Select Committee on Governance of the House

Paul Farrelly Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I support the proposed Select Committee and its eminent Chair-elect, but I want to be reassured that it is not an effort to undermine an elected and reforming Speaker of the House. Mr Speaker has given us many more opportunities than we had in the past to hold the Government to account.

I should also like to be assured that the Committee will go wider than the appointment of a new Clerk and splitting responsibilities with a new chief executive. Ideally, the Committee would at the very least recommend that the entire management structure of the House be looked at in this modern age. It would also ideally recommend any changes necessary to improve support to elected Members. To my mind, that should include organisation of the management and the Clerks department; recruitment; what opportunities and prospects are on offer; how promotions are decided; and the perks and privileges. Ideally, it would also include how we ensure that staffing and resources are responsive to the needs of Select Committees, so that we can exercise our role more effectively.

On Monday, the head of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, its first woman general secretary, talked about a “Downton Abbey” recovery. To many hon. Members, the House often has an archaic “Upstairs, Downstairs” feel. Perks and privileges for the few abound, but plenty of glass ceilings are apparent from lower down the ladder.

The debate was prompted by the appointment of a new Clerk. One notable aspect of the process was that outside applications were invited from a range of candidates. That seems to have prompted a bitter reaction from some quarters whose interests seem vested in purely preserving the past.

In this day and age, it would seem strange to the outside world if this were all simply to boil down to defending Buggins’s turn. There is no necessary connection, as we have heard, between an encyclopaedic knowledge of “Erskine May” built up over decades and the ability to run a multi-million pound organisation such as Parliament in the 21st century.

As well as the best management and governance, in the modern age the House is urgently crying out for the updating of parliamentary privilege, to which I hope the Select Committee could also give a push. A privileges Bill has long been mooted, but there has been precious little sign of one from the Government or from within the House. Two years ago, for example, the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport produced a damning report naming people who had misled the House over phone hacking and a cover-up at News International. Those conclusions, under our old procedures, now lie parked with the Standards and Privileges Committees for further action. When we came to draft the report and pressed for clarity about privilege and the sanctions available, vagueness was the guidance of the day for fear of exposing the fact that the emperor, namely Parliament, had no clothes—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think we need to get back on to the subject in hand.

[Paul Farrelly]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am coming back to the issue of the management and governance of the House, but I wanted to speak frankly about how that difficult report involved trial and tribulation in how Committees were supported by the management of the House.

I want to conclude with a few words about one disturbing aspect of the appointment process, namely that attacks on Mr Speaker, the appointment panel and one of the outside candidates, Carol Mills from Australia, began before the appointment was made on 30 July. They began 10 days before, during the interviews, when leaked attacks from unnamed sources appeared in one Sunday tabloid, and they have carried on since. I will not dignify the organ my naming it, but it was hardly the first time it has attacked Mr Speaker, nor will it be the last. I have particular sympathy in that regard because two years ago I was on the end of such leaks, and not from elected Members, to the same newspaper.

What has happened this summer has been a disgrace, with the same newspaper, the same reporters, a similar modus operandi and similar sources, it seems to me. As we consider the motion, I want to be assured that such bad behaviour will not be tolerated or rewarded in the future.