Parliamentary Reform

James Gray Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Natascha Engel]

Absolutely. To widen that point, I want to see Westminster Hall being used as a more experimental Chamber. As the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden said, some of the experiments that were conducted in the past worked and some did not. That is what experiments are all about, to see whether or not they work, and unless we actually have a go at them we will not find out. Westminster Hall seems to be exactly the type of forum where we can conduct those experiments. I would have ministerial statements and any number of things taking place in Westminster Hall that currently we may or may not do in the main Chamber.

I want to make a very broad point before I make my one suggestion for parliamentary reform. That broad point is about being very clear what we as parliamentarians do and to make that our starting point for reform. I was with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion when we were giving evidence to the Procedure Committee on reforming sitting hours, in a pre-inquiry seminar, and one of the points that emerged is that every MP is different. There are different parties, but MPs are also different as individuals. They have different lives, different backgrounds and different experiences that they bring to Parliament. No one way of doing things will suit everybody, but we have come quite far from there being a clear idea of what we do in Parliament. The increasing focus that we have given our constituency work, which is something that has been happening over a long period, not only undermines the work that used to be done by local councillors and local authorities—work that they should be doing—but there has been a direct correlation between the amount of time that we spend doing very local constituency casework and the amount of time that we do not spend scrutinising legislation in Parliament and holding the Executive to account. I wonder whether the Hansard Society would like to carry out some proper research into that issue. It is a very important case that we need to make.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely good point. Does she agree that there is a direct correlation between the increasing power of the Executive, which we have seen over the last 20 years, and the increasing quantity of time spent by Back Benchers doing stuff that should be done by somebody else in their constituencies? What we want is people here in Parliament, working hard, holding the Government to account and getting a grip of the Executive.

[Natascha Engel]

Yes. I would not like to say that we should never go back to our constituencies, but the hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair point.