Select Committee on Governance of the House

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am conscious that I am the fourth former Leader of the House to speak, with possibly one more still to come. I fundamentally disagree with what the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) said about the role of the Clerk of the House.

It is worth reminding the House of what happened when the other place decided to modernise an historic office of Parliament—namely the office of Lord Chancellor —and split it into its component parts. There were all sorts of good intentions, but it turned out to be not nearly as straightforward as the authors of the plan assumed and resulted in a considerable backlash. That should be a warning to us to proceed with care, as the motion proposes.

On the central issue of whether it is realistic to expect the diverse qualities needed for a Clerk of the House on the one hand and a chief executive on the other to be found in one person, my view is that in the case of Sir Robert Rogers the answer was yes. I said as much in the tributes to him a few weeks ago, as did many others. One of the key questions for the Select Committee is whether it continues to be realistic to expect to find one person to hold those qualities or whether they need to be separated. The other reason that the Select Committee needs to re-examine the issue is this: not only should it look at separation, but it should look at something short of separation—a sort of devo-max; in other words, as hinted at by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), keeping a Clerk, but having underneath him a chief operating officer to whom certain functions are delegated.

The House has to be crystal clear on the issue of accountability. As Sir Robert Rogers made clear in his letter, many of the decisions that he took as Clerk impacted on the decisions he took as chief executive and vice versa. If we had a chief operating officer answerable to the Clerk, that would provide a focus for services of the House and avoid all the problems of having co-equals, and it would not need legislation. Without primary legislation, the Clerk would still be the corporate officer, with statutory responsibilities that could not be separated from the responsibilities of a chief executive.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall that in Sir Kevin Tebbit’s report into the management of this place, one of his recommendations—recommendation 19—was that there should be such a role, namely an operating officer with commercial experience who was the deputy to the Clerk?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for refreshing the House’s memory of that particular Tebbit recommendation. If we had two co-equals, they could play Members off against each other; indeed, Members could play them off against each other too. That has to be taken on board.

[Mr Jenkin]

I do not prejudge this question, but if we went for a chief operating officer under the Clerk, the really important thing is that the chief operating officer should be directly and visibly accountable, in a way that the present officers under the Clerk are not visible and accountable.

[Sir George Young]

I think the Commission could make that happen in the terms of reference if we go down that particular route.

I agree that some of the considerable burdens on the Clerk’s shoulders should be removed. In the meantime, I think the appointment process should not be paused; I think it should be aborted. If Carol Mills, with whom I have some sympathy, wanted to show that she understands how this place works, she would withdraw her application, resolve a constitutional impasse and generate some good will among colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made a good point about there being robust interim arrangements in place.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) said, we have to take on board the interface with the other place, where there is a Clerk of the Parliaments, who has a unified command. How would he interface if one separated the jobs down this end?

I have two final points. I am slightly worried about the ambitious time scale for the Select Committee. Nominations for the proposed Select Committee do not close for over a month and then there are but three months to complete the task, including Christmas. The House may have other things on its mind by then. Braithwaite and Tebbit took many months, with people doing nothing else. We may need an interim report in January, if the ground is to be thoroughly covered, and a final report later.

I end by gently asking a question. What would have happened in this case had we not had the safety valve of the Backbench Business Committee, enabling the House not just to make its views known, but to pass a resolution, in a way that was not possible before—a resolution that I am happy to support?