Ministerial Statements

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, which is being held only because this coalition Government established the Backbench Business Committee, giving it the opportunity to set the debate and allow a vote. The shadow Leader of the House raised the availability of the autumn statement. We always use our best endeavours to get the documents to the Opposition Whips office within 45 minutes, and we will continue to do so.

Let me set out the Government’s position on the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). As he said, it arises from, and refers to, the Procedure Committee report on ministerial statements published in February. The Committee was asked to prepare its report as a result of the debate on the first Backbench Business Committee day on 20 July last year and the motion, also moved by my hon. Friend, that was agreed that day.

The Chair of the Procedure Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), sought a debate on a motion taking note of that report, which would have covered more issues than are under discussion today, but the motion was never debated. The Backbench Business Committee has now chosen to introduce its own motion on the subject, drawing on parts of certain Procedure Committee recommendations —although, as my right hon. Friend implied, it is unclear why we are not debating the whole report. As the shadow Leader of the House said, we responded in full to the Procedure Committee’s report and our views on its recommendations have been available to hon. Members since May. We made it clear in our response that we did not support the relevant recommendations of the Procedure Committee and so it should come as no surprise to the House that we are not able to accept today’s motion.

Let me begin by setting out where the Government are at one with the Procedure Committee and, indeed, with the majority of those who have spoken in the debate, before setting out where we disagree. The ministerial code states:

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

My Cabinet colleagues are very mindful of that requirement, and I do not hesitate to remind them of it. But there is clearly a “tension”—that word was used by the shadow Leader of the House—between the realities of the 24-hour news cycle and the requirement of the ministerial code. As the Government said in their response to the Procedure Committee in the spring:

“Ministers’ obligations to Parliament are paramount, but the Government also has a duty to communicate its policies and programme effectively to the wider public, including through the platform of a 24-hour news media. These dual pressures have been a reality under all recent governments”.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) made that point in his effective contribution.

I looked through the evidence to the Procedure Committee and read that a former Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), said in his:

“I don’t think we should complain about Government trying to maximise the positive media for its policy. Any Government is going to do that.”

Ministers must adhere to the responsibilities of the code, but we also need to bear in mind the need to address the public’s desire for timely, accurate information, especially when fast-moving events have a capacity to distort or misrepresent the Government’s policy. The public’s appetite for that does not start and end with the day’s sitting hours—again, that point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole.

Of course the House has legitimate expectations in this area, and this Government are making many more statements than their predecessor. We have so far made 163 oral statements this Session, and compared with the last two Sessions of the previous Government, this Government are making 40% more oral statements than Labour Ministers—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). We have only to look at the record of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to see how importantly the Government view the House’s role in scrutinising policy. My right hon. Friend has spent almost 30 hours at the Dispatch Box, making 24 oral statements so far this Session, which is a considerably better record than his predecessor.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House state how many of that increased number of statements were forced on the Government by the increase in urgent questions?

[Sir George Young]

None is the answer; urgent questions are in addition to the statements to which I have just referred.

I do not believe that the motion either sets realistic standards or proposes an appropriate path for what might follow from a departure from the standards. I say in passing that it also threatens to undermine the basis that all Ministers are equal under the ministerial code, because the motion applies only to Commons Ministers.

[Chris Bryant]

The Leader of the House is being slightly unfair. Often what happens—indeed, it happened today—is that a Member applies for an urgent question and the Minister, by some miracle, immediately decides that it would be a good idea to ask to make a statement. In those circumstances, would it not be a good idea if the Minister just started his statement with an apology?

[Sir George Young]

However one looks at the statistics, there has been a marked increase in the willingness of this Government to come to the House to make statements; the figures speak for themselves.

I turn to the question on which we disagree: whether or not the standards set out in the motion are the right ones. The Cabinet manual is clear that

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

The words in the Cabinet manual were used in terms in the resolution of this House on 20 July, which again referred to “the most important announcements”. However, the motion before us today broadens the requirement massively, and in an open-ended manner, to “all important announcements”. At a stroke, the motion seeks to sweep away the intention of the Cabinet manual to draw a distinction between those matters that are properly for Parliament first and those matters that can be announced in other ways. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) said, almost all announcements made by the Government are important to someone. I commend the way in which he managed to get into his speech the names of a number of large villages in his constituency, and I am sure that the people in all those were delighted to hear of his commitment to them. If the House were to agree to this motion, it would replace a text that acknowledges the need for a sensible judgment about relative importance with a text that invites consideration of importance wholly in isolation.

The motion seeks to lay down a blanket requirement for statements to be made to the House first “on all occasions”, without any exceptions or qualifications. Let us consider a recent example. Does the House seriously imagine that the Government’s policy on the advice to be given to British nationals on travel to Iran should not have been announced before the House sat? Equally, the motion contains no recognition that certain market-sensitive announcements must be made when financial markets are closed. For example, a whole series of announcements by the previous Administration about Government support for the banks were made at 7 am. As the then official Opposition, we understood why Parliament could not be told first. If this motion is passed, any Minister making a similar announcement would face an inherent conflict between their obligations in relation to the financial markets and their obligations to this House.

[Thomas Docherty]

For the sake of clarity, will the Leader of the House therefore confirm that if the motion had specifically excluded financially sensitive information and matters of state security, he would have supported it? Or is this simply a smokescreen?

[Sir George Young]

First, the motion did not do that and the hon. Gentleman did not table such an amendment. Secondly, if he listens to the rest of what I have to say, he will understand that the Government have other difficulties with the motion.

Similarly, the motion contains no acknowledgement that announcements of policy that are the subject of international agreement must often be made simultaneously and on terms acceptable to the other parties to such agreement. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister successfully negotiated an agreement among the 16 realms at Canberra about the royal succession, and being able to announce that decision together with other Heads of Government at Canberra was part and parcel of the negotiation. The motion, if agreed to, would limit the Government’s ability to reach and announce joint or multilateral agreements—my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) also made the relevant point about military intervention.

The motion also seeks to establish as a protocol the requirement that any information that forms all or part of an announcement to Parliament should not be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament. That would be very difficult to interpret where the development of a policy has gone through several stages, some of them in the public domain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham pointed out, the inevitable increase in statements, both written and oral, that would result from a blanket interpretation would risk squeezing the House’s other business, including Opposition day debates and Back-Bench debates, as well as putting at risk the effective scrutiny of Government legislation. That is one of the central tasks of the House; it is not an optional extra.

[Michael Ellis]

The ministerial code of conduct makes it clear that all Ministers are equal, even those in the other place, so is the Leader of the House not concerned that this motion is particularly in error because it is silent about the Ministers in the other place?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct and I believe that I touched on that a moment or two ago.

The motion would create new, enforceable rules of the House, and that is a novel step. In 1995, the House passed a resolution setting out the principles that should govern the conduct of Ministers of the Crown in relation to Parliament. The resolution referred to broad principles of accountability, and the duty not to mislead Parliament and to be as open as possible. It made no mention whatsoever of a duty to make statements in the House first.

I shall now deal briefly with the process outlined in the motion, which my hon. Friends did not touch on. The first step in any case where a Member believes the standards had been breached—

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir George Young]

If I may, I will make some progress and then give way.

The first step in those circumstances would be to refer the matter to Mr Speaker. The relevant recommendation of the Procedure Committee says the following about what happens next:

“If he determined that the complaint was without basis or trivial, it would be open to him to dismiss it.”

The motion makes no mention of that. Where a minor breach has occurred, the motion, like the recommendation, refers to Mr Speaker taking steps. But Mr Speaker already has the power to summon Ministers to the House to answer urgent questions—a power used more extensively by this Speaker than by any of his predecessors. One should not underestimate the value of that tool. The former shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), told the Procedure Committee that Ministers take urgent questions very seriously indeed.

A range of other options are already available to the House to hold Ministers to account and can be used as sanctions. Ministers can be cross-examined by departmental Committees, they can be called to account through debate in the House—more so than ever before as a result of the Backbench Business Committee—and there can be a debate, in extreme circumstances, on a motion of censure. Indeed, I recall answering a debate in which it was proposed that my salary as a Minister should be reduced—a motion that, in its wisdom, the House did not carry.

In those circumstances, we oppose the suggestion that it would be a useful addition to give Mr Speaker the power to refer a more serious or complex breach to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That proposal was made by the Procedure Committee, although I note that the Committee has not published any written or oral evidence to show the views of the Standards and Privileges Committee on the proposal, a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). Given that there is no proposal to change the terms of reference of that Committee, I assume that a referral would be treated as a matter of conduct. The code of conduct, which applies to all Members, contains no reference to the conduct of Ministers. Indeed, this subject was not raised in the recent consultation on the code. Out of the blue, the motion seeks unilaterally to change the principles behind the code before the House has even had an opportunity to review them.

As a former Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I think that those proposals could conflict with the fundamental role of that Committee, which is to regulate the conduct of individual hon. Members. It is not the function of the Standards and Privileges Committee to enforce the ministerial code and there is a real risk of double jeopardy if two institutions—the Prime Minister and the Standards and Privileges Committee—police the same code.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, who chairs the Procedure Committee, said that the Government preferred the status quo. That is not quite the case. We proposed a number of reforms to his Committee. First, we suggested that there should be time limits on certain oral statements, so more could be made. That was rejected. Secondly, together with the then Shadow Leader of the House, I expressed an open mind on the proposition that oral statements could be made in Westminster Hall, but the Procedure Committee made no recommendation on that. Thirdly, I proposed that the earliest time for the release of written ministerial statements should be brought forward from 9.30 am to 7 am, which could be coupled with arrangements that the House already has to ensure the prompt availability of such statements on the parliamentary website. The Procedure Committee rejected that suggestion.

The Government are keen to pursue proposals that enable the House and its Members to be informed first of the most important announcements of Government policy in helpful and innovative ways. In the light of recent events, I will remind all Cabinet colleagues of the terms of the code and the strong views of the House in the debate this evening. However, the proposal before us does not take matters forward constructively. It seeks unrealistically to change the standards expected of Ministers and then seeks to subject them to additional policing that muddies the waters surrounding the role of the Standards and Privileges Committee. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject the motion.