Business of the House

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It seems that north-west England is now very well represented in the Chair, which is a very good thing.

I am astonished that the Leader of the House has tabled a programme motion relating to important changes in the business of the House, given that Conservative Members argued against programme motions on many occasions when in opposition. It seems that things change.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed that many of the Members who used to stand up and say how awful such motions were do not appear to be taking part in today’s debate?

[Barbara Keeley]

That is an interesting observation.

It was right that today we were given a considerable amount of time on the Floor of the House to discuss the statement on the Saville inquiry, but it also important for us now to have adequate time in which to debate changes in the business of the House. We have already heard a point of order indicating the seriousness with which one Member takes the issue.

During business questions last week the shadow Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), drew attention to the lack of consultation with the Opposition on the details of the changes before the motions were tabled. I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House is aware that it has been customary for the Opposition to be given advance sight of proposals on House business. That happened throughout all the discussions on reform of the House and the Wright Committee, but it is a courtesy that the coalition Government seem now to have abandoned, and I regret that.

We want to move on. A large number of amendments have been tabled to the motions, and it is only right for us to have time to debate them fully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady wants to disfranchise up to a third of this House, who were not here in the previous Parliament. It is important that those Members be allowed to look at the proposed reforms and have their say on them. I know that, along with her colleagues, she has signed up to the Conservative party. I thought that the Liberals were not in favour of an authoritarian approach. We see the two sides of the Liberal party.

It is important that we have debates. I served for seven and a half years on a Select Committee and am a keen supporter of the scrutiny role that Select Committees play. There are issues about, for example, the size of such Committees and the representation of the minor parties. If this is steamrollered through on a Conservative-Liberal Democrat guillotine, many people in both Scotland and Wales will rightly be annoyed.

The Parliamentary Secretary and the Leader of the House have made a very quick conversion on a short road to Damascus. In the previous Parliament, when we talked about modernisation, the Parliamentary Secretary said:

“At the moment, there is a nod and a wink between the usual channels, and then a programme motion is plonked before the House, which can take it or leave it—the answer is that we take it, because there is a Government majority in favour of the programme motion. That is not a good enough way of doing business, and it does not do justice to hon. Members.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2006; Vol. 451, c. 335.]

In the new coalition Government and in the new spirit of co-operation, or conversion, that has taken place in the past few weeks, the Parliamentary Secretary has clearly changed his mind on programme motions. It is bad enough to have programme motions, which he used to argue vociferously against in the previous Parliament, for legislation that is being introduced, but to have them for something that affects individual Members of the House is wrong.

[Mark Tami]

I think that my hon. Friend will find that, even in this Parliament, in addressing an Adjournment debate, the Parliamentary Secretary still seemed to be opposed to programme motions.

[Mr Jones]

That is not surprising, because the Parliamentary Secretary is a Liberal Democrat and they say one thing in one place and another in another. We are increasingly seeing—we certainly saw it at Justice questions—the push me-pull me coalition, where some Members think that they can say anything in one sphere and say something else in another.

The Leader of the House, who has been in the House a lot longer than I have, clearly was against programme motions and spoke vigorously about them. I looked up his speech to the last Conservative party conference, which took place on 5 October 2009. It was revealing. He needs to explain to the House why tonight he is a great convert to guillotine motions. He said that

“one of Labour’s worst reforms has been to introduce a guillotine motion before a bill gets a second reading, automatically cutting short the time available, before we even know how complex or contentious the issues are or by how much the government will amend them. Harriet is always there, with her knitting needles.”

No doubt he will be getting the knitting out later. I can visualise the Parliamentary Secretary knitting. I find it hard to visualise the Leader of the House doing so.

I am sorry to say that there is more. The Leader of the House went on to say in his speech:

“As a result, we send huge amounts of poor quality legislation through to the Lords. We don’t have time to do what we tell you to do—read the small print.”

I agree with the Leader of the House in that we need to read the small print of the measures we will be deciding on tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I will do so, Mr Deputy Speaker, but the important point is whether or not we have a debate and vote in Government time on the Floor of the House, and what the constraints on that will be. Will we be able to propose alternative September dates, because no doubt some new Members and others will have fixed holidays? What will the motion actually mean, therefore?

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a true understanding of the costs and of what those sittings cost in the past?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. That is way outside what we are talking about now. I ask hon. Members to restrict themselves to discussing the motion before the House.