Parliamentary Reform

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing for us this debate, with the support of the Backbench Business Committee. The turnout shows how many hon. Members want to discuss the subject. For me, what ran like a thread through all the speeches this afternoon was a passion for this place because of what it can do for the people whom we represent. That is why this issue matters.

Like others, I pay tribute to those who have worked to bring about reform, including, certainly in the past year or so, the Wright Committee. I pay tribute to the former Leader of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and to the current Leader of the House for the work that they have done to improve the way in which Parliament operates.

The other thing that has been striking about today’s debate is the number of hon. Members who have come along and said, “My mind has been moved by my experience in the House.” It is very encouraging to see so many newly elected Members here. People’s minds have also been moved by the quality of the argument and the force of the case that has been put. We owe a lot to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion for the cogent and forceful way in which she has argued the case.

The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) referred to recent events surrounding the resignation of the hon. Member for Belfast West. The Leader of the House has been so good as to come and listen to the debate, although he is not winding up. When I suggested a change in the system, because I believe that if a Member wants to resign, they ought to be able to write to the Speaker and say, “I hereby resign from the House of Commons,” the Leader of the House chided me slightly by saying that our procedure for the Chiltern hundreds had stood us in good stead for, as I recall, some 260 years and the Government were not inclined to change it. His reputation as a reformer goes before him. I trust that that is not an argument that we will hear deployed too often when we come to debate some of the other changes that have been discussed this afternoon, because the response to any proposal put forward by hon. Members should be that it will be considered on its merits. We certainly should not argue, “Well, we’ve always done it this way.” We should argue the case, listen to the different views—we have heard a very wide range of views this afternoon—and make a decision.

The work of the Wright Committee and others has meant that real change has happened. The election of Select Committee Chairs and membership has been a very important step in taking those positions away from the power of Governments and Whips and putting them in the hands of hon. Members. Select Committees are a very powerful force in the House. The change has been an important assertion of the principle of independent scrutiny of what the Executive do.

More urgent questions have been granted. I pay tribute, if one can without breaching parliamentary order, to Mr Speaker, because he has certainly increased the number that are granted. The fact that more Back Benchers are now called to ask questions—business questions and others—has helped to re-energise the Chamber.

For me, however, the most significant change of the lot has been the creation of the Backbench Business Committee. In fairness, a reading of history would probably suggest that the Executive really grabbed control of time at some point in the 17th century. The creation of the Backbench Business Committee has wrested back for Back Benchers the opportunity to determine what we debate, how we debate it and whether it is put to a vote. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) for the skill with which she has chaired the Committee and for the really open way in which she and the other members of the Committee meet every week and say to hon. Members, “Come and tell us what you want to discuss.”

The salon, so christened by the Leader of the House, is an open and transparent way for Members to have the chance to say, “This is what we would like to discuss.” It is a profound change, and we are still getting to grips with it, but one occasion crystallises the force of the change in my mind. That was the first of the Backbench Business Committee’s debates, on contaminated blood, which included a vote. I have never encountered such a thing in my time in the House. We have seen that same force in this afternoon’s debates, and there will be another example next week with the debate on voting rights for prisoners.

[Mr Bone]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an interesting point. On transparency—he was discussing votes—does he share my desire that, in order for people to see what is really going on in Parliament, if voting is organised by the business manager, in other words it is whipped, it should be displayed in public and recorded in Hansard? If the party is whipping people to vote in a particular way, those outside should be able to see it.

[Chris Bryant]

They could tweet it.

[Hilary Benn]

From a sedentary position, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) suggests how it could be done.

I am not convinced that that is the most urgent of the reforms that is needed. The truth is that there is a tension here. On the one hand, we are members of parties; some are on their own and others have more around them, but that is part of the reason why we are elected to this place. We may or may not have great qualities as individuals, but we are elected because of what we represent, but that bringing together enables Parliament to do business. The other part of the tension is how that impinges on Members exercising their independent judgment, a point that I shall return to in a moment.

I welcome the Procedure Committee’s report on ministerial statements, and its inquiry into sitting hours. I sense that we have a moment for further reform. Today’s debate demonstrates that, not least because there are long-standing Members here today who have expressed an interest and shared their views with us, and there are many new Members here—a large number of new Members. That is why the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion has done us such a great service. One thing that struck me today, which is not always the case in all debates, was that as the hon. Lady spoke—indeed, as all hon. Members spoke—every one of us was listening intently to what was being said, which is how it should be. That is a characteristic of Westminster Hall, and sometimes—and sometimes not—it is a characteristic of the main Chamber, which tells us something about the importance of our discussion.

Turning to the specific proposals, I agree that we should consider ways to provide greater certainty about when votes are taking place, and I am all for considering ways to speed up the process. However, the chance for Members to come together collectively is important, and it is the reason for the proposed change. On sitting hours, I am in favour of returning to 11.30 am to 7 pm on Tuesdays, and I am in favour of moving private Members’ Bills to Tuesday or Wednesday evenings. It is wrong that Members should have to make a choice on a Friday between their constituency responsibilities—many choose to exercise them, myself included—and considering legislation. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), I agree that Bills should be disposed of by a vote and not by trying to talk them out.

[Joan Ruddock]

I ask my right hon. Friend to confirm that when we sat three hours earlier on Tuesdays, it was possible for all Parliament’s business to function perfectly well, including the Speaker, the Committees, the staff and everyone else. Those hours have huge value, because they provide the scope for private Members’ Bills and the certainty of Friday being a constituency day.

[Hilary Benn]

I agree completely. The neatness to the solution of having private Members’ Bills on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings is this. One of the arguments against the old hours was that, “Well, the place is dead in the evenings,” but there would be plenty to discuss for those who wish to stay and take part. That would acknowledge the fact that we have responsibilities to our constituencies, which we all understand, and would not put us in a bind.

As for amendments and explanations, I am absolutely in favour of the recommendation. We had an experiment, but not everyone did so. A simple way to ensure that everybody does it is to say that those who want to table an amendment must offer an explanation or it will not be considered.

Turning to the broader questions, many hon. Members have mentioned balancing competing pressures on time, and we happen to be sitting in one of the solutions. The Adjournment debates that take place in Westminster Hall are hugely important for Back Benchers who want to raise issues and get an answer from Ministers. A number of ideas relating to that have been suggested by the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) and others. The Procedure Committee has recommended that we use this place to question Ministers on written ministerial statements, which is a most sensible suggestion that I hope the House will adopt. The other question is who should control the time, as we seek to expand it to deal with the competing demands.

The second matter is the fundamental one of the balance of power between the legislature and the Executive.

[Chris Bryant]

By convention, constitutional Bills are dealt with entirely on the Floor of the House. In practice, the process of going through them line by line means that we end up with fewer hours of debate. I wonder whether there is a means of having those debates in Westminster Hall, so as to allow a longer debate, more in the style of a normal sitting on the Committee corridor, but with the votes still being held in the main Chamber.

[Hilary Benn]

That would be one way of addressing some of the pressures that we have been discussing. I shall return in a moment to how we could take it all forward.

I was a local councillor for 20 years and, picking up on a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), when I was first elected to the House, I was astonished at the lack of scrutiny of expenditure, because councillors went through every year’s budget line by line. We have a lot of means by which to hold the Executive to account, if we choose to exercise them, and we can discuss ways to acquire more means. My right hon. Friend has made a number of suggestions on that point.

The third question is how Parliament is seen and covered by the media. I regret the fact that there is more commentary and sketch writing about what is said in Parliament than there is reporting of what parliamentarians say. It is a bit like “Match of the Day” having about five minutes of football and 55 minutes of analysis. We have to get the balance right, but it is up to us.

We should think back to the tuition fees debate, when a wide range of views was expressed. That day, the eyes of the nation were on Parliament. My son told me that he went to the bar at university and saw something that he had never seen before—students watching the Parliament channel on television. On that day, people were looking to us, because we were debating something important. When the bankers appeared before the Treasury Committee—those folk had contributed somewhat to the economic difficulties that we face—people were interested in the process.

The fourth question is how we legislate. I agree with the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and others about the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny. With the benefit of some ministerial experience, I can say that Governments of all colours do not draft perfect legislation. The notion that the Government should unveil legislation in the House and then repel all boarders, wherever they come from, is nonsense. The act of scrutinising legislation, both pre-legislative and in Committee, means that we end up with better legislation, which is what we want. That process tests the legislation, and things that have not been thought of are exposed. I agree with those who say that we should have the chance to vote on proposals, and not see them slip off the edge of the Order Paper. The Government should have the courage of the argument and respect the vote.

Turning to how representative we are, we have not touched on House of Lords reform, because that would have taken all of our time, but I am wholly in favour of the second Chamber being 100% elected. It should be part of the system of checks and balances while recognising that the first elected Chamber should ultimately have its way.

Where do we go now? We need a process to take forward the ferment of ideas that we have heard this afternoon, and we must not lose the moment—for reasons that many Members have mentioned. The Procedure Committee, which is ably chaired by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight)—I am sorry that he is not well and we have sent our best wishes to him—is the furnace from which the ideas should come. The ideas should be presented to us; we can debate them and then have a chance to vote on them. Completely different views have been expressed this afternoon, which is great. In the end, though, we have to have a mechanism for deciding whether or not we are going to do something. Voting is a wonderful way in which we can try to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable.

Finally, why does this all matter? My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) expressed it on behalf of us all when she said that people look to this Parliament to be the forum for national debate. They want to see that their voices are heard. They want to see us solving their problems and they want their hopes and aspirations realised by what we do. In the words of the prayer, we seek

“to improve the condition of all mankind”—

I would change that to humankind—and it is good to reflect on that when we start the day. The truth is that our democracy is our best and only hope of doing those things; it is our Parliament, so let us make it work for the people whom we have the privilege of representing.