Oral Answers to Questions

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

2. What recent consideration has been given to the role of the Grand Committees of the House.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The Welsh Grand Committee and the Northern Ireland Grand Committee have a valuable contribution to make to the work of the House, and I am pleased that the Northern Ireland Grand Committee will be meeting again in November, following the agreement of the House on Tuesday.

[Mr Dodds]

I thank the Deputy Leader of the House for his answer. Given the advent of devolution, opportunities for Members from Northern Ireland—I can speak only for them—are somewhat limited, so it is important that meetings of the Northern Ireland Grand Committee take place. Will he ensure that there are more frequent meetings at which matters of relevance to the Province can be debated in more time than is available on the Floor of the House?

[Mr Heath]

I certainly hear what the right hon. Gentleman says and I am happy to speak to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to see what arrangements can be made. Obviously, there are limits to the number of times that any Grand Committee can sensibly meet, but I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Earlier this week, my excellent Whip informed me that on 20 October the Welsh Grand Committee will be meeting in my constituency. Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that it was extremely discourteous of the Government not even to have told me about the meeting and for that information to have been conveyed to me by my Whip rather than by somebody acting on behalf of the Government?

[Mr Heath]

I am sure that no discourtesy was intended. Of course the decisions of Grand Committees to meet are presented to the House, and so the hon. Gentleman would be aware of it by that means. I would have thought that any discourtesy was more than outweighed by the convenience to him of having the Grand Committee meet in his constituency.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

3. What recent estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of parliamentary questions for written answer.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The average cost to the taxpayer of a question for written answer is estimated at £239. In the financial year 2010-11, a total of 46,825 written answers were published, at an estimated total cost of about £11.2 million.

[Mark Menzies]

We would all agree that written parliamentary questions are an important way of holding the Government to account, but what steps is the Deputy Leader of the House proposing to take to limit exposure to the public purse? Should hon. Members be in more control of this process?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, but I really do not think it is for the Government to limit or try to ration the supply of questions, because, as he says, it is very important that hon. Members have that opportunity to hold the Government to account. However, I do think that hon. Members, like other public servants, should consider the impact of their activities on the public purse. It is particularly important to recognise that the right to table questions belongs to hon. Members, and hon. Members alone.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that if he is to fulfil the Prime Minister’s pledge to

“increase the power of Parliament”,

he should be worrying less about the quantity of questions and more about the quality of the answers? What is he going to do to ensure that Ministers give full and timely responses to Members, and that they end the increasing practice of giving holding answers to named day questions and transferring orals at very little notice? Or is this going to go the way of other prime ministerial pledges, such as those for more free votes on Bill Committees and text updates on the progress of Bills?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Lady has a very short memory span if she really thinks that this Government are performing worse than the Government of whom she was a member. I recall that many times her Government were quite incapable of providing timely, or indeed adequate, responses to questions. We always try very hard within the Departments to make sure that people get their questions answered properly and on time. If Departments fall short of those ideals, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and I are very happy to chase up those Departments to see whether we can improve the performance. However, I have to say that I do not think the performance is lacking at the moment.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to increase the transparency of the lobbying of hon. Members.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

As my hon. Friend the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform announced on 18 January, the Government remain committed to creating a statutory register of lobbyists and are working towards developing proposals for that register. The Government hope to hold the consultation exercise later this year before bringing forward any necessary legislation in due course.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. Given the erosion of trust among the public in politics and politicians over the past few years, will he ensure that that process proceeds as quickly as possible and tell the House precisely when the register will be in place?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman and I entirely agree with him. This is a priority issue and we need such a degree of transparency in the arrangements for lobbyists. As I said, we have a consultation exercise and it would be wrong for me to prejudge it, but it is certainly our hope and intention that we will be in a position to introduce legislation on this matter in the next Session of Parliament, as has been indicated by my hon. Friend the Minister.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

6. When he plans to implement the remaining recommendations of the House of Commons Reform Committee’s report “Rebuilding the House”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

10. What assessment he has made of the process for using ministerial statements to make major Government announcements.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

So far this Session, there have been 139 oral ministerial statements and more than 1,500 written ministerial statements made to the House. My assessment is that this Government have a much better record than the previous Government.

[Pat Glass]

The right hon. Gentleman has something of a reputation as a parliamentary reformer. Is he not concerned that that reputation is now under threat given his churlish and I have to say uncharacteristic response to the Procedure Committee regarding ministerial statements?

[Mr Heath]

I presume that the hon. Lady is referring to the response from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, but I can remember not a single occasion on which he has even hinted at churlishness, let alone expressed it in response to a Select Committee. Of course we look carefully at what is proposed by Select Committees, and there will be times when we do not entirely agree with them for very good reasons, but that does not mean that we do not respect what they say, while being prepared to argue our case in due course when relevant matters are debated in the Chamber.

[Mr McKenzie]

Why is the hon. Gentleman so against using Westminster Hall to ease the burden on this Chamber and allow us fully to scrutinise the misguided legislation that his Government are pushing through the House?

[Mr Heath]

I am not sure that I entirely understand the hon. Gentleman. He is a new Member of the House and I hope he will not consider it patronising when I say that he may not know why Westminster Hall sittings were first proposed, which was to allow for non-legislative and non-contentious business to be taken in a parallel Chamber while the House was sitting. It was not meant to create impossible dilemmas for Members in having to attend two important venues at the same time. Having said that, if we can make better use of Westminster Hall we are certainly open to doing so. If we can find other ways of reducing the pressures on this Chamber then it is better that we do so. The biggest difficulty that we have is the huge appetite that the House understandably has for hearing Ministers make statements and its proper appetite for scrutinising legislation fully and properly.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

9. What plans he has to assess the effectiveness of the e-petitions initiative.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The Leader of the House’s office is constantly monitoring the effectiveness of the e-petitions site. Following its launch, the site now hosts more than 6,500 petitions, which have received more than 1.5 million signatures. This unprecedented interest in the site is a useful indicator of its effectiveness. For the first time, the e-petitions website is not just graffiti, but offers the public an effective route for engaging with Parliament.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank the Deputy Leader of the House for that answer—I was going to ask him about the overall visitor numbers to the site and the number of petitions already hosted on there. Will he comment on the decision of the Backbench Business Committee about the most popular two petitions not being discussed until we reconvene in October?

[Mr Heath]

I think it would be entirely improper for me to answer on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, but let me make it clear that we have provided a way for the public to engage with Parliament. What the petitioners want, presumably, is for the topic they have raised either to be dealt with effectively by the Government or to be debated in due course by the House when the opportunity arises. The idea that when a petition reached the threshold there would be an immediate debate is not the purpose of the site, but it does mean that proper consideration is given to whether the matter has been debated or will be debated in another form or whether the Government have changed their policy to meet the concerns, which may be the case in relation to at least one of the petitions that has already reached the required threshold.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

But does the Minister agree with the Daily Mail, which says that this amounts to an e-petition con? The Government said to the public, “If 100,000 of you sign one of these petitions, there’ll be a debate.” What discussion did the Government have with the Backbench Business Committee about how the time for those debates would be allocated?

[Mr Heath]

May I caution the hon. Lady, first against reading the Daily Mail, and secondly against agreeing with what it says? The Government have never said that when a petition reaches the threshold it will have an automatic right of debate. It will be considered with a view to seeing whether the matter raised has already been debated or is already going to be debated in a different context or whether the request has already been met by the Government. If there is then a need to debate something that the public have registered as an interest, the Backbench Business Committee will respond to that request. That seems to me an entirely proper way of doing things and it is a huge improvement on the old No. 10 petition site on which the petitions went precisely nowhere.