Standing Orders and Select Committees

David Lidington Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Lidington)]

I beg to move,

That, with effect from 17 October 2016, the following amendments and related provisions be made in respect of Standing Orders:

A: Select Committees Related to Government Departments

(1) That Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments) be amended in the Table in paragraph (2), in item 1, by leaving out “Innovation and Skills” in each place it occurs and inserting “Energy and Industrial Strategy”.

B: Related Provisions

(2) That all proceedings of the House and of its select committees in this Parliament relating to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee shall be read and have effect as if they had been done in relation to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, including for the purposes of calculating any period under Standing Order No. 122A (Term limits for chairs of select committees).

C: Liaison Committee

(3) That the Resolution of the House of 10 September 2015 (Liaison Committee (Membership)) be amended, in paragraph (2), by leaving out “Innovation and Skills” and inserting “Energy and Industrial Strategy”.

D. European Committees

(4) That the Table in paragraph (7) of Standing Order No. 119 (European Committees) be amended in respect of European Committee C, by leaving out “Innovation and Skills” and inserting “Energy and Industrial Strategy”.

It might be for the convenience of the House if, in speaking briefly to motion 6, I say a little about the other motions, since they all relate to each other. Motions 6 to 11 seek to change the arrangements in the Standing Orders of the House for Select Committees, following the recent changes to the machinery of government. First, they change the name of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Secondly, they remove references in Standing Orders to the Energy and Climate Change Committee. Thirdly, they introduce two new Select Committees for International Trade and on Exiting the European Union. The motions also allocate the Chair of the EU Exit Committee to Labour and the Chair of the International Trade Committee to the Scottish National party.

The changes allow for the usual notice periods applying to elections of Select Committee Chairs to be disapplied, and they enable you, Mr Speaker, to announce a date for an election of Chairs before 20 October, since the House has already been without effective Select Committees in these areas for quite a long time.

Question put and agreed to.

Standing Orders Etc. (Machinery of Government Changes) (Energy and Climate Change)

Resolved,

That, with effect from 17 October 2016, the following amendments and related provisions be made in respect of Standing Orders:

A: Select Committees Related to Government Departments

(1) That Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments) be amended in the Table in paragraph (2) by leaving out item 6.

B: Liaison Committee

(2) That the Resolution of the House of 10 September 2015 (Liaison Committee (Membership)) be amended, in paragraph (2), by leaving out “Energy and Climate Change,”.

C: European Committees

(3) That the Table in paragraph (7) of Standing Order No. 119 (European Committees) be amended in respect of European Committee A, by leaving out “Energy and Climate Change”.

D: Planning: National Policy Statements

(4) That paragraph (7)(a)(i) of Standing Order No. 145 (Liaison Committee) be amended by leaving out “Energy and Climate Change”.

(5) That paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 152H (Planning: national policy statements) be amended by leaving out “Energy and Climate Change”.—(Mr Lidington.)

Standing Orders Etc. (Machinery of Government Changes) (Exiting the European Union)

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, with effect from 17 October 2016 and for the remainder of this Parliament, the following changes be made to Standing Orders; and that such changes shall cease to have effect upon the lapse or repeal of the temporary Standing Order on the Committee on Exiting the European Union:

A: Committee on Exiting the European Union

(1) There shall be a select committee, to be called the Committee on Exiting the European Union, to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Exiting the European Union and related matters falling within the responsibilities of associated public bodies.

(2) The committee shall consist of no more than twenty-one Members including:

(a) the chair; and

(b) no more than twenty other Members who shall be nominated upon a motion made on behalf of the Committee of Selection as set out in Standing Order No. 121 (Nomination of select committees); and the provisions of Standing Order No. 121(2) shall apply to motions for the nomination and discharge of Members to and from the committee as if it were a committee not established under a temporary standing order.

(3) Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it for the remainder of the Parliament.

(4) The committee shall have the power to appoint a sub-committee.

(5) The committee and any sub-committee appointed by it shall have the assistance of the Counsel to the Speaker.

(6) The committee and any sub-committee appointed by it shall have power to appoint legal advisers, and specialist advisers either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee’s order of reference.

(7) The committee and any sub-committee appointed by it shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place and to report from time to time the evidence taken before them.

(8) The quorum of the committee shall be six and the quorum of any sub-committee appointed by it shall be three.

(9) The committee shall have power to report from time to time, and any sub-committee appointed by it shall have power to report to the committee from time to time.

B: Election of Select Committee Chairs

(10) That Standing Order No. 122B (Election of select committee chairs) be amended in paragraph (1), by inserting, in the appropriate place, “the Committee on Exiting the European Union”.

C: Liaison Committee

(11) That the Resolution of the House of 10 September 2015 (Liaison Committee (Membership)) be amended, in paragraph (2), by inserting, in the appropriate place, “Exiting the European Union”.

D:European Committees

(12) That Standing Order No. 119 (European Committees) be amended as follows:

(a) in paragraph (4) by inserting after “departments)” the words “, or the Committee on Exiting the European Union”; and

(b) in the Table in paragraph (7), in respect of European Committee B, by inserting, in the appropriate place, “Exiting the European Union”.

E: European Scrutiny Committee

(13) That paragraph (12) of Standing Order No. 143 (European Scrutiny Committee) be amended by inserting, in the appropriate place, “the Committee on Exiting the European Union”.

F: Public Bodies: Draft Orders

(14) That Standing Order No. 152K (Public bodies: draft orders) be amended as follows:

(a) after sub-paragraph (b) to paragraph (1) to insert

“(c) in respect of a draft order laid by a Minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union, the Committee on Exiting the European Union”; and

(b) in paragraph (2) by inserting after “departments)” the words “, or the Committee on Exiting the European Union”.

G: Positions for which Additional Salaries are Payable for the Purposes of Section 4a(2) of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009

(15) That the Order of the House of 19 March 2013 (Positions for which additional salaries are payable for the purposes of section 4A(2) of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009) be amended, in paragraph (1)(a), by inserting, in the appropriate place, “the Committee on Exiting the European Union”.— (Mr Lidington.)

--- Later in debate ---

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Lidington)]

I am grateful. May I first say to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) that the Government, in bringing forward this motion, have absolutely no intention of in any way denigrating or downplaying the work that he and the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee and other departmental Select Committees have done, or continue to do, on European affairs? Of course, all those departmental Select Committees will continue to have oversight of the European Union responsibilities exercised by the Departments that they shadow. Indeed, scrutiny of those elements of Departments’ business has always been an integral part of the responsibility of those Select Committees.

When the Chief Whip and I received the letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, we considered seriously the proposal that he made. It is true, as he said, that the Government’s intention is that the Department for Exiting the European Union should endure only as long as that work needs to be carried out. In the end, we concluded that there was merit in the long-established principle that each Government Department should have a Select Committee to which Ministers and, through them, the officials in that Department are accountable. I refer my hon. Friend to the wording of the motion, which refers to the Select Committee being responsible for scrutinising

“the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Exiting the European Union”.

Given the breadth of policy areas that the new Department covers there would be a lack of clarity and lines of accountability if we tried to spread not just policy but expenditure and the administration of the Department among a number of departmental Select Committees, each having a finger in the European pie.

I would briefly make two more points. First, it remains the case that Select Committees can carry out joint inquiries. I believe that the report delivered to the Liaison Committee in the last Parliament by our former colleague, Lord Beith, advocated changes to Standing Orders that would make the co-option of a small number of members of a Select Committee to another for a particular inquiry easier to organise. Secondly, I understand what my hon. Friend said about the risks of partisanship, but the history of Select Committees shows that they are most effective when they can deliver a consensual report. It will be for the members of the new Select Committee to decide how they conduct their business, but they will go into this work knowing that their reports will carry greater weight both with the Government and with the wider public if they achieve a consensus, as the best Select Committees, including his own, have been able to do in the past.

My hon. Friend mentioned the size of the Select Committee. Yes, it is larger than normal, but that is because we wanted to make sure that for this question of Britain’s departure from the European Union all parts of the United Kingdom, including all three devolved parts of the United Kingdom, had proper representation, and that all the main political parties represented in the House have representation on the Committee. I accept that we will not reach complete agreement, but I hope that my hon. Friend at least understands the Government’s reasons for introducing the motion. We considered his case carefully, but we stand by the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Standing Orders Etc. (Machinery of Government Changes) (International Trade)

Resolved,

That, with effect from 17 October 2016, the following amendments and related provisions be made in respect of Standing Orders:

A: Select Committees Related to Government Departments

(1) That Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments) be amended in the Table in paragraph (2) as follows—

(a) insert, in the appropriate place, the following item:

[Mr Speaker]

I will now announce arrangements for electing Chairs for the Select Committees on Culture, Media and Sport, Exiting the European Union, Home Affairs, International Trade, and Science and Technology. Nominations should be submitted in the Table Office by 12 noon on Tuesday 18 October. If a post has more than one candidate the ballot will take place on Wednesday 19 October from 10 am to 1.30 pm in Committee Room 16. Briefing notes with more details about the election will be made available to Members and published on the intranet.