Amendments to Bills (Explanatory Statements)

Michael Meacher Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

Not for the first time, I find myself in complete disagreement with the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I shall endeavour to explain why, but let me first express my genuine appreciation to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Procedure Committee, who has brought a breath of fresh air to the important issue of reform of parliamentary procedure.

I support amendment (a). Despite what I have just said, I believe that the Committee’s modest position represents a major missed opportunity, in that the gain from making brief explanatory statements mandatory is enormous, while the extra effort required to achieve it—and here I strongly disagree with the hon. Member for North East Somerset—is minuscule. At present, particularly on Report, Members who have not participated in Committee often do not know, and have made little or no effort to find out, what precisely they are casting their vote for. Anecdotal evidence suggests the proportion could be as high as seven or eight out of 10. This is of great significance because, particularly if the Government Whips have exercised a tight leash over Committee stage, the Report stage is often the only real opportunity for the House to modify the content of the Bill. The debates on Report are usually focused on important issues where strong views are known to be held by the public. Echoing what the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said, it is a reasonable assumption that if the public were more widely aware that these matters of considerable importance to them were treated in such a cavalier fashion by many, if not a great many, Members who often vote blind—and I confess that I am one of them occasionally, because of the difficulties of finding out exactly what we are voting for—there would be a huge outcry that Parliament was abusing its proper functions.

Currently, if a Member is diligent—and many are, of course—they will need to obtain a copy of the Bill, a copy of the list of amendments and, on the day, a copy of the grouped amendments selected by the Speaker. A number of Members with a particular interest will undoubtedly do this, but in most cases I submit it will be a minority. In the absence of obtaining the necessary documentation and reading it in order to understand the point at issue and reaching a considered view, the default position, as we all know, is for Members to follow their Whips on arrival in the Chamber.

Even if a Member did take the trouble to get and read the relevant documents, it is often quite difficult for someone who has not been following a Bill closely to understand what precisely the amendment is designed to do. This adds up to quite a serious flaw in the whole process of scrutiny of Government legislation, which is the central function of Parliament. It can be so easily remedied by requiring that a short statement of no more than 50 words explaining the purpose is attached to every amendment on the Order Paper and reproduced on the television monitor.

What are the objections? Here I come to the points made by the hon. Member for North East Somerset. I chair the all-party group for reform of parliamentary procedure, and the only objection raised with us is that while the Government have their civil servants to deal with amendments and provide explanatory statements, the Opposition do not have the same resources and adding the requirement for explanatory statements would impose too great a burden.

I simply do not accept that that objection is tenable. Speaking as someone who in my 43 years has taken many Bills through the House, I know that it certainly takes a huge amount of time to get to grips in particular with a large Bill—to consult outside experts over all its detailed aspects, to identify areas where modification needs to be sought and to draft amendments in an appropriate parliamentary form. Once hundreds of hours have been expended on doing that, however—that has to be done by any responsible Front Bench—adding a short statement distilling the essence of an amendment would take less than half a minute.

There is already evidence that a large majority of the House is in favour of this proposal Many hon. Members have indicated how helpful they found the two recent pilots when the Government introduced this reform for two recent Bills. In addition, Parliament First—that is the name of our all-party group—carried out a survey of all Members seeking their reaction to six proposed reforms of the House procedure, including explanatory statements. I have the results here and I will show them to anyone who cares to look. The response rate was more than 20%, which is not bad for parliamentarians. Of those respondents, 87% were in favour of explanatory statements, and there was very little difference between the two main parties.

This is a modest reform. The gain to everyone would be enormous and the effort to bring it about in practice is relatively tiny. I hope that, for those reasons, the House will support amendment (a).