House of Commons Governance

Debate between Jack Straw and Julian Lewis

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I accept that there are such problems. This is a grade I listed building. I do not dispute the dedication of staff, but stronger leadership and greater clarity are needed.

We propose that the position of Clerk and chief executive should be split. There should in future be a Clerk, and working alongside her or him, there should be a new post of director general of the House of Commons. We had lots of debate about nomenclature. Others may lift the veil on the wide range of titles we considered. We decided on this title, rather than CEO or COO and many others, because, as we say in paragraph 157, we wanted a title that emphasised the authority of the new post, and would allow it to evolve unburdened by preconceptions.

As a consequence of calling this senior person director general of the House of Commons, the people currently titled directors general will need to be re-titled directors. There is a separate issue about whether the new post should become an additional accounting officer, an arrangement that exists in some Government Departments. I hope the Commission will consider that.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given that there is going to be a split and that there will be an authoritative figure in charge of the management of the House of Commons, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what would happen if there were a decision about management taken by the new director general with which the Clerk disagreed? What would happen then?

[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.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jack Straw and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

That has been the charge against the ISC in the past, and I am glad that things are going to change. However, I can tell my hon. Friend that I have given evidence to the ISC on a number of occasions, and it is no patsy Committee. It is composed of senior parliamentarians from both Houses, and they do a proper and effective job. The challenge for my hon. Friend is to explain how, given the nature of its subject matter, that job could conceivably be done by means of open hearings. It is not possible. The choice is between an ISC that operates in the way that the Bill proposes, and the absence of any kind of parliamentary scrutiny. I know which I choose.

Let me now deal with the arguments that have been advanced against closed material proceedings. The most frequently used argument is that we should resort to public interest immunity certificates. I accept that, if possible, gisting should be used or the court should sit in camera, but in most cases those options are not possible. Public interest immunity certificates are used fairly often, but they work effectively only when the evidence that they seek to exclude is relatively peripheral to the proceedings. If they are used in relation to evidence that is central to the case, they make it impossible for a trial of the action to take place at all. They do not protect evidence and make it safely usable in court; they exclude it altogether.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the observation by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)—I am sorry that he is no longer in the Chamber—that PII certificates have not imperilled national security was obviously correct but utterly banal? As long as we are willing to drop all these cases and pay millions of pounds, national security will not be affected, but the Exchequer will be.

[Mr Straw]

Yes, and using PII certificates in respect of evidence that is central to a case is profoundly unjust to both sets of parties.

Dinah Rose is a leading critic of the proposals in the Bill. I have looked carefully at her response to the consultation document, which was published earlier this year.

She stated,

“PII is not perfect—it does result in some cases being tried without all evidence being available.”

She also stated that in rare cases:

“PII may also result…in a situation in which a party is ordered to disclose a document which it is not prepared to disclose, leaving it no alternative but to settle the claim.”

She is being disingenuous, because in these national security cases we are talking about not a document—her word—but bundles of documents that are central to the adjudication of the action.

I, like the Minister, dealt with lots of PII cases and had to work through them very carefully. If there were thousands of documents, as there would be in these cases, a Minister would have to take a month or so off to operate that and, at the end, if the court accepted the PII application, there would be evidence that could not be used in the case.

Ms Rose concludes her summary by referring to the need for “potential misconduct” by the agencies to

“see the light of day”.

I absolutely agree with her sentiment. The problem is that in the absence of CMPs, there is no way of determining misconduct by members of the agencies in a civil action. The most that can happen is a settlement out of court with a payment into court but no admission of liability. That is profoundly unjust to both sides. It is unjust to the complainant, who might well have right on their side but who is denied the means to have the court find in their favour, and equally unjust to the agencies and their staff, who might also have right on their side but no means of making their defence.

In the other place, various amendments were made that were designed to strengthen the role of the courts in determining whether and, if so, how CMPs should be used. They will be examined upstairs and I look forward to the result of the Committee. I am in no doubt about the necessity of the Bill and if the sceptics want to make the agencies more accountable, they should have this Bill—

Constitution and Home Affairs

Debate between Jack Straw and Julian Lewis

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I will make a little more progress before giving way to the hon. Gentleman.

For seven years after the 1999 change, the absence of any clear consensus blocked further reform. It will be recalled that in early 2003, this House voted against every single one of seven alternative propositions put before it, ranging from an all-appointed to an all-elected House of Lords. I took over responsibility for Lords reform, in that time-honoured passage from Foreign Secretary to Leader of the House, and duly established a cross-party group. Its key conclusions, which worked very well, were set out in a February 2007 Green Paper.

Thankfully, in March 2007 this House voted emphatically in favour of two consistent propositions—an 80% or 100% elected House of Lords—and against all other choices. That proposition for a wholly or mainly elected House has been the foundation for progress since. The cross-party group re-met for 15 months and did a great deal of detailed work on how an elected Lords might operate, and its conclusions were contained in the July 2008 White Paper.

At the most recent general election—for the first time—all three parties were clearly committed to action to secure an elected House of Lords. Further work to ensure that should be straightforward: a great deal has already been done, including, as the Deputy Prime Minister knows, the drafting of many of the key clauses to form the central part of any Bill. I pledge that my party will work constructively on that with him and his Administration, and with luck, we may be able to mark the centenary of the first Parliament Act with legislation finally to meet its long-term goal.

The proposal for a referendum on voting reform is another long-running issue in British politics. It took the expenses scandal for broad agreement to emerge that at the very least the British people should be given the opportunity to decide whether they wish to continue with the existing first-past-the-post system or to move to the alternative vote system. Legislation for an AV referendum was agreed earlier this year by the House by a very substantial majority of 365 to 187. That would have become law by the general election but for the refusal of the Conservative party to allow it to go through in the so-called wash-up. I am glad that the rather spurious objections that the Conservatives raised then have now dissolved. We shall, of course, support clauses on AV if they are put before the House in a similar form to last time.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that in the course of the competitive negotiations with the Liberal Democrats as to which side was going to form a Government, his party offered the Liberal Democrats a deal whereby AV would be rammed through this House without a referendum?

[Mr Straw]

The answer is no. I would also say to the hon. Gentleman that a very significant proportion of Labour Members, including myself, would never have accepted such a proposition had it been put forward—let us be absolutely clear about that.

We support proposals for recall, which we proposed before the election, although the detail will have to be carefully thought through.

Many of the other aspects set out in the coalition agreement are non-controversial. I am glad to see the Administration support the proposals of the Wright Committee, and I hope that we will see good progress made on them. I say parenthetically, on a subject that concerned me greatly when I was in government, that I continue to be concerned about how we conduct our Report and Committee stages on the Floor of the House.

There is another unsatisfactory matter, and I hope that the Leader of the House will consider it. Since there is likely to be some element of timetabling, or even if there is not, we need better order when the House is considering legislation clause by clause, not least by allowing the Chair a discretion to set time limits on speeches. One of the most important functions discharged by this House on the Floor of the House is the consideration of legislation. The old system before 1997 led to great frustration, as did the system post-1997. What we have not yet got right is adequate provision to ensure that Back Benchers especially can take part constructively in debates without those debates being undermined either by too hasty Government timetables or, frankly, by some Back Benchers hogging the whole of the time by filibustering.