Select Committee Effectiveness, Resources and Powers

Hywel Francis Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chair of the Liaison Committee. I apologise for missing the first minute or so of the right hon. Gentleman’s excellent and cogent contribution. I was speaking in Westminster Hall on a matter of great interest and concern to him: the Welsh language and the Welsh language channel.

I welcome the report and wish to identify three recommendations that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has already begun to implement to the benefit, I hope, of both Houses. The first concerns best practice and a recommendation on away-days. We have implemented that recommendation in order to discuss which inquiries we should choose and review our work. In doing so, we have engaged with civil society and outside organisations, and it has been a worthwhile exercise.

Secondly, there was a recommendation on leading questioners. Our Committee may be a little unusual, because its members come from two Houses and have a wide range of experience. Decisions on certain inquiries are often led by the recommendation of a particular member. For example, the inquiry on independent living came from a strong proposal from an eminent and experienced member at the time—Baroness Campbell of Surbiton. Although it was implicit, we all recognised that she was the expert, and she basically led that inquiry. Equally, the Committee’s well-known inquiry on extradition was proposed by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), and for most of the time we deferred to him. I was delighted that both inquiries resulted in unanimous reports.

One intriguing recommendation that I warmly recognise and embrace concerns the importance of principles of diversity and of engaging as fully as possible with civil society and small but well-known groups at national level. For example, yesterday we met Praxis community projects. It has helped a small group, Better Futures, which related to our inquiry into young unaccompanied migrant children. I am certain that the inquiry and report will benefit enormously from the first-hand experiences—often very traumatic experiences—that we heard about from those young unaccompanied migrant children, some of whom were from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

On principles of diversity, we are all familiar with the fact that Chairs of Select Committees are invited to conferences, and whether it is a large international conference or a small one, I always benefit from it. I am sure the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed will recall the conference that we both attended and addressed last year on 18 April here in Westminster on Parliaments and human rights. It marked the end of the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers. It was a sobering experience to have such a wide range of voices and experiences from this country and throughout the world looking specifically at the work of my Committee, and it made me reflect on my work as a Chair and on the work of the Committee as a whole.

There have been other conferences, including one in November in Geneva on strengthening the role of parliamentarians in establishing human rights, which was organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth secretariat. Human rights are being struggled for, and people from some countries say, “We are freedom fighters and have fought to achieve what you have in your country.” It was sobering to hear them talking about their experiences and to reflect on the benefits of the Human Rights Act and the Joint Committee.

I recently had the privilege of speaking to the new commissioners on the Equality and Human Rights Commission. They scrutinised me and my Committee on our work, as we will do shortly when they come to meet us in the next few months.

On behalf of my Committee, I warmly welcome the report and look forward to implementing more and more of it. I look forward to Ministers doing the same. I am sure they will take the report seriously and ensure that officials see Committees as and when they are expected to do so. I endorse other Select Committee Chairs in thanking their Clerks—I thank my Clerks, Mike Hennessy and Mark Davies—and all their staff, for all their hard work. I look forward to them having more resources as a consequence of the implementation of the report.