European Statutory Instruments Committee

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am happy to accept most of what the Leader of the House said and I am inclined to support the amendment. I hope that the House will forgive many of us on the Opposition Benches if we first want to see all these assurances of fair play put into practice, because many such assurances have not been, in the case of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and associated legislation. We will take the Government at their word just now, but we will be watching carefully not only what goes to the Committee, but what does not. We will be holding the Government firmly to account.

With regard to the amendment, I understand the Government’s reluctance to set a precedent. We must recognise that because this Parliament is nowhere near gender-balanced, we will have a problem if we try to make all its Committees gender-balanced, because women MPs would have to do the work of two men MPs. Well, a lot of people might suggest—[Interruption.] You’re getting ahead of me, as Ronnie Corbett used to say. That would create difficulties if it was applied to every Committee at once, but why not introduce such a measure, one Committee at a time, to see how it works?

I am intrigued by the Leader of the House’s concern that there might be times when nobody of the correct gender puts themselves forward for membership of the Committee. That implies that Members volunteer for Committees, rather than simply being told by their party Whips which ones they will be members of—I will need to have words with my own party Whip about that in the future. The proposal does not work for smaller parties, however, because if a smaller party has only one place on a Committee, that Member will, generally speaking, be either 100% male or 100% female. However, the bigger parties will have more members of the Committee, and a much bigger number of MPs to draw from. I would be concerned if no men or no women from either of the two largest parties in the House were willing to put in what looks like a fairly modest time commitment to ensure that secondary legislation for Brexit is scrutinised properly.

There is no issue with the fact that Brexit will involve a lot of secondary legislation, but there is a major issue with some of the things that the Government intend to use that secondary legislation for. I would have thought that anyone who is interested in ensuring that this House tells the Government what to do, rather than the other way around, would also ensure that no party would struggle to find Members to take up places on the Committee.

I ask the Leader of the House to reconsider her opposition to the amendment. We should be looking to introduce the principle of gender balance in fairly minor ways, over time, especially when there are those who say that it is not possible to do it all in one go. With that slight caveat, we will support the motion, but we will be watching carefully what happens to the Government’s assurances in the coming months.