House of Commons Governance

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the report of the House of Commons Governance Committee; notes the priority it has given to agreeing a package of proposals which can both significantly improve the governance of the House and be capable of attracting support from Members on all sides of the House, in a timely manner and well before the House is dissolved; agrees to the recommendations in Chapters 6 and 7, with the proviso that, without changing the party balance of the Commission as proposed in the report, the recommendations relating to the composition of the Commission be implemented so as to allow the Chairs of both the new Finance Committee and the Administration Committee to be elected to these positions rather than appointed to them by the Commission; and encourages the appropriate bodies in both Houses of Parliament to address the Committee’s remaining conclusions and recommendations.

The motion has been tabled in the name of the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House, all members of the Select Committee on Governance and myself. I want to begin with some thanks, first to the House for appointing me Chair of the Committee, which turned out to be a happy and consuming task. Secondly, I express my deep thanks to all members of the Committee: the hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and my hon. Friends the Members for St Helens North (Mr Watts) and for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). Despite all the other calls on their time and the fact that we had to meet intensively on two or three days each week, attendance at the Committee was almost always complete. The House will wish to note that all members of the Committee are present in the Chamber today with the single exception of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North, who cannot be here for unavoidable family reasons and who has asked me to offer his apologies to the House.

My third set of thanks is to the staff of the Committee, who worked incredibly hard and provided sage and timely advice. For reasons that the House will readily appreciate, the staff of the Committee were drawn more widely than just from what was known as the Clerk’s Department. They came from other parts of the House Service, but worked brilliantly together. I put on record my thanks to Mark Hutton, Joanna Dodd, Paul Dillon-Robinson, Ed Potton, Charlotte Simmonds, Louise Glen, Dr Michael Everett, Liz Parratt and Nicholas Kroll, the former secretary of the BBC Trust, who acted as our special adviser.

My fourth set of thanks is to the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House for the constructive and timely response to our report—I say this in advance of their speeches, so I reserve the right to withdraw that comment if they are not quite as we would hope. They have been extremely co-operative, and I thank them for that, as evidenced by the fact that their names are on the motion.

Fifthly, I thank all those who gave evidence to the Committee. In seven weeks of evidence taking, we heard from 59 witnesses in 13 sessions, including from 21 Members of the House and 16 staff. In addition to receiving 91 written submissions, many from staff, we held an afternoon of consultation with 60 members of staff of all grades and from all Departments of the House. We were always conscious of the keen interest that staff were understandably taking in our work and the anxiety that some of our deliberations gave in some cases. We are very grateful indeed to them.

The House is well aware of the provenance of the Committee, which arose from the pause in the appointment of a new Clerk and chief executive that you, Mr Speaker, announced in your statement on 1 September, the Backbench Business debate held on 10 September that was initiated by the hon. Members for Hereford and South Herefordshire and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), and the resolution of the House passed that day to establish the Committee. The appointment process for a new Clerk and chief executive has now been formally terminated by the Commission. I intend to say no more about it as the Committee’s purpose was not to conduct a post-mortem but to look forward.

Although there had in recent decades been three reviews of aspects of the governance of this House, known as the Ibbs, Braithwaite and Tebbit studies, ours was the first root-and-branch examination of the subject by Members themselves in more than 40 years, since the Bottomley Committee met in the mid-1970s.

A huge amount has changed in the intervening period. The establishment of departmental Select Committees in the 1979-80 Session, the exponential increase in Members’ constituency caseload, the decline in deference towards those running the country and the ever-rising public expectation and scrutiny of Members that comes with it, the astonishing growth in the number of visitors to the Palace of Westminster and the ubiquity of the internet—unknown and unimagined when I first came into this place not many years ago—have led to a multiplication of demands on Members that have in turn resulted in a major expansion of the Estate across Bridge street and a dramatic growth in the number of staff in the employment of the House and of individual Members.

What has not changed in the past 40 years is that the House of Commons is unique. As it is at the heart of our democracy, governed by 650 individual Members, each with strong opinions and none of them wilting violets, who are answerable to their constituents, simplistic analogies with corporations, whether they are in the public or private sector, rapidly break down. We are also conscious of the following paradox about this place: precisely because it works by the dialectic method, by intense argument, it is essential that there is broad consensus about how that argument should take place and about the ground rules, including on how this place should govern itself.

We began by exploring the principles of good governance that should apply to the House. We quickly concluded that the governance arrangements in the House of Commons Administration Act 1978, which followed the Bottomley review, were no longer fit for purpose. That view was heavily reinforced by the evidence we received.

We were appointed to deal with an immediate problem, which I shall come on to, but in the course of our deliberations we had to look to the longer term. The next Parliament will face some critical decisions on the restoration and renewal of the fabric of the Palace of Westminster. We were reminded of the imperative of restoring and renewing the fabric of the Palace of Westminster by the exchange just a few minutes ago in business questions over the fact that the roof to the Members’ Lobby is leaking yet again.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I add my thanks to my right hon. Friend and all the members of the Committee who have worked so hard on this report and its recommendations. My right hon. Friend may not be aware that in a particular initiative, led by Mr Speaker, it has now been agreed that we will include requirements to have social value and social impact in the procurement for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, including the restoration. It is a huge step for this Parliament, and I would like the Committee to confirm that that element of our modernisation will be at the heart of the process.

[Mr Straw]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend. When she rose as I was speaking about leaks, I thought perhaps she had something to say about her work as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, but I was on the wrong track. Of course she is right about that, and I greatly welcome the initiative that you, Mr Speaker, have taken.

We have endeavoured to ensure that all our recommendations will assist in decision taking for the restoration and renewal programme that will take place in the next Parliament. Those decisions will have to be made on a bicameral basis: it is a single building for two Chambers. It is the essence of any properly functioning bicameral system that each Chamber should govern its own work, and it was no part of our remit or intent to usurp the autonomy of the other place. However, we took plenty of evidence from both ends of the Palace, including from the Lord Speaker, about how, co-operatively, there could be better joint working between the two Houses. Those proposals are highlighted in recommendations 1 and 2 of our report.

I turn now to the Commons itself and the current corporate arrangements for running this place, which are essentially with the House of Commons Commission, chaired by you, Mr Speaker, and, underneath that, the Management Board. The respective roles of the Commission and the Management Board were unclear not only to staff and Members—to many Members their roles were not only unclear but their existence was unknown—but even to some of those who sat on those bodies. The Committee’s recommendations for reform of the Commission and the replacement of the Management Board with an Executive Committee flow directly from the assessment that those two bodies are not working, either individually or together, as effectively as they should. Our aim has been to bring together Members and officials into a single coherent structure.

One key change proposed to the Commission is in respect of Back-Bench Members of the Commission. We recommend that the current three—one from each of the largest parties—should be replaced by four Members, by the addition of a fourth from the minority parties. At present, the Back-Bench Members, distinguished though they are, are effectively nominated by the Whips Offices. In future—[Interruption.] Mr Speaker, will you note the fact that the Opposition Whip has broken rule one of all Whips, which is to remain silent. [Interruption.] No, it was not a cough. I was about to say that the current Back-Bench Members are effectively nominated by the dark forces of the Whips, but I decided to be nice to them by leaving that out. I will now ensure that it goes back on the record. In future, to avoid these dark forces of the Whips Office, we recommended that each of the four should be elected by the whole House. We also added that they should be remunerated on the same basis as Chairs of Committees.

We looked carefully at the work of the Finance and Services Committee and of the Administration Committee. Each has been very ably chaired by the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who is in his place, and by the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). The former happens to have been also a member of the Commission, while the latter has not. We thought that that was unsatisfactory, and that the Chairs of both those Committees should, ex officio, be members of the Commission.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

Let me go through the arrangements. Once I have done that, it will become easier to answer the hon. Gentleman’s point.

To secure a unified House service, we concluded, as paragraph 166 sets out, that the Clerk should continue to be head of the House service and thus formally the line manager of the director general. However, the new director general will have a considerable degree of autonomy. Since delivery will be their responsibility, it is the director general, not the Clerk, who will chair the new executive committee. She or he will sit on the Commission with the Clerk, and will have direct access to Mr Speaker and other Commission members.

So the answer to the hon. Gentleman is that if there were a dispute between the Clerk and the chief executive, the matter would go to Mr Speaker and be resolved by the Commission. Crucially, unlike the current arrangements where the Management Board is free-floating and separate from the Commission, the executive committee will formally be a committee of the Commission. I hope that that answers his question.

The executive committee will consist of the director general, the Clerk, and Director of Finance, with up to three other members drawn from the senior officials appointed by the Commission. I believe that the Committee’s recommendations have attracted support from all sides, but as I said earlier we did not simply split the difference between them: they are a coherent package in which the changes to the role of the Clerk and the introduction of the director general are integral to the reforms to the Commission and member committees, and are underpinned—this is crucial from our point of view—by recommendations for broader cultural change in the House service.

[Hazel Blears]

My right hon. Friend is generous in giving way again. He raised the issue of culture. That is fundamental and it is why many of us supported the idea of a chief executive. I understand that the proposals now have unanimous support. On culture, there are two things in particular that have changed in this House over recent years, led by Mr Speaker. One is to make this House a living wage organisation and the second is the emphasis on diversity and inclusion. That initiative, led by Anne Foster and the diversity and inclusion team, has meant that we have made tremendous strides forward. I seek the reassurance of my right hon. Friend, the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House that when we recruit the new director general, we ensure that issues relating to the diversity and culture of this organisation are paramount in that recruitment process.

[Mr Straw]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We make recommendations about and acknowledge the work that has been done. In recruiting to any senior post, including the Clerk and the director general, we must take full account of the need to improve diversity in all ways in this place.

Select Committee on Governance of the House

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I have been encouraged by the tone of the debate, and I think there will be unanimity on the motion. I was beginning to think that we are all modernisers now, but in view of one or two of the contributions I am not entirely convinced of that.

Over the last 20 years, since I have been in the House, there has been massive change in business outside as well as in this place. When we look at the developments in employment practices, the real importance now of the agenda for diversity—something that the House never really talked about 20 years ago—the introduction of the internet, the whole issue around cyber and the issues around security, it is clear that the practices of the House have changed enormously. I want to pay tribute to our current Speaker, because I think he has done more than any other Speaker I and other Members have experienced genuinely to try to modernise and open up this House of Commons and make us more contemporary and more in touch with our constituents.

We need only look at the way in which the Speaker has opened up the apartments to voluntary organisations and charities. There have been more people in those Speaker’s apartments over the last few years than there were in the many decades before, and this is their House; they pay for this Parliament through their taxes and they are entitled to have the place open.

Let us look at the establishment of the nursery. Some in this House fought tooth and nail against that because they did not want to lose the rifle range—I think that is what it was—and did not see the need to have a nursery in this place. If we look at the issues around diversity, we see that we now have some fantastic groups here that are seeking to get in the talents of disabled people and people from different backgrounds. The Speaker has supported the placement scheme I set up to bring in working-class people to come and work in Parliament. Robert Rogers, when he was Clerk, supported an apprenticeship programme here in the House which is taking in apprentices, mainly from east London and from many different faith backgrounds, who, again, would never otherwise have got an opportunity to work in this House.

I think this House is dramatically improved by very many of the measures that the Speaker has taken. He has been brave and has been prepared to take on some very establishment views to achieve that change. I think that some of the behaviour of some Members during this process has been pretty appalling, and I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who said that we now have to move forward—not use this as an agenda for people to pursue—and recognise the progress we have made.

I think there are savings to be made if we do this properly and if we do much more of our business jointly with the Lords. I have been involved in a programme that looks at bringing the procurement contracts together between the Commons and the Lords. We are going to put social value clauses in those contracts so that we get maximum social impact from them, and that will achieve a tremendous saving.

Let us be imaginative. Let us be creative. This is not about replacing what we have got with another bit of status quo. This is a fabulous opportunity for my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to take this place forward.

I personally believe that we need two people. The skills sets are so different that it would be impossible to combine them under one individual. I do not support the idea of a chief operating officer. That would entrench the current hierarchy, and the Clerk would remain the position to have, with the say over what should be chief executive decisions on management, skills, human resources and technology. I think we can have an independent office-holder for procedural advice, with the ability to take decisions on procedure who is not countermanded by the chief executive on those issues, and also have a chief executive who runs this place in the 21st century.

I finish by saying that I am very proud of my history—of course I am—but I certainly do not want to live in it.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Miliband]

I ran on a manifesto that included a referendum and I support it absolutely.

Let me deal with the argument that elected Lords will represent a shocking precedent and a threat to the constitutional order, because they will be political partisans—not to say apparatchiks—put on party lists. I remind right hon. and hon. Members that 80% of the current House of Lords were nominated by party leaders, and the figure is higher if we look at voting numbers in that House. Yesterday, the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who is not in his place, said that the Lords defeated the Blair Governments 430 times and invited us to believe that that proved that the Lords were mighty enough already. The truth is that the problem was not the power of the House of Lords, but the fact that there was an in-built Conservative majority when we came to power in 1997.

The second issue that I want to deal with is more important. It goes to the issue of the relationship between the House of Commons and the House of Lords—something to which the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) referred. I have long argued for a single package of reform for both Houses, but the alternative vote farrago or fiasco has put paid to that, and we need to cut our Lords cloth accordingly, given that we know that the electoral system for this place is not changing in the foreseeable future.

Many of those who have attacked the Bill have done so on two mutually contradictory grounds. They have said that election to the Lords will mortally wound the primacy of the House of Commons—the point that the hon. Lady made—and neuter the power of Government in the process. At the same time, they have argued that 15-year terms will not provide sufficient accountability for Members of the new House of Lords, and that it is necessary for the new elected Lords to have more regular engagement with the electorate, but opponents of the Bill cannot have it both ways. The truth is that 15-year terms were designed, in 2007-08, to minimise the challenge of an elected Lords to the Commons. The electoral alternative to 15-year terms is five or 10-year terms, with re-election. That really is a recipe for a challenge to the primacy of the House of Commons. To oppose 15-year terms is to oppose any direct election at all. That is a perfectly principled position, but not one that I hold.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

rose—

[David Miliband]

I will come back to my right hon. Friend if I can. The real question is whether an elected second Chamber with 15-year terms will overwhelm the conventions and understandings that establish the primacy of this place, and that we all defend. I can see the truth in the argument that an elected upper House will be more demanding of the Executive, and lead to more robust debate. It might—probably will—make life more difficult for Government, though contrary to the editorial in The Times and what the hon. Member for Portsmouth North said, Cross Benchers will be protected, and will hold the balance of power in the new House. Personally, I think that a more robust challenge to the Executive from the second Chamber would be a good thing. It would make for a better Parliament. To be fair to myself, I argued for that when I was in government, as well as in opposition.

I cannot, however, see the truth in the argument that that greater challenge—that more robust debate—will lead to such difficulties that the Lords will overrun the Commons. This House will form the Government, control the finances, and have the constituency link; this House will always have the most recent—and only—electoral mandate; and this House will hold up its sleeve the ace of the Parliament Acts, which regulate the role of the other place on financial matters, and provide that this House will get its way.

In Lord Pannick’s submission to the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, he made the point that

“it is absolutely vital…for the reform Bill to specify with clarity whether or not it is the intention that the Parliament Acts should continue to apply”.

That is the Government’s intention. We must make sure, in Committee, that in all scenarios, the Parliament Acts are completely protected. The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), said yesterday that he did not want justiciability, and I understand that argument. If we are to go with that argument, we must be absolutely sure that we cement the role of the Parliament Acts, which Lord Pannick says is possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Nothing will persuade me to support the Bill. I opposed the Labour Government’s proposals, and this Bill is far worse. I have not heard any convincing arguments in its favour. Most of them boil down to the syllogism, “Something must be done. This Bill is something. Therefore this must be done.” Such sophistry has been augmented with the line, “We must act now to complete the unfinished business left for 100 years, and we must get on with it.” Well, if we have waited for 100 years, we really ought to try to get it right and not botch it, and the Bill is undoubtedly a botch.

The plain fact is that an elected second Chamber would be very different from an unelected House of Lords. No self-respecting elected Member would accept for very long being bound by the conventions that restrict the unelected Lords. If the Lords were to lose their democratic deficit, they would replace the deficit with a surplus—a democratically legitimate surplus—of the dynamism, commitment and energy that election brings to the political process and which we all try to demonstrate.

[Hazel Blears]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No. I ought to get on.

Not content with what the Lords do now, an elected Chamber would demand new duties to reflect their new democratic legitimacy, and with those duties would go new powers. I have to say to all those who are in favour of this proposal that “new powers” is the phrase that dares not speak its name in this debate. Until we get clear what job we want the second Chamber to do, we cannot sensibly decide how it should be made up. As I first said about 10 years ago, we are being asked to pick the team before we know what game it is going to play. An elected second Chamber would not play the touch rugby played under the present rules. An elected Chamber would lurch into the contact version of that game, crunching tackles and rucks and mauls with the Commons. Yet the Bill pretends that that problem does not arise.

Worse than that, the Bill does not look at what is wrong with Parliament as a whole. It has long been my view and long been my experience that Parliament is not working very well. It is not good at holding Governments to account. It is not good at controlling the raising and spending of tax. If anybody questions that, how can any of us justify the decades-long failure to pass laws which stop tax evasion? Parliament certainly is not good at passing laws that work as those who proposed them intended or that are readily understood by the people who have to try to make them work.

The House of Commons is undoubtedly the dominant Chamber, so most of the fault with Parliament must lie with us, not with the Lords, however good or bad that institution. We need to look radically at how we improve our performance. Then we need to consider, once we have done that, whether we need a second Chamber, and if so, what its functions can be. That is extremely important, because in these turbulent times people, and in particular young people, are becoming disillusioned with the political process, and not just with us. There is a danger that they will become disillusioned with democracy as a whole. We must start doing our job better before we start messing around with the House of Lords.

Business of the House

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Last week in Munich, the Prime Minister made a very important speech about the need to tackle extremist Islamist ideology. At the same time, I hear that there have been significant cuts to the organisation Quilliam, which is a very effective counter-extremist organisation. Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange for us to have a debate about how we can tackle these extremely important, complex and difficult issues, and particularly about the role of Quilliam in being very brave on that agenda?

[Sir George Young]

I join the right hon. Lady in paying tribute to the Quilliam Foundation, which does heroic work in that important area and continues to receive six-figure funding from the Government. I will draw her comments to the attention of the Home Secretary. I hope there will be broad endorsement of what the Prime Minister said in his speech on multiculturalism about the need to tackle extremism in all its forms. We cannot allow extremists to propagate their message unchallenged and we need less of the passive tolerance of recent years and more active, muscular liberalism. I would welcome a debate on that subject.

Business of the House (Thursday)

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am sure that the House is extremely grateful for that guidance, Mr Speaker.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that one of the greatest achievements in recent years has been extending participation to young people from disadvantaged communities? Salford university takes 45% of its students from the local area, and that includes many young people who otherwise would not have the chance to go to university. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the curtailment of the debate tomorrow will mean that the voices of those particularly disadvantaged young people will not be heard?

[Hilary Benn]

That is the case. With five hours, there will be an opportunity for only a relatively small number of Members to participate in the debate. The number of Members who have sought to intervene in this debate tonight is a pretty good indication of the number who will want to speak tomorrow.