Select Committee on Governance of the House

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I was not aware of that, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it now.

The Speaker has made clear his personal support for a split between the roles of Clerk and chief executive. In a statement to the House last week he called for the issues of a pre-appointment hearing and a possible split in roles to be examined and the views of Members to be solicited in detail. This debate, and the governance Select Committee and procedure for wider consultation proposed in the motion, are the House’s response to that request by the Speaker.

The proper governance of this House is a matter of enormous public importance. Indeed, it is properly considered a constitutional matter, first, because the British constitution—at least such as it is for the next eight days—relies on the effective functioning of Parliament and, secondly, because this Parliament, and especially the Clerk, act as the final word on procedural matters for a host of further Parliaments across the Commonwealth.

Contrary to popular belief, parliamentary procedure—the rules of the game—is not some pettifogging accretion, or irrelevant decoration, to the business of democratic government; it is the essence of democratic government. This country is governed by laws, laws are made in Parliament, and that Parliament is run according to rules and procedure; without procedure, there could be no government. Indeed, even the role of chief executive has a constitutional dimension, because the capacity of Members to hold the Government to account rests in part on how well they are enabled to function by the House service.

Because of the importance of this subject, the House has regularly sought to assess the quality of its own governance. Three times in the last 30 years it has invited outside experts to lead a process of review: Sir Robin Ibbs, Mr Michael Braithwaite and Sir Kevin Tebbit. No institution is perfect, of course, and some of their criticisms have been stringent. Even so, those reviews have identified a fairly clear, if inconsistent, path of reform and modernisation.

The first such review, the Ibbs review of 1990, painted a pretty damaging picture of administrative incompetence:

“Good financial management systems and the associated control mechanisms did not exist. There was no effective planning, measurement of achievement against requirement, nor assessment of value for money.”

The Braithwaite review in 1999 acknowledged the constitutional significance of a properly resourced and effective Parliament. It recognised that

“the Ibbs team found a situation which was profoundly unsatisfactory in terms of responsibilities, structure and operation.”

It acknowledged that significant progress had been made, but at the same time it made clear that

“full implementation of Ibbs was slow and in some areas did not occur.”

The Tebbit review in 2007 was rather more encouraging. It concluded that:

“The present system is certainly not broken”

and that it was “well regarded overall”. It mentioned

“effective management of delivery and services”,

adding it was

“highly effective in core scrutiny and legislative functions”,

but it made a crucial exception for the management of the estate and works. It recommended steps to improve integration, transparency and clarity of management goals, and to create a stronger finance function and greater professional management across the board.

To those, we may perhaps add one last data point. In the recent debate on the retirement of the last Clerk, Sir Robert Rogers, the House was united not only in acclaiming the merits of Sir Robert himself as Clerk, but in acknowledging the progress the House had made in key areas of management and modernisation. Those include implementing a substantial savings programme without loss of service, the introduction of new IT and a drive towards paperless working, far greater outreach and significant improvement on issues of diversity and equality, as well as a new apprenticeships programme.

The Chair of the Finance and Services Committee, the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), aptly summarised the situation by recognising

“a transformation in the management of the House Service, which has moved from what could be described as an era of gifted amateurism to one of thoroughly competent professionalism.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 901.]

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I recently had the privilege of attending an international conference on modernising parliaments. Although we have made progress in this country, we are behind many other countries. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to keep moving forward and to ensure that whoever is appointed is the right person to drive forward change?

[Jesse Norman]

I regret that I was not at that conference, and I am unfamiliar with the comparisons that might be made, but I absolutely agree that continued progress in modernisation and management is important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I rise to support the motion in the name of the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and proposed for debate this evening by the Backbench Business Committee.

After concerns from Members about the recruitment of a new Clerk and chief executive, this motion allows us to move forward swiftly in pursuit of a solution that can unite the House.

Before I address the content of the motion in detail, I would first like to refer briefly to the events that have led us here. I was one of six members of the panel that reached a consensus agreement and suggested a name to the Prime Minister for recommendation to Her Majesty the Queen. I think it would be invidious to say the least if I were to go into details of what happened during that process. Suffice it to say that we spent more than 20 hours interviewing a wide range of candidates, judging them against a clear job description, through a fair and robust process. This was the first time that recruitment of the Clerk has been done through a completely open process of the kind we would expect for a senior appointment in any other profession.

[Meg Hillier]

I welcome the approach of having an open process. Does my hon. Friend regret that the House has used its privilege to name candidates in the recruitment process in the way it has?

[Ms Eagle]

We are not making it easy for any future outside candidate to apply for a job in this place—candidates have been traduced across the airwaves when they cannot reply. Hon. Members on both sides of the House should think carefully about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I have deliberately kept my counsel over the past few weeks as a member of the panel, because I thought that was the proper and right thing to do. Although I support the motion and pre-appointment hearings, the way we have got to tonight’s debate shows the House and all of its Members in a very poor light. The often ill-informed and critical comments made by some Members who simply do not know how the process was conducted have been mistaken and misguided. The personal attacks on Mr Speaker have been unwarranted and plain wrong. As somebody who believes fundamentally in the importance of modernising Westminster as part of our endeavour to restore confidence in politics, I think Mr Speaker has made an immense contribution in his work to making us more open, more relevant and more interesting.

The task of the appointment committee was not simply to appoint a Clerk of the House; the post was advertised for both Clerk and chief executive of the House of Commons. The post holder fulfils two functions. That is enshrined in the law, as we have heard, and was recently confirmed by Sir Kevin Tebbit. The Clerks themselves have resisted any change, and the Government too have resisted change in the past. I tell the House that the entire appointment process was extremely thorough, totally professional and very open. Criticisms of the process are entirely unfounded.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my right hon. Friend not agree that if Members believe that this place is a world-class institution, we should seek to advertise internationally for people to run it?

[Margaret Hodge]

As a member of a committee that promoted an international candidate, of course I agree with that.

We were very mindful of the importance of the procedural duties associated with the job. There are, however, well over 100 people working in the House who are knowledgeable about and familiar with procedure. We were also mindful that the post holder is responsible for spending more than £200 million of taxpayers’ money and employing 1,750 people. This palace lies at the heart of our democracy, yet the way it is run is wasteful and shambolic. We are asking our constituents to bear substantial expenditure cuts and cuts in services, and while they suffer that we are swimming in inefficiencies. Yet, because some Members concern themselves only with what happens in this Chamber, they are willing to downgrade the vital job of ensuring best value from the expenditure of more than £200 million of their constituents’ hard-earned money.

Things are so shambolic that, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, it can take our constituents an hour to get through St Stephen’s to see us. We overspent massively on the building of Portcullis House, yet managing capital projects seems less important than who is sitting in a chair in the Chamber. It is as important to our democracy to run this place well as it is to have somebody in the chair who is knowledgeable about, and experienced in, procedure. However, because we were mindful of the importance of both roles, we held two rounds of interviews. It proved impossible to find a single individual capable of fulfilling both roles, but several of the members of the panel thought that Carol Mills was the only appointable candidate.