Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings

John Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I echo the point that the Chair of the Procedure Committee made that the measures are not desirable, but are absolutely necessary. They are sub-optimal. We often use phrases that we all understand, but we should put them in a way the public would understand. We talk about holding the Government to account and about scrutiny. Basically, that means asking questions. It means asking the questions that occur to us from our knowledge and experience and that of our constituents. We have been getting a considerable number of questions during the crisis—I will come on to a few of them later. Those questions need answering, and they need answering in this Chamber, which, as the Leader of the House said, has to be the epicentre of the democratic system in this country. Otherwise, what is the point of Parliament?

In answering those questions, I do not expect Departments or Ministers to get everything right. I absolutely expect mistakes to be made. In fact, if mistakes were not being made, I would be really alarmed, because if things did not sometimes go wrong, that would mean that decisions were not being taken. Some decisions will go wrong. The test of a Government, of a Minister or even of a business is how quickly those problems are identified and how quickly they are remedied.

Many of those questions should be being asked inside the Government and, looking at how things are panning out, I am concerned that they are sometimes not being asked, either within Departments or between Departments. There seems to be a degree of dysfunctionality. I do not think press conferences are really getting to the heart of the issues, either. I fully understand the constraints that you and the House are operating under, Mr Speaker, but supplementary questions should be part of the evolution of this. Quite frankly, sometimes Ministers—as we see in press conferences—are talking in repetitive clichés. We need answers. Even if a Minister says, “I don’t know”, or “We are looking at that again, because we are not sure it worked out properly,” that is how we will make progress and be able to assess where there are failings and put the pressure on.

Last month, for example, we had both the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister here. I am pleased to say that I was able to ask both of them, on successive days, about the serious situation of very large numbers of our people stranded in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I am still concerned about the long delay in getting them back, compared with the work of many other countries, particularly Germany, which has managed to bring back tens of thousands of people. We were able to put some pressure on the system and get some reaction through that direct confrontation. It is not the same as writing a letter or asking questions in a slightly sterile Chamber, although this is an improvement.

Many Members of Parliament are receiving complaints from hospitals and care homes, and from manufacturers and distributors, about personal protective equipment. It is not matching up in the system. How the two sides can be pulled together does not seem to be getting through. Some pressure here would add energy to that system.

Those of us who have been Ministers know that when a Minister has a hard time here in the Chamber—I see nods from those who have been Ministers—when they get to the Department, they say, “Why did you leave me out there in open country? I want some answers and I want them by this afternoon.”

[Sir Charles Walker]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps the usual order of departmental questions should be changed, so that we could get more chances to ask questions of the Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care—the two Departments absolutely in the frontline of this crisis?

[John Spellar]

I hope that suggestion may have been taken on board by those who are dealing with these issues. Perhaps for certain Departments there could be an extended period of questions, rather than greater frequency, or there could be a more open system in which written questions could be answered in real time, in order to get a response. We have to be flexible on that, but we have to be able to put our points and get a response.

[Chris Elmore]

If it would help my right hon. Friend, it is fair to say that in the Procedure Committee we looked at written questions and named-day questions, and we will review that issue. We agreed to that just yesterday. I reassure him that that point is very much in the Committee’s prism of work.

[John Spellar]

I thank my hon. Friend, the ranking minority member of the Procedure Committee, for that reassurance.

There are many other issues that will be familiar to colleagues from all parts of the Chamber. They include nursery education, both in terms of providers and parents, and lorry drivers and their ability to get a hot meal on the motorway. Why is the Department for Transport not insisting that franchisees on the motorway open up for lorry drivers to make sure that they are fed when performing the vital service of keeping this country going? We have already talked about the problems of flights, furlough arrangements and companies’ access to support. Those are all issues that have to be resolved here. We therefore need to make sure that, as far as possible, we can replicate the usual arrangements so that Ministers have to be up there answering. I hope that Ministers will be coming to the Chamber to do that, so that we can make progress and improve things.

Finally, the Leader of the House says that he hopes and intends for the measures to be temporary, but in the end, of course, it may suit some for them not to be temporary. We have already had a Scottish National party Member of Parliament saying, “Anyway, why do people have to come down here to one point from all four parts of the country in order to participate in the business of the House?” Many in the civil service and Government would be quite happy if Parliament was less effective in holding them to account. Some Members, I would say, perhaps get the balance wrong between working for their constituents, which is a hugely important and essential part of the job, and running the country and actually asking questions here in Parliament.

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Gentleman is making some powerful points. May I also make the point that scrutiny in this place gives Ministers a chance to explain things? It gives them a chance to set out what they are doing. They should not run away from it or be scared of it, because it is their chance to set out the good news and the good work that the Government are doing. We need to have scrutiny here, so that we can have that full explanation from Government Ministers—holding them to account when they do get things wrong, but hearing from them when they get things right.

[John Spellar]

I thank the Chair of the Procedure Committee, and I genuinely congratulate her on the work she is doing already in that position. She is absolutely right, and she reminds me of what Warren Buffett said about financial crises: “When the tide goes out, you can see who has been bathing without trunks.” Reputations get made and lost quickly in crises.

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Ministers who are doing a good job, have a robust defence and can even say, “Well, we tried that. We did it on reasonable grounds, but it did not work out. This is what we are doing”, are the ones whose reputations will thrive. For those who try to run away from scrutiny and from decisions, their reputations will sink. However, we also need not necessarily a timetable, but certainly a statement of the necessary conditions for returning to normality.

I recognise and am pleased to see that there is a date in the motion, but that will presumably—it is understandable, and I am not criticising this—also be subject to renewal. We need a clearer idea of the necessary conditions that will enable us to come out of these measures, because otherwise there will always be a tendency for some of the groups I have described to find reasons for just continuing with the status quo, rather than getting this House back to its position at the heart of the debate and political life of this nation.