Oral Answers to Questions

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that since Channel 4 barely makes an operating profit, any future economic value is more likely to come from cutting broadcasting and production costs, and there may therefore be little public service role for it if it were to be so treated?

[Mr Vaizey]

I note what the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee says. No doubt under his new remit he will want to make an inquiry into Channel 4. That inquiry might note that Channel 4 has increased its investment in broadcasting by 15%, which is welcome.

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[Mr Vaizey]

I hope it is in order for me, Mr Speaker, to congratulate the hon. Lady on her recent marriage. She makes an extremely important point. I thought that Taylor Swift’s intervention was well made. As technology changes how we access and buy music, it is important that we put the rights of the creators at the forefront of our minds. This Department, particularly under this Secretary of State, will do everything that it can to preserve the intellectual property rights of creators and ensure that they are fairly remunerated.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

T5. On Saturday, I will have the colossal joy of sitting at Edgar Street and watching the first home game of Hereford football club—the new football club in my constituency. Will the sports Minister join me in congratulating the new club, the Hereford United Supporters Trust and all the fans who have got behind it? Does she share my view that more can be done to crack down on and improve the owners and directors test, which has signally failed so far and which needs to be improved if we are to improve governance in our grassroots football?

[Tracey Crouch]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the work that he has done in supporting Hereford United over the past few years. We will look into these issues in further detail, but he has to wait a few more weeks for the support strategy to be published.

English Votes on English Laws

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I do, but the hon. Gentleman must surely accept that what is being proposed through changing Standing Orders is not an appropriate way of addressing it. As I have already said times without number, I fully accept that several anomalies have been created by devolution, starting in 1999, but the answer to that is not to trash our own procedures in this House.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

No. If we are to take this to its logical conclusion—that is to say, to give a veto to the Scottish Parliament on areas that would currently be dealt with by the Sewel convention—then that will not be reclaimed by Standing Orders; it is the end of the supreme sovereignty of this House. That is why we need a sensible, more reasoned debate for which Standing Orders will always be inadequate.

[Jesse Norman]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Carmichael]

No, I am sorry—I have been generous with my time.

The logic is that we should be considering this, if it is to be considered at all, by virtue of primary legislation. I know that that brings concerns particularly to those on the Treasury Bench, and that the Leader of the House will say that it raises questions of justiciability and reviewability of decisions that would ultimately have to be taken by you, Mr Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Mr Carmichael]

Oh, okay.

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful. Is there not a clear distinction between two things? The first is whether this should be introduced by means of Standing Orders, and the second is what procedure, or method of reflection, the House may go through in deciding how and whether to adopt it, and under what circumstances. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was drawing the House’s attention to the latter point and the apparent lack of a timetable for proper consultation on this issue.

[Mr Carmichael]

The two propositions are not mutually exclusive. There are elements that could be capable of remedy through Standing Orders if we were to have a proper debate. The Government’s proposal goes too far, too fast. In principle, other changes may be possible, as we discussed in government before the general election. I do not completely exclude the possibility of proceeding in that way, but going as far as the Government want to us to go, and within their timescale, brings with it an attendant level of risk that I would consider to be irresponsible in these circumstances.

The last Government discussed whether the proposal could be addressed in a single Bill. If there is a will in the House to consider how it could be done, that would be a much more sensible way of doing it. The Government are saying that we should do it for a year and that it should then be reviewed by the Procedure Committee. I hold that Committee in very high esteem, but the only thing that would happen under that process is an examination of how the system had worked. It would not put a dangerous genie back in the bottle after it had been let out. I think we all know that that is the political reality.

Personally, I am quite relaxed about the use of primary legislation and the justiciability of decisions then made by Mr Speaker. I do not think that anybody in this House should be making any decision that would not stand up to judicial scrutiny. However, if that is to be the block, let us have a proper debate, because it must be possible to use primary legislation to deal with that very point. Surely it is necessary to have a proper description of the boundaries of judicial review and any proscriptions. Frankly, this House has never undertaken such an exercise. Judicial review as a body of law has been allowed to grow like Topsy, led by the judiciary itself.

I am aware that I have already taken up quite a lot of time, albeit with interventions.

Today’s Business of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just respond to the hon. Gentleman as follows? My strong sense, and I do take advice on these matters, is that what has been said is a matter of taste—[Interruption.] Order. If I felt the need of the advice of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley),I would seek it, but I am seeking to respond to the point of order. It is a matter of taste; it is not language that I would use, and it is certainly not language that the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) would use. I have responded to him, and I think that we should leave it there.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Progressives everywhere will surely welcome the possibility of a secret ballot throughout a Parliament, but is it not the case that this motion could not have been brought forward earlier without precisely a constraint on the potential freedom of Members to vote as they see fit?

[Mr Hague]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it can been seen in that light: the institution of a secret ballot would be an important strengthening—I will come on to this during the debate—of our parliamentary democracy. I noted earlier that there are Members, particularly Opposition Members, who feel constrained in expressing their views on this question, and indeed, have stayed silent during these exchanges. That is their right, but they do have a fear of expressing their views on this issue, as is very clear from this discussion.

Procedure of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Indeed—who is?

I must say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House—whom I revere as well—that I feel very uncomfortable about the procedure that the Government have adopted, which has allowed only an hour for debate. I think that that is unfortunate, given that we are debating a House of Commons matter. However, I cannot vote with the Opposition, because, unlike my right hon. and hon. Friends, they have displayed a monolithic, partisan approach to this issue, which has demeaned them and, I am afraid, has done no credit to the House either.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I express my sadness and regret that you have not seen fit to call any other Members to speak in support of the motion? [Interruption.]

House of Commons Governance

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I echo the sentiments that the Leader of the House has just expressed. I am sure that we all feel the same sense of sorrow on hearing that Lord Brittan has passed away.

I rise to support the motion as a member of the Governance Committee. I little thought at the outset of this process that we would end up where we have, or with as happy and constructive a result. My original goal in tabling an early-day motion on the clerkship nomination was simply to allow colleagues to express their concerns about the nomination, which has now been terminated. This came after my noble Friend Baroness Boothroyd had fired a majestic broadside of her own on the topic, in her own inimitable fashion.

Such are the vagaries of life that, in late August last year, I was in the middle of a series of walks to raise money for two outstanding local charities, the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford and the Midlands Air Ambulance, and I vividly recall standing at the cairn on the top of the Cat’s Back on the Offa’s Dyke path in the Black mountains, looking out over my gorgeous constituency and—if one can imagine such a movement from the sublime to the ridiculous—calling the House of Commons to table my early-day motion from there. That was a very rare example of successful rural mobile telecommunications, although I know that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is even now straining every sinew to improve those communications. But supported by you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and this House, the mysterious alchemy of Parliament has transmuted my original concern and that of others from base alloy into the gold of careful constitutional reform, and for that we have enormous reason to be grateful.

I do not propose to comment in any great detail on the substance of this report, except in one regard to which I shall come. But one key point needs to be made now, and it is a point that we should recall as we continue the debate. It is that the Committee came down overwhelmingly in favour of a single unified service. There is, at the heart of that idea, a balance that must be struck between the accountability to which the Clerk is entitled from the director general and the delineated areas of autonomy that the director general exercises as head of the executive committee. It is in that balance and harmony that the subtlety of the report and the recommendation lies, and it is in the success of that harmony that ultimately the balance of the good management of this House stands to be assessed.

I wish to join colleagues who have acknowledged the brilliance of the Chair of the Governance Committee. He was a model Chairman. Remarkable as it may seem to those who think about how much time he has spent in Cabinets and shadow Cabinets, he cut a comparatively naive and youthful figure as the Chair of a Select Committee. None the less, he did preside over a model of judicious, inclusive and yet rapid consultation. We took evidence from a vast and diverse array of people, which included Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, many colleagues and executives from this House, senior executives from the other House, outside experts, Clerks, our magnificent doorkeepers, security personnel, and our brilliant librarians who struggle to keep us all up to the mark with information. Perhaps the highlight was a fascinating session we had with 60 very thoughtful and committed members of staff across all levels and functions of the House. It will astonish Members to know that the remarkable achievements of the Committee are all the more remarkable given the Chairman’s commitment to the House of Commons gym.

The point came through time and again that the House of Commons is an institution unlike any other. Many people talked about the sheer difficulty of managing 650 autonomous Members of Parliament, each in effect running a small business and responding to their constituents’ concerns. That managerial challenge has been magnified over time by the increased constituency workloads of Members of Parliament; the rising numbers of their staff; heightened security concerns; the drive to make Parliament more accessible; and the need to renew the crumbling fabric of the Palace of Westminster. None the less, many witnesses testified that the House was, in general, well managed. They said that that was increasingly so in recent years.

It is important to note that we also came across areas where improvement was needed. I am talking about areas where we found poor management, unclear or overlapping responsibilities, clashing priorities, slow decision-making, lack of implementation of agreed actions, and inconsistent strategic direction. In particular, the crucial relationship between the senior statutory body, the Commission and the Management Board was not working well. All those matters have been addressed in the Committee’s report.

For me, this experience has served to ram home one key message, which is that the British constitution relies on the effective functioning of Parliament. Time and again, witnesses emphasised that it is the parliamentary function of this House that is, and must ever be, primary. The role of the Clerk is absolutely fundamental. He or she acts as the final word in procedural matters for a host of other Parliaments across the Commonwealth. When I opened the debate on the motion that established the Committee, I said that contrary to popular belief, parliamentary procedure—the rules of the game—is not some pettifogging accretion or irrelevant decoration to the business of government; it is the essence of government. This country is governed by laws, and laws are made in Parliament, and that Parliament is run according to rules and procedure. Without procedure, there could be no government.

In retrospect, I have one, and just one, regret, which it is important to place on the record. Having reflected further, I believe that the Committee could and should have recommended that the name of the candidate for Clerk should be presented in an address by Parliament to the monarch, signed perhaps by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, instead of the present system, which the Committee has left intact, whereby a letter goes to No. 10 Downing street and so to Buckingham palace. This is, after all, a purely parliamentary matter that does not concern the Executive directly at all. An address would be a cleaner and more transparent approach that would not permit a nomination to be made as it was made last year unless Parliament were sitting. I hope that that idea can be revisited by the House in future years.

I think that it is fair to say that I have established a national and perhaps even intercontinental reputation for being a bore about one of our predecessors, Edmund Burke, and the deep insights he still brings to politics and to government. Burke is the Paul Scholes of modern politics: just when the game is fizzling out and the crowd desperately needs a goal, he has an uncanny way of ghosting into the enemy’s penalty area and slotting the ball home. He does so again here. Scattered across his writings, Burke gives us seven tests of reform, seven ways by which we can judge the quality or temper of a given set of political measures over and above how we collectively and individually might feel about them.

For Burke, reform should be early, anticipating the emergence of a problem before its full effect are felt. It should be proportionate to the evil to be addressed to limit collateral effects. It should build on existing arrangements and previous reforms so that it can draw on any lessons learned from them. It should be measured, so that those making the change and those affected by it can adjust their behaviour appropriately. It should be consensual, so that it can be lasting over time regardless of changes of Administration. It should be cool in spirit, to maintain consensus throughout the process of change and, finally, every step of it must be practical and achievable in itself.

The Committee’s recommendations satisfy at least six and possibly all seven of the tests laid down by Burke and I do not think that they can have any higher recommendation than that. This is reform in the spirit of reform.

I conclude by thanking the Chairman of the Committee and my colleagues on it, the Committee staff, who did a superb job, and the Members and staff of the Commons, who will have the thankless task of making these reforms work.

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

The whole House should be grateful to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) for his work on the House of Commons administration, not least for the masterly way in which he summarised current concerns and controversies and how they have been resolved. He also briefly mentioned a slight dysfunction in co-ordination between the two Houses, and I will conclude my remarks with a small and rather sad recent example of that.

The hon. Gentleman said that there is a great difference between the atmosphere of this debate and the debate held on 10 September, and I agree. It is a measure of the success of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), and his Committee, that he has managed to reconcile two apparently irreconcilable views, and that the central question of whether it made sense for the leading procedural expert in the House of Commons also to be the chief manager of the House has apparently been decided.

In my intervention on the right hon. Gentleman I asked what would happen if there was disagreement on a matter concerning management—not procedure—between the new director general and the next incumbent of the office of Clerk. If I understood correctly, he said that it would be decided at a level that was, in a sense, above the two of them, and that it would not be a question of the Clerk overruling the director general on a matter of management that by rights ought to be in the sphere of the director general.

In our debate on 10 September, I suggested that the Committee ask itself four questions. I think we will find that those four questions have now been answered. Should a top chief executive officer be expected to be a top procedural adviser, too? The answer is clearly no. Should a top procedural adviser be expected to be a top chief executive officer? The answer is equally no. Should the two roles be combined by default in the future, as they have been in the past? Should the top procedural adviser be allowed, if the roles are separated, to overrule the top chief executive officer on management matters, or vice versa on procedural matters? I think we have learnt that the answer to those two questions is no as well.

[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend is being typically clear and precise, but the answer to the first two questions is not quite as clear as he suggests. The Committee’s decision was that the roles could be combined by one person and had been combined by one person in the past—that is the evidence for it—but that now, for reasons of other commitments and the development of the House, they should be separated.

[Dr Lewis]

I am delighted at the result, even if I do not entirely endorse the reasoning. I wish to say a word of sympathy, if not appreciation, for the situation in which the House of Commons Commission found itself a few months ago. It was faced with either making a single appointment from a very limited pool of top procedural advisers who would become, by default, the director general of the House of Commons—as if by some magical process of osmosis during their rise up the learned ladder of becoming a top procedural adviser they had somehow imbibed the skills needed to be a top chief executive officer or director general—or, alternatively, if it wished to go outside that very limited pool of possible candidates, it had to decide whether it was appropriate for a top manager to sit in the Clerk’s chair without having imbibed, by a reverse magical process of osmosis, the skills required to be a top procedural adviser. That was precisely why the message went out loud and clear, on 10 September last year, that we needed to send for the marvellous negotiating and reconciliation skills of the right hon. Member for Blackburn, to decide once and for all whether the two functions should be separated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Lewis]

In just a moment, but I want to make one more point. I know my hon. Friend is concerned with the constitutional aspects of this matter, but I am concerned with another aspect. The new arrangement will not work unless the individuals who occupy the two posts—I am glad to see the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) indicating his approval—have their respective roles clearly in their minds. If either of them tries to play games of superior status, the new system will not work. We can construct the best system in the world, but if the people who occupy the top posts are not minded to make it work, it will not be a success.

[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend shares my view that harmony at the top of the new arrangement will be vital. None the less, there is a very clear arrangement. The Clerk is top dog. The director general reports to the Clerk. The director general has clearly delineated responsibilities: the managerial delivery side. That is the unified structure that has been created and will hopefully be agreed.

The training of the Clerks—I have no interest in revisiting this, and we have generally taken the view in the debate that we will not do so—has not been ignored in previous years, although the Committee came to the view that it could be strengthened. The training of the Clerks has so far enabled the Clerk Assistant to run a department that is roughly 40% of the whole. These people do not arrive at their jobs by some mystical process; there is some structure of responsibility and training by which they achieve their posts. The Committee has decided that that needs to be extended, providing a further rationale for the separation.

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is fighting a gallant rearguard action for the old guard, but if the degree of management skill imbibed previously led to this spectacular spaghetti junction of an organogram of the existing system, there was something deficient in the in-house management training. Any Committee that comes up, by contrast, with something as clear and sensible as the new—

Select Committee on Governance of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Speaker’s announcement on 1 September of a pause in the process of appointment of a new Clerk of the House and Chief Executive, to give time for further consideration; and accordingly determines that:

(a) there shall be a select committee, called the House of Commons Governance Committee, to consider the governance of the House of Commons, including the future allocation of the responsibilities for House services currently exercised by the Clerk of the House and Chief Executive;

(b) the Committee report to the House by 12 January 2015;

(c) the Committee shall have the powers given to select committees related to government departments under paragraph 4(a) and 4(b) of Standing Order No. 152;

(d) Mr Jack Straw be the Chair of the Committee;

(e) the Committee shall consist of seven other backbench members, to be elected by parties in the proportion of three Conservative, two Labour and one Liberal Democrat, together with one representative of the other parties represented in the House; the parties shall forward their nominations to the Chair of the Committee of Selection by 14 October and any motion made in the House on behalf of the Committee of Selection by the Chair or another member of the Committee shall be treated as having been made in pursuance of Standing Order No. 121(2) for the purposes of Standing Order No. 15(1)(c).

It is an honour to open a debate on a motion to which so many distinguished Members have added their names—the co-sponsors include the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the right hon. Members for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart)—and which has commanded support at all levels throughout the House.

The role of the Clerk of the House dates back to at least 1363. Today, the Clerk serves, first, as the House’s adviser on all aspects of procedure, practice and privilege and as the editor of “Erskine May”; secondly, as the chief executive of the House service and chair of the management board; and also, importantly, as accounting officer, as corporate officer, and as the head of the Clerks department, responsible for some 800 members of staff.

The motion is straightforward. It welcomes the announcement by the Speaker of a pause in the current recruitment to the post of Clerk; it establishes a new time-limited Select Committee to consider the governance of the House; it nominates the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) as Chair of that Committee; and it outlines the powers of the Committee, its reporting date and the election of its members. The debate arises because of widespread concern among Members in all parts of the House that the process governing the appointment of the next Clerk of the House was seriously flawed.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I should be delighted.

[John McDonnell]

I merely ask for clarification. Does the hon. Gentleman see the new Committee as a time-limited exercise, or as a permanent body?

[Jesse Norman]

As the motion makes clear, the Committee will be time-limited and report in January next year.

There has been some misunderstanding, and much heated discussion, of the clerkship. Those are issues to which I have no desire to add, but the following facts are not in dispute. First, the chosen candidate, Ms Carol Mills, an administrator in the Australian Parliament, was not qualified for the specifically constitutional and procedural functions exercised by the Clerk. Secondly—

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I am very pressed for time. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not mind if I allow him to intervene later, perhaps at the end of my speech. We are under tremendous time pressure.

Secondly, Ms Mills was and, indeed, is herself subject to an inquiry by the Australian Parliament. Thirdly, the Speaker’s panel of selection was purely advisory, and was smaller than, and assembled on a different basis from, that used in 2011. Fourthly, the terms of the process of recruitment changed from the original terms set out by the House of Commons Commission on 30 April 2014. Fifthly, while acknowledging the Clerk’s executive functions, the advertisement for the post in The Sunday Times led with, and specifically emphasised, “constitutional matters” and the Clerk’s role as

“chief adviser to the Speaker, the Leader of the House and other members of the Front Bench on matters of procedure and privilege”.

Sixthly, outside headhunters, Saxton Bampfylde, were used for the first time. Seventhly, despite all that, the final candidate—Ms Mills—was, in effect, recruited for a job that did not then exist as such, that of chief executive of this House. Finally, the letter nominating Ms Mills was signed by the Speaker on the advice of the panel, was sent to 10 Downing street during the recess, and, but for the intervention of Parliament, might have been forwarded to Buckingham Palace during the recess.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has put this motion before the House today. Is he aware that I understand from an answer to me that the panel was completely unaware that Carol Mills was undergoing investigation—two investigations, actually—by the Australian Senate before it made its decision? Moreover, Saxton Bampfylde wished to inform the panel that that was the case, and the panel was advised not to take evidence from it.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. There are lots of speakers on the list, including the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who I want to get in early on, so we must have very short interventions.

[Jesse Norman]

I was not aware of that, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it now.

The Speaker has made clear his personal support for a split between the roles of Clerk and chief executive. In a statement to the House last week he called for the issues of a pre-appointment hearing and a possible split in roles to be examined and the views of Members to be solicited in detail. This debate, and the governance Select Committee and procedure for wider consultation proposed in the motion, are the House’s response to that request by the Speaker.

The proper governance of this House is a matter of enormous public importance. Indeed, it is properly considered a constitutional matter, first, because the British constitution—at least such as it is for the next eight days—relies on the effective functioning of Parliament and, secondly, because this Parliament, and especially the Clerk, act as the final word on procedural matters for a host of further Parliaments across the Commonwealth.

Contrary to popular belief, parliamentary procedure—the rules of the game—is not some pettifogging accretion, or irrelevant decoration, to the business of democratic government; it is the essence of democratic government. This country is governed by laws, laws are made in Parliament, and that Parliament is run according to rules and procedure; without procedure, there could be no government. Indeed, even the role of chief executive has a constitutional dimension, because the capacity of Members to hold the Government to account rests in part on how well they are enabled to function by the House service.

Because of the importance of this subject, the House has regularly sought to assess the quality of its own governance. Three times in the last 30 years it has invited outside experts to lead a process of review: Sir Robin Ibbs, Mr Michael Braithwaite and Sir Kevin Tebbit. No institution is perfect, of course, and some of their criticisms have been stringent. Even so, those reviews have identified a fairly clear, if inconsistent, path of reform and modernisation.

The first such review, the Ibbs review of 1990, painted a pretty damaging picture of administrative incompetence:

“Good financial management systems and the associated control mechanisms did not exist. There was no effective planning, measurement of achievement against requirement, nor assessment of value for money.”

The Braithwaite review in 1999 acknowledged the constitutional significance of a properly resourced and effective Parliament. It recognised that

“the Ibbs team found a situation which was profoundly unsatisfactory in terms of responsibilities, structure and operation.”

It acknowledged that significant progress had been made, but at the same time it made clear that

“full implementation of Ibbs was slow and in some areas did not occur.”

The Tebbit review in 2007 was rather more encouraging. It concluded that:

“The present system is certainly not broken”

and that it was “well regarded overall”. It mentioned

“effective management of delivery and services”,

adding it was

“highly effective in core scrutiny and legislative functions”,

but it made a crucial exception for the management of the estate and works. It recommended steps to improve integration, transparency and clarity of management goals, and to create a stronger finance function and greater professional management across the board.

To those, we may perhaps add one last data point. In the recent debate on the retirement of the last Clerk, Sir Robert Rogers, the House was united not only in acclaiming the merits of Sir Robert himself as Clerk, but in acknowledging the progress the House had made in key areas of management and modernisation. Those include implementing a substantial savings programme without loss of service, the introduction of new IT and a drive towards paperless working, far greater outreach and significant improvement on issues of diversity and equality, as well as a new apprenticeships programme.

The Chair of the Finance and Services Committee, the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), aptly summarised the situation by recognising

“a transformation in the management of the House Service, which has moved from what could be described as an era of gifted amateurism to one of thoroughly competent professionalism.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 901.]

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I recently had the privilege of attending an international conference on modernising parliaments. Although we have made progress in this country, we are behind many other countries. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to keep moving forward and to ensure that whoever is appointed is the right person to drive forward change?

[Jesse Norman]

I regret that I was not at that conference, and I am unfamiliar with the comparisons that might be made, but I absolutely agree that continued progress in modernisation and management is important.

[Mr Frank Field]

Surely we do not want modernisation for modernisation’s sake. We want it so that we can carry out our major functions more effectively. They are to hold those on the Treasury Bench to account and to conduct an intelligent five-yearly election campaign.

[Jesse Norman]

I think the right hon. Gentleman knows that, as a strict Burkeian, I—along with many Members of the House—believe in intelligent reform. I therefore broadly share the perspective that he offers.

I believe that we can draw a number of conclusions from this matter. First, it is facile and mistaken to argue that the House is poorly managed today simply because it was poorly managed in the 1980s and 1990s. Rather, there has been steady if somewhat inconsistent progress against a background of massive growth in demand for House services, significant change in information technology, and rising standards and expectations both from Members and from the general public. It would be a tragedy if that process of improvement and modernisation were to be set back by an obviously flawed appointment to the present clerkship.

These reviews have come at eight to nine-year intervals, and the proposed governance Committee would report next year, eight years after the Tebbit review. This debate therefore falls at a highly opportune time, and doubly so because circumstances and the needs of Members and of the general public, as well as politics and Parliament itself, have continued to evolve—and might, I fear, evolve further next week. A specific challenge is presented by the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster. This mammoth project might, it seems, be managed by a specific delivery authority that is accountable to this House and the other place.

As the motion makes clear, a key issue to be addressed by the Committee is whether the roles of Clerk and chief executive should be split. The Ibbs, Braithwaite and Tebbit reports all came down against a split, but it is absolutely right that the issues here should be re-examined by the Committee in the light of changing needs and circumstances. I suggest that that question rests in turn on the answers to several further questions. If the roles are to be split, how exactly would the split work? What functions would fall on either side of the divide, and why? Presumably, in any scenario, the Clerk would continue to be responsible for the Clerk’s department of 800 people, or just under half the total employed.

Furthermore, would the Clerk and the chief executive be coequal? That would require careful thought, as there are cases in business where such an arrangement has succeeded, and cases where it has failed. If they were not coequal, who should report to whom? Would the Clerk, authorised and protected by letters patent, report to the chief executive, or would the chief executive report to the Clerk—in which case what, apart from the job title, would have changed? What would be the implications for relations between the Houses? What legislation would be required if the Clerk were no longer to be corporate officer? Finally, what would the cost be of such a split, in both salary and other costs?

Let me conclude with two reflections. The first concerns the present nomination. The letter nominating Ms Mills as Clerk was signed by the Speaker, on advice. Constitutionally, he and he alone has the capacity to withdraw that letter. I would request that he now do so. The second concerns the process of selection. The Tebbit review in 2007 recommended that the clerkship be subject to the selection board process used to select permanent secretaries, but that approach was not adopted. Whatever its merits, I would ask that, perhaps after the report of the Committee, the House of Commons Commission reconsider, agree and publish new proposals for a fully open, competitive and transparent selection process for the clerkship.

Reform of the governance of this House is, like marriage in the words of the prayer book,

“not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly...but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly”.

This motion is designed to enable sober reform, and I commend it to the House.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

It falls to me in the very few seconds that remain to thank all Members across this House for their extraordinarily wise and thoughtful contributions. I am grateful to the Government and Opposition Front Benchers for supporting the motion. Mr Speaker called, rightly and wisely, for good will and consensus; we have seen those things tonight and for that we should all be profoundly grateful.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the Speaker’s announcement on 1 September of a pause in the process of appointment of a new Clerk of the House and Chief Executive, to give time for further consideration; and accordingly determines that:

(a) there shall be a select committee, called the House of Commons Governance Committee, to consider the governance of the House of Commons, including the future allocation of the responsibilities for House services currently exercised by the Clerk of the House and Chief Executive;

(b) the Committee report to the House by 12 January 2015;

(c) the Committee shall have the powers given to select committees related to government departments under paragraph 4(a) and 4(b) of Standing Order No. 152;

(d) Mr Jack Straw be the Chair of the Committee;

(e) the Committee shall consist of seven other backbench members, to be elected by parties in the proportion of three Conservative, two Labour and one Liberal Democrat, together with one representative of the other parties represented in the House; the parties shall forward their nominations to the Chair of the Committee of Selection by 14 October and any motion made in the House on behalf of the Committee of Selection by the Chair or another member of the Committee shall be treated as having been made in pursuance of Standing Order No. 121(2) for the purposes of Standing Order No. 15(1)(c).

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

There is limited time for this debate and I need to conclude my speech.

I urge Members to recognise that democrats in all parts of this House should reject the Lords amendment. Even those who object to the boundaries reviews, whether for party, personal or other reasons, should reject the way in which the Lords have amended the Bill. In doing so, they would still have the option of voting for or against the review, in the subsequent vote on the amendment in lieu or, if it is rejected, in October when the boundaries reports come before the House for approval.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I am very grateful to the Leader of the House for giving way. I can only sympathise with his travails over the abuse of powers on this issue by the House of Lords. Can he imagine how much worse it would have been if the House of Lords had been elected?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is inviting me to engage with a series of hypothetical situations. I will resist the temptation.

All four boundary commissions have completed their consultations and are finalising—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my noble and hon. Friend for his comments. First, is he aware that there is a Bill at the moment that would reduce the size of the House of Lords without making it into an elected Chamber, which his own party is opposing? Secondly, on the question of whether the Lords are able to put up a decent fight against the Executive, is he aware that during the Labour Governments of Mr Blair and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and the other—[Interruption.] I have forgotten his name, as he appears so rarely in this House. Is my hon. Friend aware that during that time the Lords defeated the Government 450-odd times and the Commons defeated them fewer than 10 times?

[John Thurso]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that, as it is a perfect argument in favour of supporting their lordships on this occasion.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

With great respect, I have to disagree with my hon. Friend. Whether the Bill has “moral authority”, to use his words, depends on the verdict of the House on Second Reading. If the House gives the Bill a majority on Second Reading, the House is perfectly entitled to make progress with it, and I indicated in my statement that in the autumn we hope to come back with a timetable motion in order to make progress. But we do now have some moments for reflection.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir George Young]

I will give way one last time, as I am conscious of Mr Speaker’s injunction about the large number of people who want to speak.

[Jesse Norman]

I am enormously grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Let me make it clear from the Conservative Benches that the very substantial opposition from within the Conservative party, not just that from Labour, was responsible for the withdrawal of the motion. That should be perfectly clear and reflected in the record.

[Sir George Young]

On these matters, I listen to my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, who indicated some dissent with the proposition put forward by my hon. Friend. I always agree with the Patronage Secretary.

In response to your injunction, Mr Speaker, I shall now move on to what I was going to say about the merits of the Bill on Second Reading. I want to address the issue of the primacy of the House, which was a matter that concerned many hon. Members yesterday. As the first Conservative Front Bencher to speak in the debate, however, I hope the House will understand if it I say why I think my party should continue to support the Bill.

The House will recognise that I could have no conceivable problems with the Bill, given that some of the ideas originate in a book that I co-authored in 2005, to which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) referred yesterday. I have spoken in favour of reform in just about every debate since 1997—and there have been many—and, like many colleagues, I have supported reform in the Lobby. I respect the views of my colleagues who oppose our reforms, but I point out that the last time the House voted on this topic in a free vote in 2007, the majority of Conservative Members voted against a fully appointed second Chamber.

Some have branded the Bill a Liberal Democrat measure, but I invite the House to look at the list of the Bill’s sponsors. As far as I am concerned, the Bill has strong Conservative antecedents, and I would have been happy to introduce it if we had had a majority Conservative Government. My party has a long and proud history of constitutional reform. Although other issues might make the hearts in North West Hampshire beat a little faster, we have always been concerned with the health of Parliament.

At the 1955 general election, the Conservatives under Anthony Eden announced in their manifesto:

“It has long been the Conservative wish to reach a settlement regarding the reform of the House of Lords, so that it may continue to play its proper role as a Second Chamber under the Constitution.”

Three years later, it was a Conservative Government under Harold Macmillan who navigated through Parliament one of the few reform Bills of the past 100 years, the Life Peerages Act 1958. I say to my colleagues who are unhappy about this Bill that when the then Government introduced the 1958 Bill, it was in the teeth of sharp objections from some Conservatives in both Houses, but I believe that everyone now accepts that that was a sensible reform. I believe the same is true of our proposals to move progressively from an appointed to an elected House. I see nothing Conservative about retaining a wholly appointed upper House in the 21st century.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). I have the same aspiration as he has for the other place, but I draw the opposite conclusion about the Bill. Over the past couple of days, I have listened to a number of speeches, few of which have been full-hearted in their support for the Bill. I am quite strongly in support of the principles set out in it, however, because I believe they provide an effective answer to the challenge of creating a stronger House of Lords to check the legislative torrent that has become the habit of Executives over-dominant in the House of Commons.

Several speakers have said that the answer to Executive dominance of the Commons is to change the balance in the latter, and reformers have set out to deliver that objective over the 30-odd years I have been here. Let us stand back and look at the results. Under Conservative Governments before 1997 and Labour Governments between 1997 and 2010—and even occasionally under this coalition Government—it became too easy for Ministers to bring measures to the House, to get them approved by the House and to pass them without effective check in the House of Lords. It was too easy for those measures to end up on the statute book.

My hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) asked what was the question we were seeking to answer. In introducing an elected element into the House of Lords, we are seeking to answer the question first posed not by the coalition or, with respect, by the Liberal Democrats, but by Lord Hailsham 50 years ago when he spoke of an elective dictatorship. Under our system, we have a general election and a Government are elected based on a majority in this place, but that does not provide sufficient checks and balances, particularly on the legislative ambitions of Ministers.

[Jesse Norman]

It is an interesting solution to an elective dictatorship to propose two elective dictatorships. The Blair Government was defeated four times in the Commons and 460 times in the Lords. Does my right hon. Friend wish to replicate the record of the Commons in the Lords?

[Mr Dorrell]

My hon. Friend repeats a point made several times in the debate, and I accept that it is a serious point. His point is about the Blair Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough quoted 576 defeats in the Lords, presumably over a slightly different time scale. However, those defeats were over individual measures in a Bill, and they often came back to be reversed by this place.

When we stand back from the matter, we see that the House of Lords cannot be said to provide the check on ill-developed, badly thought out legislation. Too often, Ministers are tempted down the road of trying to create legislative monuments for themselves. Occasionally, when I sat on the legislative committee in the Cabinet—in another existence, many years ago—we heard it argued that we needed a Bill from a particular Department to create a political centrepiece for the Government’s programme. That is not a good reason for proposing legislative change. To be effective, legislation needs to be properly thought out. It is far better seen as a rifle than a blunderbuss.