Sittings of the House

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

Again, I am sympathetic to everything that my right hon. Friend says. He is absolutely right, and if he is patient, he will hear that I have taken account of all his points.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend admit that she is not distinguishing between sitting hours and what we do in those sitting hours? She is conflating the two. Will she separate those two things, because the sitting hours are one thing but what we do in them is something completely different?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I think my hon. Friend is teasing me, because she knows exactly what I am suggesting. The sitting hours of the Chamber are the hours that condition the voting patterns, which most of us consider to be mandatory. I am talking about the opportunity for Members to consider bringing forward the mandatory voting hours to earlier in the day. Each person will choose how they vote during all the hours of the day and, indeed, all the hours of the night.

I do not claim that the proposed reforms are family-friendly. All families are different, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, nothing is family-friendly if the family are hundreds of miles away. To bring forward the sitting hours, however, would be more people-friendly and would give us more control over our own time and more choice about how to spend the remaining hours of the day. It is not just a London issue either. The gap in preferences for earlier hours between those in the London area and those outside it is not that great.

--- Later in debate ---

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Procedure Committee’s report and thank the Committee for allowing me to give evidence. I have only one point to make. My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) said that I teased her when I tried to draw a distinction between our sittings hours and what we do, but I was not teasing her. It is very important. The difference between what MPs do today and what they used to do in the past is dramatic. What we do in our constituencies has become much more important. Casework, campaigning, visiting schools and all the things the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) mentioned have become much more important than they used to be, but we as individual MPs have to decide how to deal with that. It has nothing to do with sitting hours. The sitting hours are supposed to be arranged around what we do in Westminster, where we have Committees, all-party groups, meetings and any number of different things.

A variety of Members have spoken about the different kinds of constituency and the distances that they have to travel. There are inner-city and rural constituencies and constituencies far away and close by. We have also heard details from any number of Members about their domestic arrangements. The issue is that every single MP has different domestic arrangements. Some people have families and some have social lives—[Interruption.] Very lucky people have both.

The point is that we are not here to fit our hours around those families and social lives, but to make and change laws. We are supposed to be running the country; we are not here to look at sitting hours and fit them around my children’s bed times. In looking at the sitting hours, what we are doing today is wrong. We should be considering the changing role of MPs, because that is the issue. As individual MPs, we have to sort that out between ourselves and our constituents rather than looking at changing the sitting hours.

[Jo Swinson]

rose—

[Natascha Engel]

I will take a very brief intervention.

[Jo Swinson]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that in our roles as legislators, it is incredibly important that we should be able to work efficiently and make good decisions? Important decisions are made here. Sitting late into the night does not always guarantee good decisions. Having a bit more control over how we can arrange our working lives would make for more efficient and effective working.

[Natascha Engel]

I do not really take that point. If the problem is late-night sitting, people should get up later. The sitting hours are not the problem. The hon. Lady mentioned the efficiency and effectiveness of an MP’s work. The sitting hours are not the issue. The issue is what we do when we are here and what we do in our constituencies.

[Mrs Grant]

rose—

[Natascha Engel]

I will give way very briefly and then stop.

[Mrs Grant]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that the role of an MP and the hours we spend here are inextricably linked?

[Natascha Engel]

I do not. What I do accept is that there is a job of work that MPs do in Parliament and a different job of work that we do in our constituencies. How we manage that is down to us. We have to make sure that everybody can manage to work around our sitting hours. Although what we have at the moment may not work perfectly for everyone, I think it works for everyone. I will leave it at that.