Scheduling of Parliamentary Business

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right to make those points. I want to be very positive and to talk about what we are doing.

We have been mindful of Back Benchers. As requested by the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, we have rescheduled some of the debates that were agreed before dissolution. I am pleased that we have already found time for some of those debates, including on the ongoing challenge of seeking peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

With regard to the intervention by—and I do mean this—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), is it not the case that when the arrangements for Prime Minister’s questions were changed, there was no change to the amount of time for them, because the two 15-minute sessions were consolidated into one 30-minute session, which now regularly lasts about 45 minutes, so, in fact, there is more time than ever for Prime Minister’s questions?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I would certainly agree that, under your watchful eye, Mr Speaker, Prime Minister’s questions has become quite a lengthy experience, which I am sure we are all the better for.

Most Select Committee Chairs have now been elected, and elections to the Committees themselves will take place as soon as possible. The House will also know that sitting Fridays have been announced.

Given the outrage affected by the Opposition, we would be forgiven for thinking that there had been no opportunities at all for them to have their voices heard. However, in addition to the six days given to the debate on the Queen’s Speech out of the 18 sitting days in this term so far—that is 40% of the time—where topics for debate were, of course, chosen by the Opposition, there have been two debates under Standing Order No. 24, six urgent questions, 14 Adjournment debates in this Chamber, 15 departmental oral question times, 16 oral statements, 24 debates in Westminster Hall and—I am sure the shadow Leader of the House would not wish to forget this—the four feisty business question sessions we have had in this Chamber.

It is therefore certainly not the Government’s fault if the Opposition have failed to make good use of those many opportunities. They will be aware that an Opposition day debate has been offered via the usual channels for after the summer recess, in September.

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[Pete Wishart]

I say candidly to the hon. Gentleman: get on with it, for goodness’ sake. The Select Committees should be up and running before the summer recess. If the Conservatives cannot do that themselves, they should accept your offer to help them arrange it, Mr Speaker.

[Kevin Brennan]

I shall call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend. The Labour party has already held elections for Select Committee places. If the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) thinks the Conservative party is going to have difficulties arranging its own membership, we could provide it with election observers and tellers.

[Pete Wishart]

I shall call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend, too. He makes a very good suggestion. How about we make use of the Office of the Speaker? We could send observers along to help facilitate the Conservative party’s arrangements; and then let us get on with it, for goodness’ sake. We are three days away from the summer recess. Let us get these things in place.

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[Mrs Miller]

We shall have to agree to disagree, because I think that going through the Division Lobby is one way in which Members of Parliament can talk to each other. It can be cohesive. We can talk to Ministers about the policies that they are developing, for instance. I do not support the idea of electronic or remote voting; I think that the present system creates more of a team within Parliament.

I do not support the idea that a vote at the end of every day, sometimes in the wee small hours of the morning, gives anyone the edge. It gives no one the edge. It feels as if we were re-enacting the D-day landings, and trying to adopt guerrilla tactics, which, in my 12 years of being in Parliament, have never worked. They have never changed the outcome of a debate, or the outcome of a vote. I urge the Government to think about how they can modernise that aspect of our parliamentary schedule—which brings me to my next point.

I am reliably told by some Members who have been here much longer than I have that late sittings are an integral part of parliamentary life. I know that they are not as late as they have been in past generations, but we are still regularly here until 10 pm, as we will be tonight. We may not mind that, which is absolutely fine, but there are consequences. The late votes that we decided to have cost the taxpayer £5 million over the last five years, and those were staff costs alone: the additional costs of policing and security must at least double the amount. At what point will we, as a Parliament, realise that sitting until 10 pm, or voting at 10 pm, on a Monday is not an integral part of the work that we do? When will we realise that we could change that, and save taxpayers money? We could also improve the quality of life of the staff who work here, which we currently seem to disregard when we make decisions about the scheduling of our sitting hours.

[Kevin Brennan]

This matter has been considered many times over the years, but does the right hon. Lady accept that one of the issues about Mondays is the need for Members to travel here from far corners of the kingdom, many of which are much further away from London than her constituency?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am very fortunate not to have the long commute that he may have from his constituency. Ultimately, however, what I am saying is that while we could decide to continue to have debates into the evening, voting earlier in the day would mean that, from the point of view of parliamentary staff who must currently be on standby throughout the evening—and who, of course, receive compensation as a result—we would be at least one step further towards modernising the shape of this place.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am not sure that I heard the right hon. Lady correctly. Was she suggesting that we should have the votes before the debates had finished?

[Mrs Miller]

No. The hon. Gentleman’s party might do that, but we would never suggest it in ours. The hon. Gentleman is obviously familiar with the concept of the deferred division, and he will, I am sure, have looked at what happens in Europe and Scotland.

I was rather disappointed that the hon. Member for Walsall South did not talk about the importance of changing parliamentary scheduling to protect the work of Select Committees. There has been a great deal of debate about the importance of constituting Select Committees, but, having chaired a Select Committee for the last two years—and I am very pleased to have been re-elected to that position—I can say that much of our work can come to naught as a result of the scheduling of parliamentary business in the House. Indeed, my Select Committee’s trip in connection with the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women was scrapped as a result of a vote here, because we do not have something as simple as a proxy system for Members of Parliament.

Rather than talking simply about Opposition day debates, will Opposition Members please talk about other important aspects of scheduling? It is not “job done” when it comes to the way in which our Parliament operates, but today’s debate has risked obscuring that. I think it a shame that some Members have failed to focus on the real issues of the scheduling of parliamentary business. I hope that Labour Front Benchers will support some of the important changes that I have suggested, so that we can give the House a more modern face, and perhaps by doing so attract a wider cross-section of Members of Parliament in the future.

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[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on her maiden speech and welcome her to her place. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) on her excellent maiden speech, for its wit and wisdom and its focus on connectivity to her constituency.

Democracy is a system for processing conflicts, and in this House that lies at the very heart of our debates; it is truly what we have come to this place, the mother of all Parliaments, to do. It is absolutely right that parties of all colours should be able properly to hold the Government of the day to account. Since arriving in this place in 2015, I have certainly found that the opportunities to do so have been plentiful.

It has to be said that the calling of this debate by Her Majesty’s official Opposition has very little to do with representing their constituents; to my mind, it has everything to do with political point-scoring. This is truly a case of navel-gazing by the Opposition, using precious parliamentary time to do so. It is a debate about debates, which is exactly what my constituents and theirs will feel angry and aggrieved about.

The reality is that the Standing Orders state that there should be 20 Opposition days in any one Session, 17 of which are for the main Opposition party, which in this case is the Labour party—I see the Opposition Benches emptying. The Labour party was provided with those 17 days in the previous Session, which lasted less than year. It has been offered the usual Opposition day debates for the short September sittings through the usual channels.

However, I agree with the Scottish National party’s Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), that voters simply do not want to see this type of debate; they want to hear us discussing what matters, which is jobs, opportunities, schools, the impact of Brexit nationwide and so much more. Interestingly, the hon. Gentleman also mentioned his frustrations with filibustering. The greatest shame tonight is that we will be unable to discuss properly the shocking incidence of nationwide abuse of candidates during the general election, which is something I raised with the Leader of the House—I received a positive reception—in applications for Back-Bench business debates. It is up to the wit and will of Members of this House to use all the tools at their disposal to ensure that the points and issues raised by their constituents are heard via co-operation, and indeed their own persistence.

As right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, there have already been plentiful opportunities for Opposition Members to make representations in the Chamber on behalf of their constituents during the debates on the Queen’s Speech, because the Labour party of course had six days to choose those topics. Therefore, I join right hon. and hon. Friends in their disappointment that these complaints are being made to the Government. Indeed, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) that this was purely a great opportunity for the Opposition to look at process, rather than complaints.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am enjoying the remarks of the hon. Lady, who debates very openly and freely. Does she not also agree with her hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who pointed out that, given that the Government have announced a two-year Session, anybody can see that it is only fair play to consider giving Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition some extra Opposition days so that we can do our constitutional job of holding the Government to account?

[Mims Davies]

I think that there are two points to be made in response to that intervention. First, it is up to the wit and wisdom of Members to use all the tools at their disposal, and I absolutely agree that the Opposition will play every trick in the book, and why would they not? Secondly, I have found myself in a multiplicity of debates since the election, so I wonder how Opposition Members can feel so aggrieved. I have been in debates about new towns, WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—Grenfell Tower, travel infrastructure, school funding and so much more since my return to this House. I am sorry that Opposition Members have not found the variety of opportunities that my colleagues and I have found.

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[Angela Smith]

That point has already been made this evening, but the point is that we are not getting the space necessary for us to raise those important topics.

[Kevin Brennan]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) to question the Speaker’s ruling that tonight’s debate is taking place on an urgent specific topic under Standing Order No. 24?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I do not think we need to worry about that.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair), who made an absolutely sterling, brilliant Union speech. I concurred with nearly everything she said in it, apart from the political stuff—[Interruption.] Well, the party political stuff. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova)—who is not in her place at the moment—also made an exemplary speech. It is nice to hear a Member paying tribute to their mother in the Chamber, and my hon. Friend did that beautifully and elegantly.

It is a shame that I am following the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), because I am actually rather fond of her, having spent a great deal of time in her constituency contributing to the Labour party coming third in the by-election. She said that Labour Members needed to get over themselves and get on with it. Yes, we would like to get on with the business of opposition; the problem is that we are not being given the Opposition days on which to be the honourable Opposition. That is the whole point. I apologise to the Leader of the House; I was rude to her earlier. I actually like her, and there are some things that I want out of her, so I am going to be nice to her now. Seriously, I was rude earlier, but I feel strongly about such issues.

The Government and Government Members need to bear it in mind that the power of the Executive in our parliamentary system is quite phenomenal. Standing Order No. 14 says that the Government have complete control over the timetable. They get to decide when they are going to give days to the Opposition, to private Members’ Bills and to the rest, but Government business always takes precedence. Standing Order No. 48 says that only the Government can table motions relating to money and taxation. We do not have a proper Budget; we have a Budget speech. This House does not actually decide on the process of how money is allocated at all. Standing Order No. 83A means that only the Government can table a programme motion, so only the Government can decide how much time we are going to devote to each element. Even in the utter nitty-gritty of the Welsh Grand Committee, only the Government can table a motion under Standing Order No. 108 to say when we are going to have a Welsh Grand Committee, what it will debate and all the rest of it.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is also speaking through a hole in his head. It is just a biological fact, and I hope he does not think I am being rude.

My hon. Friend is describing a fundamental principle of this place, and that is actually what this debate is about—it is not a debate about debates. The principle is that the Government have their way, but the Opposition have their say. By denying us Opposition days while having their way about extending the Session to two years, the Government are breaching that fundamental principle of Parliament.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, we have had several Sessions that lasted only several months because of early general elections or because, in the old days, the parliamentary Session started in November and then ended in the spring. We did not suddenly have 17 Opposition days because that is the fixed number of such days in a Session. Since Richard Crossman introduced these in November 1967, the whole idea of the change from Supply day debates to Opposition day debates was that the Opposition would have a fair amount of guaranteed time during the year.

This is not just about the Standing Orders; the Government have the absolute power to decide on the date of the Prorogation and how long a Session will be. That is only in the hands of the Government, not in our hands or the House’s hands. The Government get to decide when we will adjourn and go into recess. Only Government amendments are guaranteed to be considered on Report, and only the Government can table an amendment to the Standing Orders and be certain that it will be debated. That is a phenomenal tying up of power in the hands of the Executive, and the only thing that the Opposition have in return is the expectation that the Leader of the House and the Government will exercise fair play.

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[Mims Davies]

You are talking about me.

[Kevin Brennan]

She has a very good point.

[Chris Bryant]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) says, the hon. Lady has a very good point, so I will give way.

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[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

In some ways I feel that Christmas has come early, because here we are with three hours to debate parliamentary procedure, one of my favourite activities. Indeed, I look forward to aestivating in Somerset and talking with my family about all the intricacies of Standing Orders, so I feel in many ways fortunate.

It has been a particularly happy and fortunate debate, with two brilliant maiden speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair), whose constituency I have had the privilege of visiting—I know its manifold beauties—put the case for the Union perfectly. She should be hired by her tourist board to encourage further visits to her wonderful constituency.

The hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) was so generous to her predecessor. It is one of the great charms of maiden speeches that we recognise in them, if only briefly and for the only time in our political careers, that people on the other side of the House are actually not all bad. It is very charming that that is done, and she did it particularly well.

Standing Order No. 14(2) is an important subject, and I have much sympathy with what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said in his well-considered speech. It is the job of those of us on the Back Benches to hold the Government to account, but the job of holding the Executive to account is not just one for the Opposition; it is one for Government Back Benchers, too. Our constitution works if it is balanced and if the Government have to make their case and their arguments, but this debate misfires because the Opposition have come to it too soon in the Parliament and have given it an urgency that it does not deserve.

In my earlier intervention I questioned whether it was wise to have asked for this debate, not whether it was wise to grant the debate. Standing Order No. 24 is an exceptionally valuable tool, and I am glad you are back in the Chair, Mr Speaker, because the more that Standing Order is used, the better.

[Kevin Brennan]

That is not what the hon. Gentleman said earlier, as Hansard will show. Standing Order No. 24, as he well knows, puts the onus completely in the hands of the Speaker to decide whether something is an urgent matter for debate, and the motion does not proceed if the Speaker does not believe it is urgent.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I questioned the wisdom of requesting the debate, not of granting it, which is a very important distinction. It is of the greatest importance that the Speaker, if asked for an emergency debate by the formal Opposition, should in almost all circumstances grant it because such debates are an important way of holding the Government to account and of inconveniencing the Government.

As the hon. Member for Rhondda said, Standing Order No. 14 gives enormous power to the Government to set out the business of this House, but the Opposition need opportunities to raise urgent matters. There, the Opposition must be wise in what they ask for.

[Kevin Brennan]

Given the hon. Gentleman has put on the record that he believes the Speaker should, in almost all circumstances, grant a Standing Order No. 24 request from the Opposition, I look forward to his supporting future applications that the Opposition will have to make because of the lack of time for Opposition day debates.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That is where I think the Opposition have misfired today:

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

But this is not the season or the time. So much is happening of general urgency, and this debate strikes me as fiddling while Brussels burns. We have the massive Brexit debate to consider, we still have a huge deficit to be debated and we have a great housing crisis that has been so starkly brought to our attention by what happened at Grenfell Tower, and what do Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition ask for? They ask for a debate on Standing Orders—a debate on a debate. A debate on conversation. Even for one who loves procedure and thinks it of great importance, can that be what is of most urgency to us today? It is a question of proportionality.

The hon. Member for Rhondda made many important points about how the House has limited powers to hold a strong Government to account and about how it should use those powers, but the Opposition have asked for this debate a few days into the Session, before we have had any real opportunity to discover how many Opposition days we will have, and well before it is decided whether additional days will be given because it is a two-year Session. I have no doubt that further days will be given. Indeed, if all 20 days have been used up a year from now and the Government come to the Dispatch Box to say that there will be no more days, I will be on the side of the Opposition. I would support the Opposition in asking for a proportional share during the second year of this Session, which would be only right. I would also be in favour of an extra three days for the Scottish National party, because that is what this Parliament ought to do, but the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), the shadow Leader of the House, has misfired—this is too soon and too early, and it is not genuinely urgent.