Liaison Committee

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. I do not know—perhaps we will find out later—the extent to which the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has been consulted on this and has agreed that, on Government strategic thinking, it will have its role usurped by the Liaison Committee. I am sure that all will be revealed in due course. If my hon. Friends want to intervene on these issues, I will be happy to take interventions.

The next item of the terms of reference is:

“What additional machinery of Government, knowledge and skills are necessary to support strategic thinking and effective strategy and delivery, both within individual departments, and across two or more departments, and how strategy and strategic thinking can be sustained by building consensus between the main parties”.

The fourth item on which evidence can be given is:

“Which governments around the world demonstrate best practice in strategic thinking”.

That is an opportunity for some overseas visits, no doubt, to go and see which Governments across the world are demonstrating best practice in strategic thinking.

The next item of the terms of reference—the sixth—contains the first reference to Select Committees:

“How Select Committees consider strategic questions, including any recent examples of scrutiny of Government strategic plans and/or their delivery; and elements of Government strategy- and delivery that are repeatedly identified by Select Committees as effective or as deficient”.

At least that item on which evidence is sought is relevant to the purported nature of the inquiry. The next item in the terms of reference is:

“The engagement of individual departments, and Whitehall as a whole, with Select Committees on strategic challenges, including through the provision of information necessary for effective scrutiny.”

The next one is:

“What additional resources”—

more taxpayer’s money is going into this, I can see—

“parliamentary procedure, knowledge and skills are necessary to support effective Select Committee scrutiny of strategic thinking and effective strategy-making, as well as monitoring implementation of any Government action in response”.

This is a great one:

“How other parliaments around the world are engaging with the strategic thinking of their respective governments.”

Well, what an inquiry. It could take years, could it not? Woe betide whoever is appointed a special adviser under the terms of the motion before us. They will need to be handsomely remunerated, will they not, for the time and effort they put into the inquiry? They will have a global remit.

I speak as a member of two Select Committees—the Procedure Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee. The Environmental Audit Committee is cross-cutting and looks at the effect of the Government’s environmental policies across a whole range of areas. The Liaison Committee seems to be creating a new cross- cutting Select Committee covering public administration, strategic thinking, oversees democracy and so on. I want to hear the justification for that, what the cost is likely to be and how this idea ever got a start. Was it discussed by the Liaison Committee? Did it agree those very wide terms of reference? Did it think through the implications? In supporting the motion, has the Leader of the House thought through exactly what that strategic thinking is all about?

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I apologise for not being in the Chamber for the start of the debate, but I have been listening to my hon. Friend carefully on the television.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Can I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is absolutely customary to be in at the start of a speech if the right hon. Gentleman is going to intervene?

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg]

This is such an important debate and my hon. Friend is raising such an important point about the fundamentals of the Liaison Committee. Do I understand from what he is saying that the Committee would need to change its name if it takes on those responsibilities, because its job is simply liaison, not to go further than that?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. That is why I am worried about the mission creep. We have the Liaison Committee proposal set out in the press release to which I have been referring, but it bears little resemblance to the motion on the Order Paper, which states that

“the Liaison Committee shall have power to appoint specialist advisers in relation to its inquiry on Strategic thinking in Government.”

Its inquiry purports to be on the ability of Select Committees to scrutinise strategic thinking across Government, which is completely different. As anybody who has been listening to the terms of reference will know, it is not limited to strategic thinking across our Government, but restricted to strategic thinking across all Governments that are members of the United Nations. So it has an enormously wide remit.

I must say that I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chair of the Committee, on his imagination and breadth of vision. He could have a job for life fulfilling this important role. But our job in questioning matters like this, which are put on the Order Paper and would otherwise go through on the nod, is to say, “Well, hang on a minute, what are we about? Have the members of the rest of the Select Committees thought about the implications, the costs and the dangerous precedent that is being set?” It is only in this Parliament that we got the exception to have a Chair of the Liaison Committee who is not already a Chair of another Select Committee, but how will the members of the Liaison Committee be able to give their time and devotion to this particular subject?