Ministerial Statements
Debate between Greg Knight and Chris Bryant(13 years ago)
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Mr Knight
I see that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is sitting in the far corner of the Chamber. On Thursday he told me he did not think he could be present for the debate. Perhaps that was why I did not notice him, but I am delighted that he is in his place for this important debate.
As has been said, the Procedure Committee was asked to undertake an inquiry by the House, which unanimously agreed to a motion inviting the Committee to develop a protocol for the release of information by Ministers. This was the first debate scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee last year.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has pointed out, the current position is that the ministerial code sets out the “general principle” governing the release of information by Ministers. It states:
“When Parliament is in session”—
as I said in an intervention, that is widely taken to mean when Parliament is not in recess—
“the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.”
The Procedure Committee published its report earlier this year. It set out three principles underpinning its recommendations: that statements were valued by Back Benchers and that Ministers should be encouraged to make them; that important Government announcements should, indeed, be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere; and that it is a grave discourtesy to Parliament for information to be released before a statement is made.
The Procedure Committee decided without division that it was neither practical nor desirable to produce a detailed protocol, and recommended that the House agree the following resolution:
“That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting, and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements not to be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament.”
The Government responded, agreeing with the Committee that a detailed protocol would not be a good idea, but rejecting the solution proposed by the Committee and instead favouring the status quo.
On enforcement, the Procedure Committee recommended that complaints should be made to the Speaker in the first instance, and that the Speaker should have the power to dismiss trivial complaints and complaints made without basis. The Speaker could rule in cases where a minor breach had occurred. One might envisage a case where the Speaker receives a complaint and deems it to be a minor breach, and decides to allow an urgent question in the light of that complaint. The Procedure Committee did not envisage the Speaker rapping knuckles in all circumstances. There may well be cases where the granting of an urgent question is deemed sufficient. We also took the view that more serious cases should be referred by the Speaker to the Standards and Privileges Committee.
In their response, the Government did not even acknowledge our recommendations relating to the role of the Speaker, but they rejected our recommendation that complaints be referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee and maintained that the current range of sanctions was “adequate”. In our earlier debate, a number of Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is not in his place, discussed what sort of sanctions should be available, over and above what happens now. The Procedure Committee concluded that a recommendation from a Committee of the House that a Minister do come to this House and apologise was a sufficiently serious sanction, and that no new sanctions were required. The Government’s response to that was that our Committee’s recommendations were disproportionately severe, which I find a little odd.
I have looked at the Government’s response in detail, and in my view it is highly unsatisfactory. As I have said, the Government agree with the Procedure Committee that it would not be “practical or desirable” to have a “detailed protocol” trying to cover all eventualities, but they said that they did not support the Committee’s approach that the House should agree a motion in terms very similar to the current position as outlined in the ministerial code. The Government stated:
“It is not clear…what purpose would be served”
by such a motion, in which the current position is simply restated.
The Government had clearly failed to recognise the significance, although it was explained clearly in our report, which was that the House would be taking control of the protocol away from the Government. We are not envisaging setting up double jeopardy; we are saying that it should be the House that should decide—via the process of a complaint going to the Speaker and then, if necessary, to a Committee—whether the protocol had been breached, and not an obviously partial and forgiving Prime Minister, who is currently the arbiter. In saying that, I make no criticism of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, because the natural instinct of any Prime Minister will be to want to defend his or her Ministers—after all, the Prime Minister of the day appoints all Ministers in the first place.
Chris Bryant
It would sometimes be somewhat hypocritical if a Prime Minister were to complain about a Minister briefing, because often it is Downing street that briefs the policy change, rather than the Minister, doing so with the full knowledge and understanding of the whole ministerial team.
Mr Knight
That is a very good intervention and the hon. Gentleman underlines my point.
The Government response went on to suggest that an increase in the number of statements made and urgent questions granted means that
“there is no case for the protocol that the Committee proposes.”
I am not clear what the logic is in that response.
On enforcing the protocol, the Government repeated the assertion made in the oral and written evidence that the Procedure Committee received that the House already has a sufficient range of options to deal with cases in which statements are made outside Parliament first. The Government’s response went on to suggest that the involvement of the Standards and Privileges Committee would risk dragging that Committee into party political disputes, which they say would undermine
“the integrity of its role.”
That response does not acknowledge your role, Mr Speaker, as envisaged by the Procedure Committee, in acting as a “gatekeeper” against frivolous complaints. Under the system that we proposed, any complaint that was a mere cover for a party political row or dispute would be dealt with by you and, in my view, would never reach the Standards and Privileges Committee, which would be asked to determine only serious or complex breaches of the rules
Procedure Committee Reports
Debate between Greg Knight and Chris Bryant(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Knight
My hon. Friend is now telling the House what he wished his amendment would do rather than what it does. I could not recommend anyone to vote for such an amendment. He drafted it, and it takes out all references to the use of electronic devices in Committee. In my view, Members should have certainty in what they can and cannot do in Committee. Imagine a Member attending a Committee with their notes on an electronic device and the Chairman saying, “Well, in my Committee we don’t use these devices.” That Member would be left high and dry.
Chris Bryant
If we were to presume, in the way the right hon. Gentleman does, that Chamber practice was consistent with Committee practice, the rule allowing hon. Gentlemen to remove their jackets in Committee, which does not apply in the Chamber, would presumably lapse.
Mr Knight
If I may, I will come back to that point in a moment. I want to deal completely with Select Committee amendments first, but I will return to the hon. Lady’s point and, if she is not satisfied, I invite her to intervene on me again.
The Procedure Committee was invited by the Liaison Committee to look at the possibility of a tabling system that would enable Select Committees to table their own amendments. The current practice is that amendments agreed by a Select Committee may be tabled only in the names of individual Members, which makes it difficult to distinguish Committee amendments from those tabled by the same members of the Committee acting as individuals. After consulting interested parties, the Procedure Committee published a report recommending that the practice be changed to allow Select Committees to table amendments to Bills and motions in the name of the Chair, with a tag line indicating the name of the appropriate Select Committee. The advantage of that practice would be that it would offer clarity to the House and to individual Members, and enable anyone reading an amendment paper to see that an amendment had originated in a Select Committee. It was also felt that it would contribute to the effectiveness of Select Committees.
We recognised, however, that there could be disadvantages, as individual members of a Select Committee might disagree with a proposed amendment, either at the time of its adoption by the Committee or afterwards. To counter that, the Procedure Committee recommended that stringent safeguards be built into the process whereby Committees agreed amendments that carried the special status of Select Committee amendments. We suggested that such amendments would have to be formally agreed, without Division, by a quorate meeting of the Committee. That is a more rigorous requirement than that for Select Committee reports, which can be agreed by a simple majority.
The Committee rejected the idea that Select Committee amendments should be guaranteed debate, because of the constraints of programming, but we supported the adoption of a convention that the Chair should grant a Division when one is sought. Unfortunately, as the Chairman of the Liaison Committee has said, the Government have indicated that they oppose this innovation, and I understand that they continue to oppose such a modest, sensible move today. Indeed, I have seen the Patronage Secretary buzzing round the House, rather like a wasp, discussing this matter. I therefore suspect that there could be a Government payroll Whip on this Liaison Committee suggestion.
The Government object to the proposal because they feel that it would be wrong for an amendment to be marked as having the support of a Select Committee if some of the Committee’s members might be in disagreement. We have tried to address that difficulty by recommending stringent conditions that would have to be met before a Select Committee amendment could be tabled as such. They include the condition that notice must be given before the Committee could agree the amendment. The Government say, however, that it would still be possible under the new arrangement for any two members of an 11-member Committee to approve an amendment on behalf of the whole Committee, as the quorum is only three and the Chair has a casting vote. That is technically correct, but I would suggest that the requirement for notice would make it most unlikely—or, in practice, impossible—that that could happen against the wishes of a majority of active members of a Committee.
Chris Bryant
With due respect, I do not think that either the right hon. Gentleman or the Government are correct in what they say. In this House, unlike the House of Lords, the Chair of a Committee has a vote only when there is an equality of voices.
Mr Knight
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That makes my argument even stronger and the Government’s case even weaker, and I am grateful for his intervention.
Our proposal is merely intended to enhance the visibility of Select Committee issues, without in any way diminishing the position of individual members in voting for or against amendments on the Floor. This matter was not initially on our agenda, but the Liaison Committee asked us to look at it. We have done so, and this is our conclusion. I therefore hope that, even at this late hour, the Government will reflect on their opposition to it, which I feel is misplaced. We have given our view, and whether the proposal now proceeds further is a matter for the whole House.
I see the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in her place. She was one of the Members who supported the idea of explanatory statements, which is the subject of one of the other motions on the Order Paper today. The House has conducted a series of experiments with explanatory statements, and the Procedure Committee has assessed them. We decided that the overall effect was inconclusive, but it was put to us that carrying out a further experiment in a new Parliament—namely, this one—could be worth while, and that it would also be worth pursuing the experiment during the Report stage of a Bill. That is what we have decided to recommend to the House, and we are pleased to note that, in a debate Westminster Hall on 3 February this year, which the hon. Lady attended, there was complete consensus that it would benefit not only Members but those outside the House to have an accompanying explanation of what an amendment or new clause was designed to do.
I am rather more hopeful about this proposal, because the Deputy Leader of the House attended that debate and—it was a rare situation indeed—offered Government support for the measure. He said:
“Regarding explanations for amendments, we had the experiment in Committee and I am certainly happy, as far as the Government are concerned, for that experiment to proceed. Perhaps we ought to look at having such explanations on Report, too.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2011; Vol. 522, c. 384WH.]
I wholeheartedly agree with him, and I am glad that, on this issue, we are as one. I hope that he will confirm today that he now thinks it appropriate for us to trial the explanatory notes again in this Session and the next one. It would then be a matter for the House to decide in due course whether the facility was to be made permanent.
On the question of having a three-month trial quota for questions tabled electronically, the concern arose from evidence—mainly informal—from the Table Office. It found, when questioning the intended scope of some questions tabled electronically in Members’ names, that some Members appeared to know nothing about the questions and registered surprise that they had been tabled in their name. The Procedure Committee took the view that, in some cases, research assistants might be using the electronic procedure to table questions without the express authority of those for whom they work.
Questions are a proceeding in Parliament and should not be submitted without the express and explicit authority of a Member of Parliament. As the electronic submission method could be used without the Member’s knowledge, we decided, in this area only, to limit the number of questions to five in a three-month period to see what the effect would be. We are not recommending any restriction on the number of questions that a Member may take into the Table Office personally. This is a modest recommendation, and we hope that it will lead to Members being fully aware that a question is being submitted in their name.