Select Committee on Governance of the House

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I will respond to it later.

It is in all our interests—Government, Opposition, Back Benchers and the House service as a whole—that this matter is resolved in a timely manner with due consideration. I do not seek in any way to pre-empt the work of the Committee, but there are certain principles that it will wish to bear in mind and issues that it will wish to to address. Let me flag up four. First, as Members, we expect to have access to the highest quality of advice. We rely heavily on the expert advice of the Clerk on matters of procedure and constitutional propriety. It goes without saying that the effective functioning of the House relies on the confidence of Members in its senior management and especially in the Clerk of the House as its principal procedural adviser.

Secondly, on a related point, it is vital that the Clerk is, and is seen to be, totally independent and not in any way dependent on the support of political parties or others. Advice must be dispensed without fear or favour. That is why the Clerk is appointed by the sovereign by letters patent and is not an employee of the Commission.

Thirdly, it is important that the House has a decision-making structure that is fit for the substantial challenges that we face, and is transparent. Members and the public must know who is accountable for decisions made.

Finally, any management structure must be cost-effective. Just as the Government have cut the cost of politics, the House has delivered substantial savings to the taxpayer since the last election, meeting its 17% savings target. Any new arrangements should support the efficient and cost-effective delivery of services to Members and to the public.

If the motion is agreed to, I hope that the Select Committee will be able to begin its work rapidly and conclude by the deadline. The Government will seek to ensure that the House has an opportunity to debate the Committee’s conclusions at an early opportunity, so that resulting appointments can be made as rapidly as possible.

In response to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), the election of Members to the Committee is a matter for the parties.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend has not referred to the interim arrangements that are being put in place. I want an assurance that it is difficult for him to give, because he is not a member of the Commission, that the Commission will invest the Clerk Assistant with sufficient authority to do all the things that are required of the Clerk, of the kind that my right hon. Friend has described, and to delegate such of his functions as make it possible to carry out those roles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the motion and I welcome Mr Speaker’s announcement of the pause. I wrote to the Leader of the House in August because in my role as Chairman of the Liaison Committee I felt that members of the Committee would think that the House needed further discussion and to be able to exercise some influence over how the issue was resolved. An appropriate way of resolving it has been found.

As Chairs of Select Committees, members of the Liaison Committee have a lot of experience of Clerks at work. Indeed, I ought to point out in the light of some of the comments made that the idea that Clerks do not do management is seriously misleading. In the course of our daily work most of us see senior Clerks exercising management functions. They have of course been encouraged to do so and, in many cases, trained to do so as that is now a significant part of the role of Clerks.

I was on the House of Commons Commission when previous reports considered the issue of separating the roles of Clerk and chief executive and there are quite powerful arguments for doing so. I am sympathetic to a move in that direction, personally, but it is essential that the authority of the Clerk of the House must not be undermined. Some fairly obvious points follow on from that. For example, the nature of the appointment as a Crown appointment and the fact that the appointment can only be terminated on an address should remain the property of the post of Clerk of the House, not of any chief executive. There are some serious issues, which have been aired today, about where accountability lies and I would be worried by the thought that a chief executive could countermand the Clerk in a matter that affected the ability of Committees to carry out their functions, for instance. We must be careful and I repose confidence in the ability of the Committee that we are appointing to consider those issues very carefully.

The question of authority is important. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) mentioned the Committee he so carefully chaired on the involvement of the police in a search within the House. It was clear within those proceedings—I was also a member—that the loss of authority by the Serjeant at Arms contributed significantly to what went wrong. Whatever decision was made about where the responsibility should lie, the responsibility of speaking to the police should have had with it the authority that previously reposed with the Serjeant at Arms. We must be very careful that the authority that reposes in the Clerk of the House and is then, by extension, exercised by Clerks throughout our system is not undermined.

That leads me to another point, which I made in an intervention earlier but want to reiterate, about the arrangements that we have in the meantime. Let us bear in mind that that period could be a time of some very significant events, such as arguments about who should be voting on which Bills. We need to be sure that the person acting in the role of Clerk of the House from the position of Clerk Assistant has the authority necessary to serve the House in the way that the Clerk of the House would. He must also have the capacity and authority to delegate, sufficient to the functions of Clerk Assistant, and the time necessary to do the important job that he will be called on to do during this interim period.

The Committee may need more time, in which case it will have to come back to the House and ask for it, but the time scale is set by the fact that we are approaching a general election. I wish it well in its work.