Procedure of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

We have already anticipated some of this debate during the urgent question, but I rise to speak to the motions standing in my name and that of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House.

The motions facilitate making decisions on areas which, to have any meaningful usefulness, need to be decided before the early days of the next Parliament. They include matters raised in the Procedure Committee’s latest report “Matters for the Procedure Committee in the 2015 Parliament”, published last week. The report specifically called for a decision of the House before the end of this Parliament on the issue of extending the trial of new arrangements for programming legislation. Let me deal with that motion first.

The House agreed on 8 May last year to the trial of new arrangements with regard to programming legislation, following the Procedure Committee report on the same subject, published in December 2013. The arrangements included bringing forward the deadline for tabling amendments, new clauses and schedules from two days to three days before the day on which the debate takes place. The Procedure Committee agreed to review the operation of the arrangements at the end of the current Session. That review, aided by a memorandum produced by the Public Bill Office, is summarised in last week’s Procedure Committee report. The report noted that the trial had not produced very much evidence on the impact of the change, and therefore recommended that the trial should be continued in the first Session of the next Parliament. The Procedure Committee also recommended that the deadline be extended to cover amendments in Committee of the whole House for all Bills, and on Report for unprogrammed bills.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

If we are having a secret ballot for the position of the Speaker of the House, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we should have secret ballot for the position of the Leader of the House?

[Mr Hague]

I am talking about the programming of Bills, but I shall come on to the secret ballot issue in a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way any more, as I ought to draw my remarks to a conclusion.

I say to Conservative Members that when our procedure was crafted in 2001, we took the view that the re-election of a Speaker at the beginning of a new Parliament was, in effect, a vote of confidence in the Speaker. The Leader of the House suggested that anybody elected to a position of power over the people should be elected by secret ballot. The Prime Minister will also depend on a vote of confidence or a vote of no confidence. If the Leader of the House is to continue with this, his argument must be that a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister should be a secret ballot. Of course it should not. If Conservative Members genuinely believe that hon. Members will be so frightened that they will not be able to own up to the public how they voted on such a motion of confidence or no confidence in the Speaker, frankly, they have no confidence in one another.

The proceedings of this House were secret for centuries. John Wilkes campaigned to be allowed to reveal to the public what went on in this place. What did the majority Government do at the time? They used their majority to chuck him out of Parliament, and what did the voters do? They put him back in. What did the Government then do? They chucked him out. What did the voters do? They chucked him back in. They believed that this House’s proceedings should be in public and should be known to all so that voters could make their decisions.

The Leader of the House has done himself no favours; he has betrayed the confidence of the House today. He tabled his motion at some time about 7.30 last night. He did not notify the Opposition, but let us get over that. He is arguing that we should have a secret ballot for the election of the Chair of the Procedure Committee, yet he has deliberately gone behind the back of the very person who was elected by the whole House in a secret ballot. His argument bears no weight. Moreover, he constructed today’s one-hour debate in such a way as to make it impossible to table an amendment for consideration. It is completely impossible for us to consider a single amendment today. That is not the action of a Leader of the House who respects Parliament. That is why I say to him: in the name of God, go—and I think the people of this country will say the same.

[Pete Wishart]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given the great unhappiness about this process and the way this House has been bounced into considering it, is there any way that this question could not now be put?

[Mr Speaker]

There is, of course, a device of moving the previous question, but it would affect only the first of the motions, which is not the one that has excited the debate. It could be done, but I rather suspect that it would not be effective.