Select Committee on Governance of the House

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.]

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I must say that we now have a four-minute limit.

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[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I want to avoid personalities, and I certainly deplore whispering campaigns. I consider this to be an interesting debate and I am glad that it is being held. However, if we had gone through the usual procedures for appointing a new Clerk as a result of a vacancy, it is most unlikely that we would be having this debate today. For some time, I have considered it rather odd that the House itself has had no say whatever in the appointment of the Clerk. This is no reflection at all on the previous Clerk or his predecessors, but none of those appointments was ever brought before, say, the Public Administration Committee. It has always simply been a question of the Speaker of the day announcing that so-and-so has been appointed, and that has been the end of the matter. What we are doing now, in having the matter thoroughly looked into by a Select Committee, is the right approach in every possible way. I have thought on previous occasions that I should express some concern about the way in which appointments were made for the most senior job—the most senior officer—in the House, but I thought, on reflection, that no purpose would be served by doing so. After all, first and foremost, we are here for political purposes.

I find it difficult to understand why the position of the Clerk—as the hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) has just emphasised, we are talking about the No.1 authority on procedural rules and on “Erskine May, and the very person who would give advice to the Speaker and to the House—should be combined with that of chief executive, which is entirely a managerial position. It may well be that some very talented people in this world could combine the two position adequately, but I very much doubt it—again, that is no reflection on previous Clerks.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), I do not believe this place has been well managed—to a large extent, the opposite is the case. Indeed, in previous debates on the functioning of the House, I have made sharp criticism of the way in which certain functions and aspects of this place have been managed—or mismanaged, as the case may be. We have to recognise that, as has been said in this debate, there are two separate positions here. It may well be that the Select Committee will not come to that conclusion and will recommend otherwise, but I hope that it will recognise that we have two different and important functions here, those of Clerk of the House and chief executive, and not that of a chief operating officer, as that is a bit of a cop out, to say the least.

We need to recognise that, leaving aside day-to-day management, we are faced with a challenge: the need to rebuild this House of Commons. It is in such a state of decay that it is essential that we accept the challenge, and the work should begin no later than 2020. That challenge, given a recognition that we certainly will not be able to carry out that work while the House is sitting or during the long recess, as the case may be, provides all the more reason for effective managerial authority, which I just cannot recognise as being the work of the Clerk of the House. I therefore hope—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I call Michael Fabricant.

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[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I support the proposed Select Committee and its eminent Chair-elect, but I want to be reassured that it is not an effort to undermine an elected and reforming Speaker of the House. Mr Speaker has given us many more opportunities than we had in the past to hold the Government to account.

I should also like to be assured that the Committee will go wider than the appointment of a new Clerk and splitting responsibilities with a new chief executive. Ideally, the Committee would at the very least recommend that the entire management structure of the House be looked at in this modern age. It would also ideally recommend any changes necessary to improve support to elected Members. To my mind, that should include organisation of the management and the Clerks department; recruitment; what opportunities and prospects are on offer; how promotions are decided; and the perks and privileges. Ideally, it would also include how we ensure that staffing and resources are responsive to the needs of Select Committees, so that we can exercise our role more effectively.

On Monday, the head of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, its first woman general secretary, talked about a “Downton Abbey” recovery. To many hon. Members, the House often has an archaic “Upstairs, Downstairs” feel. Perks and privileges for the few abound, but plenty of glass ceilings are apparent from lower down the ladder.

The debate was prompted by the appointment of a new Clerk. One notable aspect of the process was that outside applications were invited from a range of candidates. That seems to have prompted a bitter reaction from some quarters whose interests seem vested in purely preserving the past.

In this day and age, it would seem strange to the outside world if this were all simply to boil down to defending Buggins’s turn. There is no necessary connection, as we have heard, between an encyclopaedic knowledge of “Erskine May” built up over decades and the ability to run a multi-million pound organisation such as Parliament in the 21st century.

As well as the best management and governance, in the modern age the House is urgently crying out for the updating of parliamentary privilege, to which I hope the Select Committee could also give a push. A privileges Bill has long been mooted, but there has been precious little sign of one from the Government or from within the House. Two years ago, for example, the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport produced a damning report naming people who had misled the House over phone hacking and a cover-up at News International. Those conclusions, under our old procedures, now lie parked with the Standards and Privileges Committees for further action. When we came to draft the report and pressed for clarity about privilege and the sanctions available, vagueness was the guidance of the day for fear of exposing the fact that the emperor, namely Parliament, had no clothes—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think we need to get back on to the subject in hand.

[Paul Farrelly]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am coming back to the issue of the management and governance of the House, but I wanted to speak frankly about how that difficult report involved trial and tribulation in how Committees were supported by the management of the House.

I want to conclude with a few words about one disturbing aspect of the appointment process, namely that attacks on Mr Speaker, the appointment panel and one of the outside candidates, Carol Mills from Australia, began before the appointment was made on 30 July. They began 10 days before, during the interviews, when leaked attacks from unnamed sources appeared in one Sunday tabloid, and they have carried on since. I will not dignify the organ my naming it, but it was hardly the first time it has attacked Mr Speaker, nor will it be the last. I have particular sympathy in that regard because two years ago I was on the end of such leaks, and not from elected Members, to the same newspaper.

What has happened this summer has been a disgrace, with the same newspaper, the same reporters, a similar modus operandi and similar sources, it seems to me. As we consider the motion, I want to be assured that such bad behaviour will not be tolerated or rewarded in the future.