Julian Lewis
Main Page: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Mr Speaker
I certainly think it would be very desirable for Parliament and for the scrutiny of the Executive branch by Parliament for that Committee to be re-established sooner rather than later. The word of caution or caveat that I insert, which the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, is that, unless I am much mistaken, that Committee can be established only when what might be called the feeder or constituent Committees have themselves been established. That, of course, requires not merely the election of the Chairs of those Committees, which is due to take place on Wednesday of this week, but the election by the respective parties, by such methods as they have adopted, of their member contingents on those Committees.
I have not been given much encouragement to think that those Committees will be fully constituted by the time of the summer recess, although I must say to the hon. Gentleman that it would be perfectly possible fully to constitute all of the Select Committees by the time of the summer recess if there were a proper will to do so. If it were the case that none of the constituent political parties was interested in getting its act together, that would reflect very badly on them, to be frank, because the issue is not the interest of the party, but the interest of Parliament. If it transpired that some parties were ready to elect their members to those Committees and other parties were not, that would look very bad for the parties that were not ready. They have a responsibility in this matter.
I do not wish to say this unkindly, but, whoever is in government, it is absolutely natural that the zeal and enthusiasm to establish the Select Committees which scrutinise the Executive branch are never as obvious within the Executive branch as they are within Parliament. However, as Speaker, I am concerned about Parliament—Parliament exercising its rights, and Parliament doing its duty—and I would rather hope that, to put it bluntly, instead of faffing around, we could get on with this matter.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. In defence of the former Foreign Affairs Committee, it must be said that I think that the reason for its withdrawal from the Committees on Arms Export Controls was the unauthorised leaking of a draft report; so that was a more complex situation than was first suggested.
However, reverting to the question of getting the Committees up and running, given that I understand that the 1922 Committee, for example, has not held its elections and it would normally handle the election of ordinary members to the Select Committees, is there any way that the resources of the House might be involved in assisting this process to get under way more quickly in the absence of the election of members of the executive of the 1922 Committee to administer this?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I take note of his first point, with which I will not quibble; I do not want to enter into the dispute about what caused the ceasing to operate of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, but I simply note what he said.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s second point, I note that he said that, so far as his party is concerned, the officers of the 1922 Committee normally handle the election of members. To put it bluntly, if memory serves me correctly, what the officers of the 1922 Committee usually do in respect of their party—perhaps something similar operates in other parties—is simply oversee the count. Whether the officers of the 1922 Committee have or have not been elected is not a matter for the Chair—that is a party matter—but, frankly, overseeing the count does not require Einsteinian qualities; it is a pretty prosaic task.
I do not think it would be right to say that the resources of the House could be made available in what is essentially the oversight of a matter undertaken by parties. However, it would seem to be perfectly feasible, if my colleagues, the Deputy Speakers, were so willing, that they and I could volunteer our services to oversee the count, if the House thought that that would be helpful. My basic point stands: do colleagues want these Committees to be set up sooner rather than later? If they do not, that is a pity, but if they do, those of us who are of good will and can be relied upon to conduct the count perfectly fairly, would, I suspect, be very happy to offer our services. I could hardly be more explicit. We will leave it there for now. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg).