Select Committee on Governance of the House

Baroness Beckett Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)]

With no written constitution, the governance of this House has itself considerable constitutional significance, and this is a debate on governance; it is not one for or against modernisation, still less is it, as some seem to have suggested, a debate to undermine our Speaker, an enterprise in which I would have no part. No proposal merely by being labelled “modernisation” will thereby gain my support, but I neither fear nor resist change in this House. As some hon. Members will recall, in the 1990s, as Leader of the House, I chaired the all-party Modernisation Committee. Minor, irritating rules were swept aside. We allowed photographs to be taken in Members’ offices, and journalists to take tape recorders into the Press Gallery and TV cameras into Central Lobby. More importantly, we made substantial changes in the handling of business. Recess dates had been a guessing game, announced as late as possible, often only four to five weeks before even the summer recess. We realised that reasonable confidence about delivering the legislative programme would be a requirement for any Government, and a properly scheduled timetable for examining Bills had long been recommended by the Procedure Committee. The introduction of programme motions paved the way for published sitting dates and a proper parliamentary calendar. More minor and technical matters, then discussed and decided after the main business—at midnight if we were lucky and into the small hours if we were not—were deferred for decision until Wednesday lunchtime, though with provision for wider scrutiny if need be.

All those changes were hugely controversial and hotly resisted, but the ugly truth is that, for example, there was always a programmed timetable for every Bill. It was just that it was secret, known only to the Government’s business managers and not always to all of them. Sittings in Westminster Hall massively increased the time for Back-Bench debates and discussion of Select Committee reports, but were also fiercely resisted by many, such as our current Speaker, who were rightly concerned to preserve the supremacy of this Chamber.

My simple point is that all these reforms, major or minor, were proposed to the House in a report from the Modernisation Committee, debated in the House and decided by a vote in the House as a whole. Some things, such as Westminster Hall, were introduced as an experiment with a sunset clause. Whether the Clerk to the House should also act as its chief executive has been part of such discussions on many occasions over the years, and I am certainly open to such an idea. I have a degree of reservation. I say with due deference to the Clerk that in my experience of five years as Leader of the House or shadow Leader of the House, I found that getting the Clerks to see the point of view of Members can be an uphill struggle. An administrator less familiar with the workings and concerns of the House might be even worse, but I have no quarrel at all with a reassessment of the full implications of such a change. I say a full reassessment because some of the wider implications of such a decision are new, at least to me. I believe the motion offers a constructive way forward and is really worthy of support.