Code of Conduct and Modernisation Committee

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has done much good work in this space over the years. The Government’s ethics and integrity commission will focus more on Government members, Ministers, civil servants and others, whereas the work of the Modernisation Committee will focus particularly on the House of Commons. There may be a relationship at times, but they will have a different remit and scope. I hope that answers my hon. Friend’s question satisfactorily.

As the proposed Chair of the Committee, I reassure the House that my door will always be open to Members and staff across the House. I see it more as a task and finish Committee—that was a good comment that the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) made to me the other day—that will take a strategic look at recommendations from other bodies and Committees, but not duplicate their work.

I note amendment (a), tabled by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), which is about the engagement of smaller parties and their role on the Modernisation Committee. I hope that I have gone some way towards providing reassurance on aspects of that issue. I want to be clear that I want Members across the House to be heard, but the Committee also needs to be an effective body that delivers change. If the Committee is to work swiftly and generate momentum behind proposals for reform, it needs to be of an appropriate size. If each party were represented, as the hon. Member’s amendment requires, the Committee would have to grow considerably. That would not be proportionate with other Committees of the House, which I do not think is reasonable.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Given the likely breakdown, does the Leader of the House understand that only three parties will be represented on the Committee? It would be possible to flex that slightly, and have voices from more than just three parties on the Committee, while still keeping it relatively small.

[Lucy Powell]

I understand the hon. Member’s concern. It is an unfortunate case of the mathematics that apply across all Select Committees. On other occasions, in past Parliaments, her party has benefited from the formulas that are used. Beyond formal membership, however, I reassure the House that I want to commit to regular and meaningful engagement with any and all parties represented in this House and with Members who want to contribute.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Congratulations to you and your colleagues on your new roles, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish you the very best of luck in dealing with all of us in our time here.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Sureena Brackenridge) on her excellent maiden speech, and particularly on her passionate message to her students, who I am sure miss her very much too.

I want to speak about the motions on the Order Paper. There is a huge amount I could say about the ways in which this House should be modernised; I have been speaking and thinking about it for years. I am probably one of the few Members who has spent many hours poring over the Standing Orders, considering how they could best be changed to improve this House. Not many people are quite as geeky about that as I am. However, I will not focus on that. Instead, I want to talk about the motions in front of us.

Motion 4 has been badged as a “second jobs” motion. It relates to paid employment, but it does not include the paid employment that constituents think of when they think about second jobs. They think about the Members appearing on GB News weekly, but that is not covered in the proposed changes. As the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) said, constituents think about the people doing work for a financial institution, but again, that is not included in the motion.

The changes to the rules are good, but the motion should not be badged as relating to second jobs. What it does is increase the transparency and restrictions on Members of Parliament who seek to use their privileged knowledge to get paid employment. We all have knowledge of parliamentary procedure because we are MPs, and the motion prevents us from using that to get money. That is a laudable aim, but it is not the change that the House needs in order to fix the issue of second jobs. I will support the Government’s changes, but they need to go far further.

I have several concerns about the motion on the Modernisation Committee, beginning with its incredibly woolly remit, which is:

“to consider reforms to House of Commons procedures, standards, and working practices; and to make recommendations thereon”.

Its remit is not to modernise the House of Commons, which I would have been more supportive of. If we gave the Committee an understanding that it needs to drag the House into the 20th century—never mind the 21st century —by increasing the amount of modern working practices and the ability of MPs to represent their constituents in Parliament, that would be helpful, but the remit is not there. It is just “to make recommendations”, so I am disappointed that the Government have not gone further on that.

The issue of the make-up of Members is significant. It is not just about the smaller parties that are not the first, second or third in the House wanting to have a voice, but about the way that the Government have chosen to arrange the Committee and the number of Members that they have chosen to have on it, which mean they have guaranteed that it cannot have a Northern Ireland member. The membership will be divvied up between the Labour party, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, so there will never be a DUP Member or anyone making decisions on the Committee who is struggling with the geographical challenges that are unique to Northern Ireland Members.

The SNP would have liked a seat on the Committee. I am pleased to hear what the Leader of the House said about trying to ensure that all voices are heard, but like the shadow Leader of the House, I would like to have had more conversations with her beforehand about it, so that we could have suggested our views on the best way for our voices to be heard. If she really wants to work collegiately, we are happy to do that, but unfortunately this has not got off to the most collegiate start. The Government should consider the best way to do that, because I am concerned about the geographical issue.

The Leader of the House spoke specifically about the experience of all Members in this place. I would like the Committee to consider hearing from former MPs who also have significant experiences. It may be that we do not currently have MPs with certain disabilities, or who have experienced the proxy voting system, but we did formerly.

During covid, I did a huge amount of work with the Procedure Committee, which met online almost every day in the early days of lockdown. We considered every possible way to make the House covid compliant and made a huge number of recommendations to the Government, some of which could be incorporated to make the House more modern as time goes on.

I am pleased that the Leader of the House committed that the Modernisation Committee will take evidence from those Committees, but there will still be no SNP voice to feed into the Modernisation Committee, because we are unlikely to get a seat on any of those Committees. It is all well and good taking advice from those places, but the smaller parties are again being restricted in how they are being heard. I am happy to support the creation of the Committee, but I would appreciate it if the Leader of the House tried to work in a more collegiate way than she has so far.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Neil Duncan-Jordan to make his maiden speech.