James Gray
Main Page: James Gray (Conservative - North Wiltshire)Department Debates - View all James Gray's debates with the Leader of the House
(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Knight
May I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for providing time this afternoon for these debates? I have to say that I do not think it should be the Committee’s responsibility to provide this time. These are House matters relating to the procedure of the House, and I think that in future the Government should provide time for debates such as this.
All the motions arise out of reports by the Procedure Committee. For the benefit of Members I should say that House of Commons papers 800, 889 and 1104 are relevant. I thank the members of the Committee for their hard work, which goes largely unnoticed. We frequently disagree, but it is part of our strength that we have a Committee comprised of a wide range of Members from all parts of the House.
I wish to start by referring to the first motion, on hand-held electronic devices in the Chamber. The House last revised its rules on the use of such devices in the Chamber and in Committee in October 2007, and of course since that time the use of technology and the introduction of smaller and less obtrusive devices have developed rapidly, as has new software. I therefore believe we need to re-examine our rules.
I remember when I first purchased a mobile phone—I think I was one of the first people in the country to do so. I had to carry it with a shoulder strap, and the battery was larger than a large, bound volume of Hansard. It was a device that weighed about eight pounds, and it would have been totally impractical to bring it into the Chamber. Yet we now see devices that have the power of computers but are capable of being held in the palm of the hand. It is therefore right that we look again at our rules, and I hope that the House will agree to the motion before us.
As I said, the current rules go back to 2007. They permit the use of mobile phones and other hand-held devices to keep up to date with e-mails, provided that they cause no disturbance. Since 2007, the availability and use of new technology both within and outside Parliament has increased dramatically. There are many new devices, including portable tablet computers such as iPads, and smartphones, that did not exist when the Modernisation Committee drew up the report that led to our 2007 resolution. It was against that background that Mr Speaker and the Administration Committee asked the Procedure Committee to look into the matter and see whether it felt the rules should be changed. We gladly agreed to consider the matter further.
We have examined what happens in other parts of the world, and we were particularly impressed with the new and simple rule that has been introduced in the United States of America. There, the House of Representatives had previously banned the use of mobile phones and computers on the floor of the House, but on 5 January this year the new Congress agreed to a revised rule stating:
“A person on the floor of the House may not…use a mobile electronic device that impairs decorum.”
That seems to us straightforward and simple. It is designed to give discretion to the Speaker, or whoever else is in the Chair, to decide what sort of technology can be used by referring to how the device is used rather than what it is used for or what type of device it is, as was the case in the past.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I want to pick up my right hon. Friend on one very small point. He keeps talking about “us”, but I know he will acknowledge that the Procedure Committee was split on this matter, and that four of its members have signed the amendment.
Mr Knight
The Procedure Committee’s report upon which the debate is based was passed by a majority of Committee members voting on it. I am happy to acknowledge straight away that my hon. Friend has been an opponent of it from the beginning and voted against it in the Committee. I accept that this is a matter of fine judgment. I do not think it is one of those issues about which one can clearly say that the mainstream view is right and any other view is wrong, but I hope during my remarks to convince the House that, on balance, it should follow the majority view of the Committee.
I accept that there is a respectable argument that electronic devices should not be used at all in the Chamber or in Committees. It could be said that Members present at any time should be attending to the debate in hand and not undertaking any other activities, and that the use of electronic devices, even silently, could distract others. However, there are arguments the other way. I believe that the main arguments, although not all the arguments, in favour of permitting the use of electronic devices are pragmatic. The Modernisation Committee, to which I referred earlier, recommended the lifting of the restriction on hand-held devices, at least as far as e-mails were concerned, because of the possibility that allowing multi-tasking in the Chamber might increase the number of Members present in a debate. In a report specifically aimed at revitalising the Chamber, it argued:
“Members might be more willing to spend time in the Chamber listening to debates or waiting to be called if they were able to do other work at the same time, either dealing with correspondence or perhaps even using a handheld computer or laptop to deal with e-mails.”
Mr Knight
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ministers have had this facility for years. Officials in the Box have regularly passed notes to Ministers so that the latter can gauge the accuracy of points being made. Why should this be denied to the rest of us, who could obtain such information electronically? The Procedure Committee therefore concluded by a majority that Members should be allowed to use electronic hand-held devices for any purpose when in the Chamber while not speaking and that the current ban on the use of such devices as an aide-mémoire when we are speaking in a debate should be ended. I understand that even Hansard is now willing to accept notes for speeches electronically, rather than asking right hon. and hon. Members for a hard-copy of their speech. However, we all hope that such devices, if allowed to be used, will be used with discretion and due regard to decorum.
The amendment that I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire will seek to move shortly would allow hand-held electronic devices to be used in the Chamber only to receive and send urgent messages as a substitute for paper speaking notes and to refer to documents in debates. There would be no right to search for information or to check e-mails while sitting in the Chamber.
Mr Gray
I cannot understand how my right hon. Friend has interpreted my amendment to mean that there should be no searching for information. Of course, there should be. The point of the amendment is that the devices could be used for any purpose connected to the debate, but for no other purposes. Of course, under the wording of my amendment as I understand it, they could be used to search for information.
Mr Knight
The amendment removes from the motion any mention of using such devices in Committee, which is extremely unfortunate because Select Committees already circulate non-confidential papers electronically. Indeed, I understand that the Administration Committee is piloting the use of electronic devices for the provision of some House papers. However, if my hon. Friend’s amendment is passed, the Chairman of the Committee alone will determine whether an electronic device may be used. The amendment provides no guarantee of consistency in Committee use.
Mr Gray
Perhaps the drafting of the amendment is not all that it could be—had my right hon. Friend drafted it, it might be better—but if the procedure in the Chamber were changed in the way I have described, I presume that precisely the same would apply in Committee. I acknowledge that the amendment does not say that, but that is the clear implication.
Mr Knight
My hon. Friend is now telling the House what he wished his amendment would do rather than what it does. I could not recommend anyone to vote for such an amendment. He drafted it, and it takes out all references to the use of electronic devices in Committee. In my view, Members should have certainty in what they can and cannot do in Committee. Imagine a Member attending a Committee with their notes on an electronic device and the Chairman saying, “Well, in my Committee we don’t use these devices.” That Member would be left high and dry.
Luciana Berger
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That point has been made by many people engaged in the discussion about whether we should be able to continue using Twitter from the Chamber. I shall go on to refer to some of those contributions.
Many of us have a function whereby our tweets are listed on our websites for people to read, particularly for those who do not access the main Twitter website. Some MPs have been lambasted for using Twitter solely to publish press releases or to state what they are doing. Others use it to engage in debate. A conversation on a topic can unfold on Twitter via a hashtag. I started #keeptweeting to initiate an online discussion and identify what the public thought about tweeting in the Chamber. I was careful to ask what people thought about using Twitter in this place, not outside it.
The fact that the amendment has been tabled at all has provoked anger from some. For example, @RichSwitch said:
“No wonder people think Politicians are out of touch”.
There were many tweets offering reasons why Chamber tweeting should continue. I will not read them all, but I have picked a few relating to a number of themes. Some see it as a means of engagement. For example, @LeamingtonSBC said:
“Surely anything which widens public participation in the democratic process is a good thing!”
Similarly, @NHConsortium said:
“Parliament already seen as cut off & static, don’t amputate it further.”
Others shared why Twitter was important to them in understanding what is going on. Thus @maggieannehayes admitted that
“parliament can be such an alien place. MPs tweeting enables us, the voters, to get a sense of what’s happening”.
Luciana Berger
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I shall come on to the responses of people who thought that we should not continue tweeting. I have a selection here. To continue, @PercyBlakeney63 said, “Citizens deserve transparency”, while @Daisydumble said, “Censorship of MPs now”.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I accept that the quality of our contributions may vary, and I certainly make no claims for what I have said in that regard. As the hon. Lady knows, I have experienced 13 years with no practice of speaking in the House, so I am a bit of a newcomer myself.
I sometimes wonder, though, what would happen when a Member was using an electronic tablet, for example, and the power went off. That Member could be caught in a very difficult situation. It is ironic, is it not, that we are discussing this matter at a time when one of the best-known devices, owned by many Members, is having problems in achieving the purposes that some Members have extolled today.
I know that I shall not be able to stem a tide of what is, I guess, modernity, but there can be no doubt that it is transformational, and that it does not necessarily accord with the style of debate that we have used in the House over the years. Twice, when I had the privilege of sitting in the Chair, I had to restrain hon. Members from making telephone calls from the Chamber simply because the device was there. No one is suggesting that telephone calls should be made, but the fact that the device is there and can be used for that purpose does, I am afraid, lead to infringements. I also noticed that the Whips on duty on the Government and Opposition Benches were often distracted by the use of their devices and were not keeping pace with business, which created a dysfunction with the Chair.
Such devices are very compelling when they are in someone’s hand. It is not a question of what they might do, which is what is being recommended, but a question of what they can be used for. We know that people’s eyes tend to be drawn to a television screen when they visit someone else’s house. Similarly, the press of a button on a hand-held device can easily enable someone to view images from outside the House that command his or her interest. People know of my interest in cricket. How convenient it would be to ascertain what was happening in the Test match at that very moment! As the bowler was walking back to the end of his run, I should be able to look up and appear interested in what was going on in the Chamber, before looking down again at what was happening at the match.
Notwithstanding the qualified nature of the recommendation before the House—and the fact that it is accompanied by an even more curious suggested qualification from my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray)—the Chair will have no means of knowing what is actually happening when these devices are in use. When we admit them—if we do—we shall have to recognise that they can be used for a variety of purposes that the Chair will find very difficult to distinguish from one another.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
I am afraid that I will not. It would extend the length of my speech, and I do not want to do that in view of the limited amount of time left. I apologise to my hon. Friend, because I did refer to him.
It has been said that the purpose of allowing hand-held devices in the Chamber is to enable Members to get on with other activities—what my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) described as multi-tasking. I can honestly say, however, that over the years the Chair has tried to accommodate colleagues by not making them sit through the whole of debates. The convention is that Members are present for opening speeches and for the speeches immediately before and after their own, but the Chair sometimes provides guidance, bearing in mind that we are all under heavy pressure to do so many other things nowadays. I therefore do not think that the idea that Members have to be present for six hours and must get on with their work during that time is a particularly good excuse.
I am not sure whether this still happens, but I know that the public have complained about the fact that the Chamber is so often empty and have asked, “Where are they? What are they doing?” One of my constituents said to me once that any Member who was not in his place in the Chamber for the whole of a debate should be deselected. That has been the level of misconception outside the House. But now, as they look around the Chamber, the public are beginning to notice that Members are, in fact, doing something. A moment ago I saw several colleagues, heads down. It is not a question of whether they are able to multi-task, or whether they are unable to listen to what is being said; it is a question of what the public think they are doing—and they do appear to be distracted from what is going on. That is a reputational point, and the House should consider it. Although I suspect that the House will bow to the inevitable and say, “This is progress,” we must be aware of the direction in which we are heading and understand that the character of our debates is likely to alter.
The Administration Committee report suggested that we should trial this move much more in Committee first, and I still believe that. I used to have doubts on this subject. When I was the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Chairman’s Panel, we were rather opposed to the use of laptops, but I think that the tablet is different. It is less obtrusive and can be used effectively to deal with notes on clauses and all matters related to Committee work. I encourage this course of action, therefore, and that is why the Administration Committee is trying out how to operate in a paperless manner.
To my mind therefore, a better balanced response would have been to say, “Let’s see how this works in Committee before considering whether there is an essential difference between the work in Committee and the work in the House.” My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), for whom I have great respect, said what he was commending was a balanced approach on hand-held devices. I think the Administration Committee proposal, which I have advocated in my speech, would have offered a better balance still.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak and to Mr Speaker for selecting the amendment that stands in my name and those of a goodly number of right hon. and hon. Members from across the Chamber. I thank you for allowing a goodly amount of time for this important and useful debate. I do not intend to take up much of the House’s time, because a number of useful speeches have addressed most of the important arguments on both sides of the debate.
I very much agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), who started the debate by saying that this is a matter of taste, discretion and delicacy. There are not passionate arguments on either side. One side is not definitely right and the other side definitely wrong. It is a matter of how we handle such machines, what we use them for, what their purpose is and how we ensure that debate in the Chamber is as good as possible.
In fact, as is often the case when we discuss matters that affect ourselves, today’s debate on the issue has been among those of the highest quality that I have heard recently. My right hon. Friend’s Committee was split on the report; four of us have signed the amendment disagreeing with it. We go from his stance, which is that virtually any electronic device can be used for virtually any purpose either in the Chamber or in Committee, through to that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), a former Deputy Speaker—he is by no means a dinosaur in this matter—whose broad view is that such devices should not be used for any purpose whatsoever.
I received a letter from a very senior Member with which I would not necessarily agree. He said that he felt that the rules applying in the House should be precisely the same as those applying at the opera—we should not use such devices at all—and there is some sense in that, although I do not necessarily agree with it.
Mr Gray
I shall not give the House a song; I fear that my voice does not rise to that.
I would not necessarily agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), who focused on the use of electronic devices for Twitter. It is right that I suggested in the e-mail that I sent to all hon. Members that we should probably not use Twitter and blogging, although I will suggest how we might be able to use them. I am not necessarily totally opposed to the notion of twittering.
The main thrust of my amendment, and of my thoughts on the subject—and the thoughts of a great many hon. Members who have spoken to me—is that if we allow unfettered use of electronic devices, three things will happen. The first is that the quality of debate will decline. Let me give an example. Recently, I chaired a Public Bill Committee. Glancing round the room, I saw that some two thirds of the people on the Committee were using electronic devices for one purpose or another. That included the shadow Minister, the Minister, both Whips, and six or eight Back Benchers, one of whom, rather magically, was using two electronic devices simultaneously; how on earth he managed to do that I have simply no idea. It seemed to me that the fine technical point being made about the Pensions Bill—for that was the Bill—was not necessarily being considered carefully by the two thirds of the Committee who were using those machines at that time. Had I challenged members of the Committee to lay out precisely what the person speaking had just said, a very large percentage of them would have looked at me blankly, and would not have had the faintest idea what was going on.
I totally accept the point made by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), that we can all multi-task. Of course we can; there is no question about that. MPs do it all the time. However, I simply do not believe that the finer points of argument in a debate will necessarily be picked up if one is focusing one’s mind on something else. The purpose of debate is not just for our own voices to be heard, or to get something on the record; we could do that by handing the speech in, as they do in the United States of America. The purpose of debate is to listen carefully to what the other person is saying, to pick up the other person on fine illogicalities in their speech, to make delicate points, and hopefully to come to some kind of useful conclusion. If a person is focusing on emptying their inbox, surfing the net, tweeting or who knows what else—famously, recently a member of the Italian Parliament was spotted surfing an escort site—while theoretically listening carefully to a debate, they are not taking part in it in the way that they should.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
The crux of the issue has been touched on. In the Welsh Assembly, every Member sits in front of a computer. Earlier this year, the Conservative Assembly Member for North Wales, Brynle Williams, passed away at a very young age. A Labour Member, paying tribute to him on the radio, said, “When Brynle Williams spoke in the Chamber, we stopped working on our computers and listened.” Is that not the crux of the issue?
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and it is useful to hear of his experience of the Welsh Assembly, where such changes have been made. Elsewhere around the world, there are examples of all kinds of Parliaments where people use the devices excessively and so are not taking proper part in the debate. [Interruption.] I am being passed a message—on paper—from the Whip, which reminds me to move my amendment; I shall indeed do so. I am most grateful to her; had she passed me that electronically, I would not have got it.
I beg move amendment (a) to motion 1, leave out from ‘used in the Chamber’ to end and add—
‘to a minimal extent, silently and with decorum, to receive and send urgent messages, as a substitute for paper speaking notes and to refer to documents for use in debates, but not for any other purpose.’.
That useful intervention from my hon. Friend the Whip leads me to the second reason why I feel uneasy about unfettered use of electronic devices. Whereas at the moment outside interests—including, dare I say it, the Whips Office—may have some influence over what we do or say, or how we vote in this place, by and large they have to exercise that influence in writing, prior to the debate. It would be particularly unhelpful if, during a speech or debate, outside interests—lobbyists, businesses and groups of all kinds—got in touch with us on our electronic devices and said, “I think you should ask the Minister such and such a question, because that is a weak point in their argument,” or “I think you should do this or that.” We should be listening carefully to the logic of the other person’s speech, and seeking to counter that argument not because a lobbying company or the Whips have asked us to do so, but because it is what we want to do.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend not accept that that is possible under the rules as they stand? It is perfectly possible right now, under the rules of the House, for someone to receive a message and check it in debate.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and if that were to happen, I would decry it. The purpose of my amendment is to say that electronic devices should be used for the purposes of the matter under debate and no other purpose. If the Chamber was seen to be full of people blogging, tweeting and surfing the net, it would risk bringing the Chamber into disrepute.
Zac Goldsmith
Does my hon. Friend not agree that one of the reasons MPs exist is so that people can lobby them with a view to influencing Parliament?
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, I was a professional lobbyist for a number of years and so have no difficulty with that whatever. It is of course right that all sorts of interest groups around the world, from journalists to lobby groups, should be able to make their views known to us, but I am not certain about the propriety of a lobby group, the Whips or anyone else getting in touch with us during the course of a debate or a Select Committee evidence session to say, “Here’s an interesting point you ought to raise.” Would it really be right for outside interest groups to get in touch with us via electronic devices during Select Committee cross-examinations, for example of the Murdochs, and say, “Here’s something you ought to say”? I think that that would be an unreasonable intervention in our internal debates by outside influences.
Chris Bryant
Well, I was not a member of that Committee, but that is just one minor factual inaccuracy of several that we are passing by. The point I was going to make is that one of the oldest rights of members of the public and constituents is the right to come to the Lobby and demand that we come out of a debate to listen to their point of view, so I do not see the difference.
Mr Gray
The difference is extremely simple. Someone outside communicating via an electronic device during a debate is not equivalent to a member of the public coming to Central Lobby, filling in a green form and asking to speak to us; it is equivalent to a member of the public coming into the Chamber and saying, “Would the hon. Gentleman please ask this question?”, which I do not believe is right. We should be debating among ourselves and not excessively involving people outside.
Most people agree that excessive use of electronic devices is not a good thing. Two or three objections have been raised with me. The first relates to the fact that we must all sit here for six or seven hours before finally being called to speak. That could be corrected in two ways: first, Members could take a greater interest in the debate; and secondly, we could perhaps move to the system enjoyed at the other end of the Palace, where peers have some indication of when they will speak. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, and your colleagues tend to indicate when Members will be called to speak, but the notion that we should sit here clearing our inboxes or writing articles on electronic devices for local newspapers because we are a little bored and cannot be bothered to listen to a debate seems a thin argument.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman makes his case powerfully, although I do not necessarily agree with it. Is not the key issue that Members can best engage in debate by being in the Chamber? If we are outside doing the work of clearing inboxes, the example he raised, we cannot be present listening to the arguments. I agree that Members should be present in the Chamber more often, but I believe that his amendment would prevent that.
Mr Gray
On the contrary, my amendment encourages Members to make use of their electronic devices in the Chamber for purposes connected with the debate. That is the important point about the amendment.
The last main objections that have been raised concern the fact that the amendment’s proposals would be very difficult to police. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, sent out a letter in July stating that although any such ban on the use of hand-held devices would be difficult to police, it would none the less be down to the individual discretion and decency of hon. Members not to use them. There are all kinds of conventions and rules in this place that we observe. They do not have to be written down or policed. The fact of the matter is that there are things that we agree to do, and I believe that the amendment's proposal should be one of them.
If we allow the Procedure Committee’s report to be agreed as printed, we will end up with a Chamber full of Members staring at their electronic devices—I can see three or four doing so now. I suspect that those looking in from outside, whether from the Public Gallery or on television screens, would say, “What are those people doing? We used to object to the Chamber being too empty. It has filled up a little, but look at them all playing with their electronic devices.” I think that it brings the whole nature of debate in this place into some disrepute. I would like to see the standard of debate maintained. We are the mother of Parliaments. Let us engage with each other in detailed and logical debate and not spend an excessive amount of time on our electronic devices.
Chris Bryant
I understand, because the hon. Gentleman is the Member for Wycombe, and I know how such issues affect people there, but if he had not intervened, we would get on to the next business faster.
I want to correct a couple of points made by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray). He seemed to think that I was on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. I should point out that I am not @tom_watson. There are a few differences between us, although we are often seen together.
I should also say that although he has been much misquoted, John Bright, the Liberal Member of Parliament, did not say that we—the House of Commons—were the mother of Parliaments; he said that England is the mother of Parliaments. That is because he believed—this is an important point—that we had to be transformed as history is transformed. I would say that Parliament has always been bad at opening itself up to the public. Indeed, in 1376 we first decided that we would take an oath of secrecy to ensure that nobody outside this place knew what was going on here. It took many centuries to get rid of that oath of secrecy, which was why John Wilkes ended up being expelled from the House of Commons on four occasions and had to be re-elected before eventually being allowed to publish what went on this House.
It is not a question of being dinosaurs or anything else; it is about opening Parliament up to the wider world around us, so that people can understand everything that goes on here. It is not for our convenience, but for our constituents’ convenience. The world has changed. When I was first elected in 2001, the vast majority of my constituents got in touch with me by coming to a constituency surgery. Now the vast majority get in touch by Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and, sometimes, text messages. We should make that more possible for our constituents, not more difficult.
Incidentally, I wholeheartedly agree with @KevinBrennanMP, who said earlier that proper wi-fi should be available in the Chamber so that people can engage properly. I disagree with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire that only urgent messages should be dealt with. Who on earth will decide what an urgent message is? It is my constituents who should decide what an urgent message is.
Chris Bryant
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not give way, because others want to get on to the next debate.
I have this picture in my mind of the Speaker going over to an hon. Member and demanding to see their last tweet or this place setting up “Oftwit” to ensure that Members are behaving properly. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has only to listen toour constituents to find out what they are moreinterested in.
Members have said how inappropriate it would be if facts were brought to bear in debate, but that is what the officials Box is there for. [Interruption.] I see them smiling. Perhaps we should abolish the officials Box, so that Ministers have to rely on their own wit and intelligence. Would it not also be good if “Erskine May” was available online so that people could refer to it in the Chamber instead of having to buy a copy for several hundred pounds?
I want to respond to a couple of points that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made. She is absolutely sincere in wanting to make our business more intelligible to people. However, I would like to know how explanatory notes to amendments would stand legally if an amendment were carried. There is a danger in proceeding down that route. In addition, I would have thought that the whole point of a debate on an amendment was to decide what it meant and what it did; just accepting at face value what the hon. Member who tabled it had said would not assist.