Select Committee Effectiveness, Resources and Powers

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the report of the Liaison Committee on Select Committee effectiveness, resources and powers, Second Report of Session 2012-13, HC 697, and the responses to it, Third Report of Session 2012-13, HC 911; welcomes the positive impact of the Wright reforms, particularly the election of committee chairs and members, on the effectiveness and authority of select committees; endorses the Committee’s recommendations for committee best practice and the revised core tasks for departmental select committees; looks forward to agreement on procedures for committee statements on the floor of the House and arrangements for debates on committee reports; agrees that co-operation from Government is crucial to effective scrutiny; and supports the Committee’s call for a new relationship between Parliament and Government, which recognises the public interest in greater accountability.

It is a pleasure to move the motion, which stands in my name and that of many Committee Chairs. It is fortuitous—it is about the only bit of good luck we have had this afternoon—that this debate follows a statement by a Committee Chair about a report that his Committee has produced. That relatively recent innovation tends to work rather better when the statement is made closer to the ministerial statements of the day, but it is welcome and something that we simply did not have in previous Parliaments.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee, the Chair of which is in the Chamber, for allowing the debate to be held. The motion is based on a report that the Liaison Committee produced in November and the responses to it from the Government and the House authorities, which we have published.

There are various aspects of the role of Parliament: we make laws; we create and oppose Governments, with this House being the forum in which the political contest between parties takes place; and we raise the grievances of our constituents as individuals or communities. However, there is a fourth function, which was sometimes neglected in earlier years: holding all Governments and the public service to account on how public money is spent, the effectiveness of administration and the development of policy.

Over the years, the Select Committee system has developed as the main means of addressing that fourth objective. The creation of a comprehensive structure of departmental Committees moved the process a long way forward at the time of the late Norman St John-Stevas. The previous Parliament left us a valuable legacy of further strengthening with the report of the Wright Committee which, in particular, put in place the election of Select Committee Chairs by the House as a whole, as well as the election of Committee members within parties. That has given Committees a new authority and mandate, and the influx of new Members, as well as the return of several experienced and senior Members to Select Committee work, has built on that authority.

Many new and more senior Members find their involvement in Select Committees just about the most rewarding part of their work in Parliament. They spend many a Wednesday listening to, or attempting to take part in, Prime Minister’s questions and they troop through the Lobby to support their party’s view in particular votes, but they can really get their teeth into things through the Select Committee process, in which they have the opportunity to question and challenge how things are being done, and to influence the shape of things in the future.

Our Committees have very small teams of staff, but the quality of their work and the way in which they cope with the demanding timetables of the Committee process are essential elements of Committees’ success. Our staff include people drawn from the Clerks Department of the House. Some appointments are made from outside, and we have indicated that there are circumstances in which it might be appropriate for such appointments to be made not only at the more specialist levels but even for the Clerk of a Committee. The Scrutiny Unit is a valuable resource for Select Committees, and we also draw on the Library—indirectly and directly, as Library staff are seconded to Select Committee service—and the National Audit Office, which I have found ready to co-operate not only with the Public Accounts Committee, as it does primarily, but with individual Committees when its expertise is valuable to their work.

Select Committees have proved to be one of the most effective ways of promoting public engagement with the House of Commons. We are always being urged to increase public engagement, and if we look at the wide range of people waiting on the Committee corridors in this building and Portcullis House to give evidence to Committees or to listen to their proceedings, and then think of all the people who watch the sittings at home on the Parliament channel or through the web system, we realise that Committees probably engage many more people than much else that goes on in the Commons. People are engaged because they are closely interested in the Committees’ work.

Today the Hansard Society published some survey results which showed a 9% increase in the past year in the public belief that Parliament holds Government to account. The survey showed that figure rising to 47%, which is just short of half, but it is a nine percentage point increase on the same question the previous year.

Select Committee inquiries have had a very high public profile. Most striking was the global coverage achieved by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry into News International and phone hacking, but others, too, have attracted a high level of interest. The Science and Technology Committee’s report on the Government’s alcohol guidelines stimulated widespread discussion about safe drinking limits. The Treasury Committee’s work on retail banking has attracted close interest not only in the financial world but among the wider public, and the Banking Commission, which is now conducting its inquiries, is a partner of the Treasury Committee—a Joint Committee drawn partly from the Treasury Committee and led by its Chairman. The Foreign Affairs Committee’s current inquiry into the UK’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is attracting international interest.

Some Committees are less often in the national media but have a very high profile in the professional press and the stakeholder community. The International Development Committee is one example. Another is the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, whose Chairman is at a funeral today, or she would have been here pointing to much of the work that it does. There are many examples of the work of my own Committee, the Justice Committee, changing the way things are done. As a direct result of a report that we produced, new guidelines have been introduced by the Director of Public Prosecutions on charging on a joint enterprise basis, which had proved to be quite a difficult and controversial issue. I had a letter only the other day from a Minister setting out precisely how the Government would implement the Committee’s recommendations—not challenging them, but setting out how the Government was going to implement them. That is a record of which Select Committees can be proud.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have so far barely scratched the surface of using social media to engage people with the workings of Parliament? The Select Committees are particularly well placed to do that, and he will know that before a session with the Secretary of State for Education, the Select Committee went on Twitter with #askGove to ask people to come up with questions. We were inundated—there were more than 5,000 tweets. We sorted through them, grouped them by theme and went through them with the Secretary of State who, in typical style, was able to give rapid-fire answers and people felt they were genuinely able to engage with Parliament through the Select Committee and hold the powerful to account.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. My own Committee has held online consultations with people in the public service who cannot come out openly to express their views, but whose views are important to us. We did an online consultation with prison officers which gave us a much better understanding of their working environment and problems. We did the same with probation officers. We had difficulty with the Ministry of Justice when we tried to do the same with court staff who were affected by the court interpretation and translation service changes, on which we will report in a few days. We were rather surprised to find the Department much less co-operative in that instance than it had been on previous occasions.

The social media are extremely important to the work of Select Committees, as are Parliament’s website facilities. The web and intranet service is working on some new designs for Select Committee homepages that will allow for more individual branding, giving Committees more control over the appearance of their online presence and greater flexibility in respect of what individual Committees can promote on their homepage. We would like to see this implemented as soon as possible. I do not claim to be the House’s expert on social media—I am the last person to make such a claim—but they clearly offer tremendous opportunities for engaging with the people who are affected by what is agreed and passed in the House. That is one of the things at the forefront of Committees’ work.

Our report honestly assesses where Select Committees can do better. It makes a range of best practice recommendations. We encourage Committees to be forward-looking in their scrutiny of departmental performance, not confining themselves to raking over the coals of past events unless there are important lessons to be learned from them. We urge Committees to give more attention to the financial implications of departmental policy and how Departments assess the effectiveness of their spending. We encourage them to experiment with different approaches to evidence taking; to broaden the range of witnesses and make more use of commissioned research; to produce shorter reports, making it clear which are the most important recommendations and who is supposed to be carrying them out; to follow up recommendations to ensure that reports have impact; and to report to the House at least once each Session on what their Committee has been doing.

Moreover, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) said, Committees need to be more effective at communicating. That involves the social media, but it also involves traditional print and broadcast media. We get a lot of coverage and a lot of interest from the broadcasters. Occasionally they annoy us by failing to distinguish between Select Committees of this House, elected by the House, and all-party groups, which have a role and a usefulness but are not the same thing. A Select Committee of this House is a Committee of people who have a degree of expertise developed over a period but are not united by a common cause in their membership of the Committee, as is so often the case with an all-party group. There is a big difference between the nature of a report produced by a Select Committee and one produced by an all-party group. The use of the term “a group of MPs” to describe either body, which we find in the broadcasts even of the BBC, is something we deplore.

The motion before the House invites us to endorse these best practice recommendations. They are not a straitjacket; it is for each Committee to determine its own priorities in how it goes about its business. However, Committees have core tasks, and we hope that they will see the good sense of the recommendations that we are making; indeed, many are already doing so.

One of the areas where we want to develop the work of Committees is in our scrutiny of policy development at the European level. We have had a lot of discussions about this with the European Scrutiny Committee and with the Minister for Europe. Far too often, this House is confronted with draft European legislation long after the important decisions and negotiations have taken place. Committees can much more usefully engage at the early stages, as long as they can be clear which work programme issues of the Commission are attracting real interest and are likely to get somewhere; otherwise they can get submerged in a vast amount of material that is not really going anywhere.

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[Sir Alan Beith]

It was an honest statement of the view of Committee members that the possibility of the activities of the House being questioned in the courts as a consequence of the exercise of powers would be more damaging to the House than the current situation. Were the Joint Committee to come to a different conclusion after careful examination, we would, obviously, look at the issue again, but it was an honest statement of the Liaison Committee’s opinion at the time. My opinion has not changed so far, but I am clear that the matter will have to be looked at very carefully indeed.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I must back my right hon. Friend and say how much I agree with him. I was one of those on the Liaison Committee who felt that very strongly. We have had people who were not keen to appear before the Education Committee, but they were told that they were expected to turn up, that it would be seen as a failure on their part not to do so and that powers could be exercised against them if they did not do so. They came. That is the test. If we move to something more legalistic, people will hire lawyers to find out exactly how many days’ delay they can use, based on precedent, so that they can put it off as long as they can and, in effect, thwart the will of Parliament, which is for them to appear. Whatever the current situation’s shortcomings, in my opinion, subject to what the Joint Committee finds out, it is the right one: it works for Parliament and does so in a speedy and effective way.

[Sir Alan Beith]

My hon. Friend puts the point extremely well.

The appearances of members of the Government and civil service officials are governed by the Osmotherly rules. The Committee is stringent about those rules in paragraph 113:

“We do not accept that the Osmotherly rules should have any bearing on whom a select committee should choose to summon as a witness. The Osmotherly rules are merely internal for Government. They have never been accepted by Parliament. Where the inquiry relates to departmental delivery rather than ministerial decision-making, it is vital that committees should be able to question the responsible official directly—even if they have moved on to another job. It does of course remain the case that an official can decline to answer for matters of policy, on the basis that it is for the minister to answer for the policy, but officials owe a direct obligation to Parliament to report on matters of fact and implementation. This does not alter the doctrine of ministerial accountability in any way. Ministers should never require an official to withhold information from a select committee. It cannot be a breach of the principle of ministerial responsibility for an official to give a truthful answer to a select committee question.”

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[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I will try to be mindful of your suggestion, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am delighted that the Backbench Business Committee has allocated time for us to debate the report of the Liaison Committee following the 2010 Wright reforms. It is fair to say that Select Committees are stronger and have more influence on Government than ever before. This is the first Parliament in which the members of Select Committees have been voted for in secret ballots by their own parties, and in which the Chairs of Select Committees have been elected by the whole House. That has given additional independence to Select Committees. It is no wonder that there are grimaces from the faces of Government Whips, and it is right that there should be. If there are not grimaces on the faces of Government Whips, we do not have a strong and assertive enough legislature. We do have an assertive legislature, but we can go further.

In the Leader of the House, we have such a fine parliamentarian, such a tremendous Minister and a man of such self-confidence, personality and breadth of philosophy that he will not think that he can hold the line and make no concessions. He understands the need for the whole House to improve the way in which it holds the Government to account and to recognise the powerful role that Select Committees play.

Select Committees not only have a role in scrutiny; they inform the character of this place. In this Chamber, we sit opposite each other and make tribal noises. I like making tribal, partisan noises as much the next man— in fact, probably rather more than most—but Select Committees bring us together and form us in teams across party lines. They build deep friendships and relationships. They help us to understand where other people are coming from. That has a civilising impact on the way in which this place works, which I hope permeates through to the way in which we make law. It makes Ministers more confident about conceding ground at times, and means we are more effective in representing the overall interests of the people who send us to this place. If it does that, a Select Committee is a very fine thing indeed.

Mindful of what you have said, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will drop the rest of my remarks because we have already touched on many good points. I will simply say that Select Committees are stronger now than they were in the past and a positive influence on Parliament. They are an excellent check on the Executive, and I know that the Leader of the House and Ministers will listen to calls from the Liaison Committee to strengthen those powers going forward.

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[Ms Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I do not know what the answer is, given that Members of Parliament often have ambitions to be in the shadow Government or the Government and like to get promoted. We have made progress in the past few years in setting up a career path for those who wish to specialise in Select Committees, particularly in the area of scrutiny.

The report rightly says that holding the Government to account is the main purpose of Committee work. However, our constituents expect more than that. Parliament is here to hold the powerful to account, as well as the Government. Major multinationals are one example of powerful organisations that our constituents expect us to hold to account.

In that context, I congratulate the Public Accounts Committee, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who is in his place, on their work. The PAC has exposed the shocking conduct of companies such as Starbucks, Amazon and Google in minimising the taxes they pay in this country. The work of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, in its relentless pursuit and questioning of News International over phone hacking, often when the issue was ignored by many others, has already been commented on. I would like to add my congratulations to its members on playing such a major role in uncovering the scandal. It is only right that we use this debate to highlight the important work that our Select Committee system has done and to congratulate those involved on the work they do. The Liaison Committee’s report rightly praises the Transport Committee, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), for its inquiry into motor insurance, which brought to light a major scandal.

It is not only major companies, however, that Select Committees need to scrutinise. The Government’s programme of increasing the involvement of the private sector in public services and the breaking up of the health service means that lines of accountability are becoming more and more blurred. The House and Select Committees have the opportunity to scrutinise what these new organisations are up to with public money, and we have to ensure that the Select Committees maintain their ability to follow public money, even if that involves the accounts of private companies. That is an area to which we have to pay particular attention given some of the changes being made.

I agree with the Liaison Committee report that the primary function of Select Committees is to scrutinise the Government, but I do not want to minimise the important role they perform in holding others to account. We share the Committee’s disappointment that the Government have not published more Bills in draft. They only published 18 Bills in draft in the 2010-12 parliamentary Session. Pre-legislative scrutiny is beneficial to the legislative process and is an area where Committees made up of members with in-depth policy knowledge can add real value. Will the Leader of the House commit, therefore, to increasing the proportion of Bills that the Government publish in draft? Even when the Government have published bills in draft, however, they have allowed insufficient time in some cases for effective pre-legislative scrutiny.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Department for Education on conducting pre-legislative scrutiny of the special educational needs clauses of a forthcoming Bill. It was a tight timetable, but it gave us the chance to do the job. Ministers have been very open to meetings and to following up and taking onboard the advice of the Committee. It really can work.

[Ms Eagle]

As someone who gave evidence before entering the House to what were then known as Special Standing Committees, which evolved into pre-legislative scrutiny Committees, I think it is important to highlight best practice and carry on evolving positively the concept of pre-legislative scrutiny.

The Energy Bill and the Civil Aviation Bill are cited in the Committee’s report as examples of where the Government have not allowed enough time for Select Committees to do their work. The Committee is also right to highlight the shambles of the draft Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill: the Select Committee members reorganised their work to enable scrutiny of the Bill at very short notice, only for the Government to pull the Bill and re-introduce it this Session. In retrospect, Committee Members could have spent many hours scrutinising it without the time constraint, which turned out not to be a time constraint. I hope that the Leader of the House will take note of the need for better organisation.

We note the Liaison Committee’s suggestion that Commons Select Committees should have first choice on whether to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny, rather than it being a decision of the Government. A Joint Committee could make a valuable contribution, but it is this House that is democratically elected and, as the Liaison Committee rights says in its report, it would make sense for a Committee of this House to consider whether a Bill should be referred to a Joint Committee. Will the Leader of the House comment on that suggestion?

[Ms Eagle]

I note that that is precisely the point the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee members made in their report. By highlighting that section, I am agreeing with him.

It is also worth considering whether we should go one step further. At the moment, it is for the Government to decide whether to use pre-legislative scrutiny at all. The Government are currently rushing ill-thought-out welfare legislation through the House that will hit people in work on low incomes the hardest. This is a piece of legislation that would have benefited from pre-legislative scrutiny, particularly evidence sessions. That was not allowed to happen, so could the Leader of the House consider whether, allowing for the Government to legislate immediately when there is an obvious need, we could have a Committee of this House deciding whether a Bill should receive pre-legislative scrutiny? These are not suggestions on which I have a settled view, but I am interested in hearing the views of right hon. and hon. Members about possible changes in that direction.

The Liaison Committee is right to comment on the role of Select Committees in scrutinising ministerial appointments. As it says in its report, the Committee previously commented on this in its 2011 report, “Select Committees and Public Appointments”, which made recommendations for reforming the process. The Government’s response prompted a further report from the Liaison Committee last September, which highlighted the

“inadequacy of the Government’s response to our proposals”.

There has been no response from the Government to date, which is clearly unsatisfactory. This has been left hanging in the air for far too long, so will the Leader of the House say when the Government will be responding?

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Governments tend to grow more and more grudging about ceding powers, whereas parties in opposition make free—they return to philosophical first principles and they tend to make promises. Let me push the hon. Lady on this point. What is the Labour party’s position on a few of these points? She should put it on the record. If there is ever a Labour Government in future, it may or may not be her that takes that position forward, but it would be useful to have on the record some promises that we can hold someone to account for in future.

[Ms Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me in all sorts of areas. I hope he realises from the tone of what I am saying that I am particularly interested in seeing what we can do to strengthen the role of the legislature in some of these areas. It is important to have a debate about the practicalities before we formulate an approach to this in the run-up to the next election. I am sure that he will be an avid reader of what comes out of that.

The Liaison Committee describes the main role of Select Committees as “influencing” Government. I understand the point the Committee is seeking to make. In outlining the role of Select Committees, the functions it describes are scrutinising and holding the Government to account. For me, however, the language of “scrutiny” is preferable to “influencing”. The measure of a Select Committee’s success should not be the sum total of its recommendations that the Government adopt. The core objectives of Select Committees, as first set out by the Modernisation Committee in 2002, have worked well, with an emphasis on their role in scrutinising the Government. However, the Liaison Committee was right to consider whether more streamlined objectives would be suitable. The proposed new guidance for Select Committees is sensible, although I note that it places a lot of weight on Select Committees in terms of their duties.

I agree with what the Liaison Committee says about how Select Committees can act as a public forum for ideas to be debated. I agree that this is an element of Select Committee work, but there are many routes for debates to take place in Parliament. It is not the primary purpose of Select Committee work to set off debates. I regret the fact that it has had to propose a compact between the Government and parliamentary Committees —again, a feature of the report we are debating—but sadly this appears necessary. The Government’s guidelines to Departments—the Osmotherly rules—state that

“departments should aim to respond to reports within two months”,

but as the Liaison Committee notes, responses frequently appear much later.

It says something about this Government that the Cabinet Office, which is supposed to be taking the lead on making government more efficient, took nine months to respond to the Liaison Committee’s report on “Select Committees and Public Appointments”, when we would have wanted it to lead a little more by example. When Government Departments finally get round to responding to Select Committee reports, the responses are often inadequate. In its evidence to the Liaison Committee, the Regulatory Policy Institute’s better government programme described the Government’s responses as “models of evasion”. Will the Leader of the House say something about what Ministers could do to respond to these criticisms from the Liaison Committee and perhaps to improve performance in the areas of timeliness and clarity of response?

There are many sensible recommendations in this report, and I do not intend to go through them all. I think that members of Select Committees will want to consider for themselves the many recommendations on how Committees can have a greater impact. I support the recommendation for Committees to experiment with different approaches, such as appointing rapporteurs to lead inquiries, commissioning external research and, perhaps more controversially, using special advisers to question witnesses on technical subjects. That can be seen in other Parliaments, and I certainly think that Committees could trial ideas in and around these areas.

I welcome the suggestion that Committees could make better use of the parliamentary website. Although, as right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned, this has improved, it is still difficult for members of the public to navigate and its existence is poorly communicated. As we place more and more emphasis on the work of Committees, we should work harder to communicate their activities and ensure our constituents can readily access information about them. I welcome, too, the suggestion for substantive motions for debates on Committee reports. In its report, the Liaison Committee said that, subject to further discussion, it would explore ways to implement that.

On privilege, I note what the Committee has said. As it says in its report, a Joint Committee is considering this currently—or will be. I said earlier that there were occasions when a Joint Committee might bring benefits, and I look forward to the recommendations. I am not as certain as the Liaison Committee appears to be that there is no argument for changes in the area of privilege.

As I said at the start of my remarks, I welcome this report and many of its recommendations. Select Committees are an important part of the work of this House. I conclude by paying tribute to the work of all right hon. and hon. Members who serve on them and to the sterling work of House staff and all those who help make our Committee system effective.