Business of the House

Peter Bone Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

This is indeed a conundrum. We are misaligning the calendar of the House of Commons with the fiscal year. We have managed to cope historically, but I do not have an answer. I would have liked deeper consideration of the proposals in a form that could be properly debated, rather than to find ourselves confronted with these motions on the Order Paper. I genuinely understand the Government’s problems. I do not wish to be obstructive, but I think it important to take some time to review what are, after all, arrangements that have been in place for many hundreds of years.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The shadow Minister is making a powerful speech. Is not one of the dangers—we hear it often—that the Government want to do something on the surface for very good reasons, but at the same time what happens strengthens the Executive and reduces the power of Parliament?

[Chris Leslie]

The hon. Gentleman has hit on an important point. If we have a too relaxed approach to the parliamentary calendar, we could see a repeat of the situation whereby this House of Commons is especially busy for a couple of months, but is then twiddling its thumbs for several months longer—perhaps when the Government are struggling to get their business through the other place.

The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) asked the right question: how should we proceed from here? I understand the arguments in favour of some of the proposed changes, but I wish that the Government had devoted more time and care to discussing the issues through the usual channels and allowing the problems that had been raised to be considered properly and thoughtfully.

It would be useful if the Minister answered some questions, because I remain to be persuaded. For instance, why should not consideration of a Finance Bill start a month or so later? I am not suggesting that that is necessarily the solution; I am merely speculating on what the consequences might be. We could still have a Budget in March, but proceedings on the Finance Bill proper could start immediately after the Queen’s Speech in May, at the beginning of the new Session. That might be preferable to a Committee stage taking place for a couple of weeks immediately after the March Budget, followed by an elongated break and then a return to the Committee stage about halfway through the clauses that had previously been under consideration. There is, of course, virtue in avoiding a disruptive period of down time in the middle of a Committee stage. I should like to know whether the Government and, indeed, the Procedure Committee have thought about that.

Will the Minister elaborate on the proposals in motion 2 on carry-over of Ways and Means legislation? He has not chosen simply to amend Standing Order No. 80A to remove the reference to Ways and Means. Instead, an attempt seems to have been made to copy and paste carry-over provisions in respect of other Bills into a new Standing Order relating specifically to Ways and Means and money Bills. As far as I can see, however, various elements have not been transposed: for example, Standing Order No. 80A(3), which provides for no more than one Bill to be subject to a carry-over motion, and (4), which prevents a carry-over motion to apply to a Bill carried over from a previous Session. There seems to be nothing technically in place to prevent a Finance Bill that has been carried over from one Session from being carried over again to another. I accept that such a development may be very unlikely, but I do not understand why it was not covered in the copy-and-paste exercise. It could be described as the Schleswig-Holstein question squared, and I should be grateful if the Minister could seek some inspiration in order to clarify the point.

I have heard the Minister argue about the move to the automatic Third Reading of Finance Bills on the same day as Report each year. He says that that it has been happening for 100 years—which, according to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), may mean that it is too early to tell whether it is working. Even if it is normal practice, the Government have at least had the courtesy to table a motion seeking the House’s permission, rather than assuming that Third Reading shall always take place on the same day as Report. However, I feel that the practice may erode the purpose of Third Readings as a distinct stage in the passage of legislation. It may be entirely pragmatic, but although I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, I do not think that consequences of some of these changes have been properly thought through.

Can the Minister explain the rationale for the omission of the backstop date applying to the three days allotted to the consideration of estimates? I understand that he is changing the date from 5 August following line-of-sight discussions after the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011—that makes sense—but why not simply shift the date forward to February or March rather than omitting it altogether?

The Minister also said that he proposed to put back the “roll-up” day for the modification of estimates by only five or six weeks—to, I believe, 18 March—which strikes me as a fairly arbitrary choice. He also touched on the fact that we would lose one of those modification days, as the number would be reduced from three to two. It is a small point, but, again, I wonder whether it should have been considered in more detail.

I have total respect for the Procedure Committee and its Chairman, who engaged in informal discussions with the Leader of the House about the proposals and did not object to them, but—with the greatest respect—I wish that the proposals had been subjected to more adequate scrutiny, and to some form of challenge or review. There have been no public hearings or discussions, and no report has been provided to enable parliamentarians to digest and consider the proposals.

I believe that the changes require serious consideration, because they could have profound and unintended constitutional consequences. I have not yet been convinced by the Minister that we need to rush them through before the Christmas recess, although I shall wait to hear what he has to say. He has, in a statesmanlike way, withdrawn motion 7, and I wonder whether it would be wise for him also to seek to withdraw the carry-over proposals. Perhaps he could ask the Procedure Committee to consider the issues relating to those proposals in more detail, because, as yet, I am not fully persuaded that it would be responsible to support them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon; he is not sitting where I expected to find him. He made an important point about the advent in due course of a House business committee. We are looking at that, as we said we would, but even under existing arrangements it is open to any Select Committee, through the Backbench Business Committee, to seek time on the Floor of the House to debate a motion relating to departmental spending plans. The great advantage of that method is that the time constraints and procedural limitations arising from estimates procedure are absent.

The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) asked why, during estimates day debates, we talk about Select Committee reports on matters that are either at some distance from or fairly peripheral to the essential element, which is scrutiny of Government accounts. Although that is a good question, it is one for another day, as it does not fall within the narrow confines of the motion.

I am grateful to the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), for his assistance. The idea that this is somehow a rushed process, when we put the proposals before that Committee for its consideration back in February and it is now, let me remind the House, December, or that we did not think of these things in advance, when we passed the proposals for consideration before the announcement of the change to the sessional timetable, is something of a nonsense. These are matters on which we needed the advice of the House; we have received that advice through the Procedure Committee, and that is why the motion has been brought before the House.

[Mr Bone]

Were the usual channels consulted and is there agreement? If there is agreement between the usual channels, I have some concerns.

[Mr Heath]

I of course have no idea what goes on in the usual channels, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that it is far more important that a Select Committee of this House has had the opportunity to comment on proposals that affect the scrutiny of Government business by the House. Not only was the Procedure Committee consulted, but it agreed unanimously that the change would assist scrutiny by the House and would in no way diminish the opportunities for Members to have their say on Government business.