Business of the House Commission Bill

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It is a great pleasure to follow the debate on the very important Bill that has just received its Second Reading. It has indeed been a good day today: two other Bills have received their Third Readings. Let us continue that tradition, and pass this Bill to create a Business of the House Commission.

Before I begin my speech on the Bill, let me point out that regardless of anything I say about the Whips, I do like Whips, and I absolutely do not think that they bully or threaten anyone. However, this is about parliamentary sovereignty, so I apologise if the Whips take it in the wrong way.

Let me start with a little story:

“The House of Commons’ historic functions were to vote money for governments to spend, and to scrutinise laws.

It now barely bothers with the first, and does the second extremely badly.

There was a time when legislation that had been formulated after months of civil service and ministerial deliberation was sent to the House of Commons which would pore over it, shape it, send it back, get it back, look at it again - and improve it some more.

Bill by bill. Clause by clause. Line by line.

Every piece of legislation would be put under intense scrutiny.

Is it legally sound? Will it be effective? Is it worth the cost?

Compare that to today.

Let me take you on the journey of a piece of legislation as it passes through the modern House of Commons.

It’s likely to have been dreamt up on the sofa of Number Ten.

A Bill gets drafted.

It’s sent to the House for a couple of hours of routine debate among a few MPs.

Then the bell rings, the whip gets cracked and suddenly, out of nowhere, all these other MPs turn up to vote.

More often than not, they don’t even know what they’re voting for.

The Bill limps through.

Then it goes to the Standing Committee.

Their duty is to look at the details clause by clause.

But it’s packed full of people that the whips put there.

So, surprise, surprise, the Government rarely loses the vote on any of the individual points of detailed scrutiny.

And then it’s back to the House to do it all again - debate, bell and then vote to wave the legislation through.

Every Bill now has a ‘programme motion’ setting out how much time can be spent scrutinising and debating each part.

These are automatic guillotines, and the time allowed for scrutiny is set in advance, before anyone can see whether or not a particular issue is contentious or complex.

Watching a minister in the Commons drawing out one point for an hour to fill the time, to an audience of dozing backbenchers - this is not accountability.

How has the mother of all Parliaments turned itself into such a pliant child?”

Can anyone in the House put up their hand and tell me who made that speech? It was the best speech that that Prime Minister ever made. It was made by David Cameron, and it was made in 2009, before he became Prime Minister. It is headed “Fixing Broken Politics”, and it continues in great detail. It is a wonderful speech. It identifies exactly the problem that we have in our democracy, particularly that section about the Government’s control over the timetable of this House.

Unfortunately, when David Cameron came to be Prime Minister, he seemed to have forgotten that speech. I thought it would be a good idea to read some novels, so I got hold of the manifestos of the three parties for the 2010 general election. Actually, I tell a lie: I got hold of two of them, because I could not find the Liberal Democrat one. Sorry about that. The Conservative manifesto is entitled “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”, and it is very well written. The Labour one, which has a much fancier cover, is called “A Future Fair For All”. I ploughed my way through them. I got to page 67 of the Conservative manifesto, which refers to

“establishing a Backbench Business Committee to give the House of Commons more control over its own timetable”

and

“allowing MPs the time to scrutinise law effectively”.

Very good. I looked up the Labour one, which says on page 93:

“To further strengthen our democracy and renew our constitution…A new politics also means strengthening the power of Parliament to hold the executive to account.”

Brilliant, I thought.

In 2010, that all got blown away by the fact that there was a coalition Government. At that time, there was a bible, and any of us who lived through that period will know it was called—

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It was called the coalition agreement.

[Mr Bone]

That was it. I have it here somewhere, unless somebody has pinched it. Here it is: “The Coalition: our programme for government”. Let us remember that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives got together; there were four wise men and they produced this brilliant document—it was, to be fair, how the coalition governed for that duration, and they pretty much stuck to it. There is one section I rather like and have always liked, on page 27:

“We will bring forward the proposals of the Wright Committee for reform to the House of Commons in full – starting with the proposed committee for management of backbench business. A House Business Committee, to consider government business, will be established by the third year of the Parliament.”

Brilliant, I thought. We have created a Backbench Business Committee, but it seems that they forgot to move on to the House. I once asked my Chief Whip at the time when we were going to get that. He said, “Over my dead body.” I could understand why the Chief Whip on our side does not want to give up power, but then I realised that the lot over there were not complaining because when their Chief Whip gets into power, he wants to do exactly the same.

The previous Speaker had a little word with me. He said, “Peter, I don’t think this Government is going to bring this in.” I said, “It’s in the bible—it’s there!” He said, “No, Peter, they’re not going to do it.” When I challenged the Government on it, they said there was no agreement. Hang on a minute. There was agreement from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who were a really powerful party in those days. There were 50-odd of them—certainly more than now. The Labour party was supportive of it, too. How could they argue that there was no agreement?

It is great to see the excellent Minister here. We have always agreed, including on my Bill on constituency boundaries, which went through. In fact, in Committee, she actually debated my Bill by accident and not the Government’s Bill. All we are doing today is agreeing with something that everyone agreed with back then, when there was a crisis in Parliament.