flexible access. All-night sittings have almost been expunged, and sittings beyond 10 pm are now rare. The programming of legislation is now the norm. Departmental Select Committees were only set up in 1981. Notice for questions is now shorter, and topical questions have been introduced. Deferred Divisions have been set up. New technology is being cautiously embraced. Time limits have been introduced on speeches, and we could go further with that in Committee, on Report and during discussion of private Members’ Bills. The Backbench Business Committee has been established. Elections are now rife, giving more power to Back Benchers. The Standing Orders are continually being changed—the ink is hardly dry on the paper, such has been the pace of reform.

The Hansard Society paper has a great many good ideas in it, particularly regarding the legislative process. I do not want to go into that in detail, but I commend the paper as a subject for further discussion. Let me be up-front, however, about where I caution against change. This Parliament is a debating chamber—that is what distinguishes it from many other Parliaments—and our performance is of high quality. We should keep away from the idea of written speeches, which kill debate.

I would keep the indirect form of address. Having watched the Parliament and, worse, the state Parliaments in action in Australia, I have seen abuse to which the direct form of address gives rise, which is shocking. Our system acts as a filter, ensuring that debates are conducted in a civilised manner. The fact is that we also forget the names of colleagues across the Floor half the time, so referring to them as “the hon. Member” is a good cover.

The House should not press for the list of speakers in a debate to be published. Having spent 13 years handling such situations, I know that hon. Members are not entirely reliable in their relationships with the Chair. The Chair tries to make up for that by being considerate and juggling lists to enable hon. Members to go off and do things that suddenly arise. Under the list proposal, however, the hon. Member who did not turn up— unfortunately that happens quite a lot—would then find that the local press were on to them to ask why they had not been present for a debate. The proposal is not, therefore, quite the obvious solution it might be thought to be. Furthermore, someone who thinks that they know when they will speak in a debate might absent themselves for rather more of the time, so I am not sure that the proposal is entirely forward-looking.

I am very suspicious about electronic voting at a single time of day. There is the question of amendments being contingent one on another. If we want a process that increasingly divorces debate from decision, that is the way to go, but there are times when we have to dispose of one amendment before we can logically go on to the next, and that has not been sufficiently thought through.