Information for Backbenchers on Statements

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who made a thoughtful speech about the need for a modern and well-informed House. On her remarks, it is indeed our ambition to have a legislative programme that is well prepared when the Bills are introduced and that is of a size that the House can easily digest, and it is our intention that the House should have an opportunity, which it did not always have in the last Parliament, to consider the legislation seriously and without undue pressure.

It is a pleasure to intervene briefly in the first debate initiated by the new Backbench Business Committee. This is the first time that the House has had an opportunity to debate a substantive motion on a subject tabled by a Back Bencher since the old system of private Members’ motions was abolished in 1995. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) went a little further back in history to the Jesuit, Robert Parsons, to identify the source of the Backbench Business Committee. I do not want to prejudice the consensual nature of the debate by complaining too loudly of the last Government’s failure to set up that Committee. It would be uncharitable to blame even the last Leader of the House for making slow progress on an idea that appears to have been some four centuries in the making.

I pay tribute to the energetic way that the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has set up the Committee and hit the ground running. I said in the last Parliament that I wanted the Backbench Business Committee to set the first topical debate of this Parliament. In fact, it has done better than that and chosen a subject for a full three-hour debate, and I am delighted that progress is being made. Restoring public confidence in Parliament is one of the ambitions of the coalition. Enabling Parliament to do its job effectively is a key part of that process, and giving the Backbench Business Committee its agenda-setting powers is a major milestone in doing that.

Turning to the motion, allegations that the Government make announcements to the media before making them to the House are not new. This is my 10th Parliament, and I can remember occasions in every preceding one when one of the six Speakers who have sat in the Chair, beginning with Selwyn Lloyd, have rebuked Ministers for continuing that practice. As we have heard, Mr Speaker, you made it clear in your very first statement that

“when Ministers have key policy statements to make, the House must be the first to hear them, and they should not be released beforehand.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 797.]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on a first-class speech in moving the motion. If I may say so, he was a little bit tough on those who sit on the Treasury Bench in implying that every Minister in the coalition Government should resign because they had all leaked information to the press, but otherwise, he made his case forcefully and convincingly. There is little doubt that, over perhaps the last 13 years, we have seen a more cavalier approach to the way in which announcements are made than previously. In 1998, the then Speaker felt strongly enough about the Labour Government’s consistent and deliberate leaks that she gave a BBC interview outlining her frustration that, although successive Governments had briefed the press before Parliament, it was being done

“far more subtly and professionally”

since the 1997 election.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and, indeed, other hon. Members have said, Parliament pays a price for that process. We devalue ourselves if the news is being made elsewhere. We therefore risk losing our position as the centre of British national debate. That is surely why the principle that we are debating today is important. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston touched on that principle. Again, it was well put by Speaker Boothroyd who said in her farewell address:

“This is the chief forum of the nation—today, tomorrow and, I hope, for ever.”—[Official Report, 26 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 1114.]

We are elected here to scrutinise the Executive and to hold Ministers to account on behalf of our constituents. It is therefore crucial that Ministers explain and justify their policies in the Chamber in the first instance.

[John Mann]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for generously giving way. Does he agree that, if the motion is passed tonight, the scale of the offence of any Minister who transgresses is significantly higher than it would have been in the past?

[Sir George Young]

It was a serious offence before this debate and it will remain a serious offence afterwards.

The Government await with interest the recommendations of the Procedure Committee, especially in relation to the ministerial code, which has already been cited. Among other things, the code provides:

“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”

Since the start of this Parliament, the Government have made 20 oral statements and 189 written statements, which is an average since the Queen’s Speech of nearly three oral statements per sitting week and nearly seven written statements per sitting day. On top of that, we have answered five urgent questions. In this Parliament, there have already been a total of 214 announcements to the House over 30 sitting days, so I hope that the House accepts that as evidence that the Government take the code seriously.

Even with the best endeavours, as we have heard, leaks to the media can occur before announcements are made to the House and without the connivance of Ministers. For example, as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) said, the whole of the 1996 Budget found its way to the Daily Mirror. The then Chancellor decided that there was nothing much that he could do about it and took his whole team to an Indian restaurant—a characteristic response from my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said, when things have gone wrong in this Parliament, Ministers have come to apologise.

The code says that the “most important announcements” should be made first to Parliament, but as we heard earlier, that gives rise to the question of what the most important announcements are—perhaps the Procedure Committee would like to address that point. However, it is worth pointing out that the code should not prevent Ministers from making observations or comments about policies that have already been announced, and nor should it mean that we cannot make speeches or give interviews outside the House. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was criticised last week for comments that he made about the graduate tax in a television interview, but as I told the House last Thursday, there was no policy change because the question of a graduate tax had already been referred to Lord Browne’s review by the previous Government. In my view, my right hon. Friend was taking part in the entirely legitimate debate that is developing outside the House.

[Stephen Pound]

Not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman is shining the light of clarity on the particular problem before us. He talked about the seven or eight written statements that are released each day and the many oral statements, but how on earth can we come to a situation in which somebody somewhere is tasked with deciding what is “the most important”? A written ministerial statement was made today on the 2013 review of the Rural Payments Agency, but I would say that that is probably not the most important—[Interruption.] I am sorry; I mean in the scale of things to be reported to the House. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider introducing a system such as colour coding under which we could have different gradations of statement, meaning that some could be laid before the House while others would have to be presented from the Dispatch Box?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir George Young]

I accept the argument that we need a gradation. In a sense, we have that already because we have oral statements and then written ministerial statements, and then I suppose we have press releases put out by Departments. However, it would be helpful if the Procedure Committee could shed some light on the key question of what should trigger the obligation for a Minister to make an oral statement to the House about a major announcement of policy because Ministers, more than anyone else, are anxious to stay within the rules.

The debate gives us the opportunity to stand back and think radically about statements and their role in our agenda. Going back a few decades, the Government made statements to the House because that was the prime means of distributing information to the nation. Life today could not be more different. There are more platforms than ever for the Government and others to communicate with individuals or communities, so the terms of trade have completely changed. It is right for the Procedure Committee to have a fresh look at the rules, which is why I will support the motion.

If the motion is agreed, I propose to submit a memorandum of evidence to the Procedure Committee on behalf of the Government, and at this point I would like to make a point that has not been raised before. In the past three Parliaments, such an inquiry would probably have been carried out by the Modernisation Committee. That Committee was chaired by the Leader of the House, and if that had been the route by which a recommendation had been agreed, the Leader of the House would have submitted a report to the House of Commons. One only has to think about that for 30 seconds to realise that that is entirely the wrong way to set about the issue. That is why it was absolutely right at the beginning of this Parliament not to re-establish the Modernisation Committee, chaired by the Leader of the House, but to ask the Procedure Committee to take on board agendas that the Modernisation Committee would previously have taken.

Let me briefly touch on a few ideas that the Procedure Committee might look at. The Wright Committee said that statements could be taken at a different point in the parliamentary day, and one has to ask whether 12.30 pm or 3.30 pm are the only times for statements. Is there a way of insulating time taken for statements from the time allocated to the business of the House? For example, Governments are sometimes reluctant to make statements on Opposition days because that eats into the time to which the Opposition are entitled. Could statements be shortened by having a yet tighter limit on the time that Ministers’ take, or by releasing the text and relevant papers in advance so that the House might proceed to question the Secretary of State, rather than have the statement read out?

It would also be helpful if the Procedure Committee were to consider whether the earliest opportunity for issuing written statements might be brought forward. Not everyone is on the estate by 9.30 am, but I am sure that a good number are in their offices even earlier than that, and if the timing of written statements is brought forward, it should be accompanied by a system of making those statements available to Members either electronically, by e-mail, or by posting them on the parliamentary intranet. To put that into context, Select Committees release many of their reports at one minute past midnight.

Finally, I have already given a commitment to consider new procedures for the launching of Select Committee reports on the Floor of the House. There is no reason why Ministers should have a monopoly on making statements to the House; Select Committee Chairs should also have that privilege. I had intended to write to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), inviting the Procedure Committee to consider how that recommendation could be implemented. However, as the proposal has something of the nature of a ministerial statement, perhaps the Procedure Committee will be able to include it in the scope of the inquiry that is before the House this evening.

[Mr Bone]

The Leader of the House is making a very important speech, but why does the practice, which the previous Government introduced, of announcing statements in advance on the Order Paper seem not to happen now?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I think that we have done that once during this Parliament, but I agree that it would be helpful if, so far as is possible, the House were given advance notice that a Minister proposed to make an oral statement.

I hope to be able on Thursday to make further announcements about time for Back Benchers’ debates. Those debates are part of a process of moving towards a fully established House Committee, which we are committed to establishing in three years’ time. Together with other reforms that either have been recently introduced or are under consideration, they will make this Parliament one where the terms of trade tilt back towards Parliament and away from the Executive, and oblige the Government to raise their game. This Government welcome that challenge.