Modernisation Committee

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I am surprised that the Leader of the House did not speak to this motion. Obviously the House needs a Modernisation Committee, and obviously there is a great deal of work to be done by that Committee—there are many things we could modernise, including the voting and the hours, which the Committee will have to draw attention to.

My question to the Leader of the House is this. There is a group of five colleagues who were elected independently to Parliament for the first time. I am not seeking a job, by the way—I am not seeking to be on the Committee. However, I do think that the knowledge and experience that is brought to bear in this House by people who have come here through an abnormal route—that is, not through party machinery—could bring a great deal of value to the work of the Committee and help to inform its work. Is the Leader of the House prepared to consider changing the format of the Committee to include representatives of all groupings in the House, so that they can all help to make it work in a more modern and efficient way, and so that our time is better used than—in my experience—by spending hours and hours going through the Division Lobby when we could quite easily vote electronically, for example?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for what she has said about inclusion. That is welcome of course, but it seems to me that an even better form of inclusion of the views of all parties in the House would be through membership of the Committee so that they are at every meeting, rather than dependent on the generosity or largesse of the Committee as a whole to invite them to give evidence.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman again for that, but this is a balance. The membership make-up of the Committee reflects that of all Select Committees of this House, and to achieve a proportion where one place would be available for a smaller party would mean a very big Committee indeed—even then, only one smaller party would be represented and not all. My approach will be to make sure that the smaller parties are regularly invited into the Committee, are regularly engaged and are regularly asked for their thoughts ahead of and during inquiries. That is a more meaningful way to collate all the views of the different parties and groupings in this place, given how the membership of the Committee has to come about.