Business of the House

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I thank the hon. Lady for standing up for her constituent, which she is obviously right to be doing. She has the support of both sides of the House in doing so. However, the issue that she raises is extraordinarily difficult. The British Government cannot and must not pay, or appear to pay, either in fact or in reality, money to allow people who have been illegally detained to be released. The risk that would cause to other Britons travelling abroad would be very considerable. The law must take its course in relation to the money that was deposited here, but it would be absolutely wrong to connect the two issues.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

Following the reformation of the all-party group on Iran, and in the light of recent events in the middle east—and domestically, as we have just heard—will the Leader of the House find Government time for a debate on relations between the United Kingdom and the Islamic Republic of Iran?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

This is obviously a matter of interest to many Members, as it is raised every week. The Government hear that, and I am sure the Backbench Business Committee hears it, too. As an immediate stopgap, I would point my hon. Friend to Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions on Tuesday 4 February.

Tributes to the Speaker’s Chaplain

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this brief debate, Mr Speaker, and have the opportunity to offer my own tribute. I will start by offering a tribute to you, Mr Speaker, because I was not able to be here earlier. I remember well, as a young man, running into the party conference in 1985 to hear you speak, so we must have known each other for at least 34 or 35 years. You were a remarkable young man, and you have had a remarkable, and in some ways famous and controversial, speakership. Of all the things you have done—someone said earlier that you have undoubtedly ruffled feathers—I think that your best decision was to appoint Rose as your chaplain.

Rose has served this House extraordinarily well, and she always seemed to have a knack of knowing what to say. In one of the most difficult times in my life, I happened to bump into her in New Palace Yard. She looked at me from across the yard, pointed at me, and said, “I need to see you.” Although I had not talked to her at all about the difficulties I was facing, she already knew. She had a way of having her finger on the pulse and of knowing who needed help and counsel. Within an hour and a half or two hours, she had made time in her diary, and I spent probably 80 minutes in her study. Those were the most reassuring and illuminating 80 minutes of all the time that I spent talking to people about the difficulties I was facing, and she gave me an enormous amount of reassurance and relief. Rose has an extraordinary gift for pastoral care, and I shall always be extraordinarily grateful to her. She set me on the course that I am relieved I ended up on, and I felt reassured by her that it was an okay course on which to embark.

I endorse the tributes we have already heard. The Church of England often gets a lot of stick, and people worry about the future of our established Church. I believe that so long as people such as Rose are within it, and rising within it, the future of our Church will also be secure.

Business of the House

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

As always, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me prior notice of urgent debates for which he is seeking time. I will always seek to accommodate the Backbench Business Committee.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the Leader of the House for being in her place and attending to her duties. May we have a debate about those Ministers who seem to think that supporting the Government is optional, despite their evident willingness to draw a Government salary paid for with our constituents’ taxes?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I absolutely understand my hon. Friend’s concerns. He will appreciate that there are widely held views right across the House among different Members, and it is extraordinarily difficult, at this time that is so important for the nation, to try always to deal with every single aspect of all eventualities. My hon. Friend knows that yesterday Government Members were given a free vote on the Government’s motion, but in the end that was not what the Government were voting on. The motion was amended by the House, which is why the challenging whipping arrangements occurred.

Business of the House

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

A few moments ago, the Leader of the House said that the Prime Minister had spent three hours reassuring us that she would seek some reassurances. Does the Leader of the House understand that when a motion is brought back for us to vote on the withdrawal agreement, the only thing that will make a difference is for changes to be made to the text of the agreement? Does she understand that?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Let me first point out to my hon. Friend that the Prime Minister was here answering questions on all aspects of the withdrawal agreement. She was not here simply to reassure people; she was listening to all Members. In answer to the second part of my hon. Friend’s question, let me say that I think the Prime Minister fully understands that there are serious questions about the backstop, and a desire on the part of Members to see changes in the legal text.

Restoration and Renewal (Report of the Joint Committee)

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker. I will enjoy a refreshing cup of Irn Bru with the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) any time, but on his substantive point, I assure him that I cannot wait to get away from this place and for my nation to take control of all its own affairs.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

Is it true that there are only 22 voters in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency who separate him from fulfilling his wish?

[Pete Wishart]

Yet again, there is a cunning plan in place, because a precedent has been set. If I, for whatever reason that I cannot foresee, was less than successful in the next election, defeated Members for Perth and North Perthshire are simply given a peerage in the House of Lords.

We have proposed a sensible approach to the current issues facing this House. There is nothing wrong with considering a new-build Parliament off site. It is deeply disappointing and depressing that when that was sensibly presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) to the Joint Committee, it was rejected out of hand and did not even get the time of day as a proposal. Is that not absolutely shocking? It was a failure of true diligence of this House to consider all available options—just rejected immediately. It would have been a solution. Just imagine developers lining up to get a share of this place, a UNESCO site; just imagine what they could do. We are trying to shoehorn a Parliament into this mock Gothic building. We need a 21st-century Parliament designed with all the features that we require as 21st-century parliamentarians to do our job, and that cannot be achieved on this site without decades of work and billions and billions of pounds.

That brings me to amendment (b) to motion No. 2. This is really, really important. For goodness’ sake let us at least end the useless tradition that actively eats into our productivity as Members of Parliament and restore electronic voting in whatever approach we pursue. [Interruption.] Another proposal that has gone down particularly well with my Conservative friends! We waste days of parliamentary time just stuck in the packed voting Lobby, waiting to make that simple binary choice of yes or no.

Business of the House

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not accept that. I made a point of ensuring that no public statement was made by the Government, and no provision of the motion was made to the media, before the motion was tabled in the House, and I think that that was the right and proper thing to do.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I managed to get hold of a copy of the motion—for which I commend the Government—with no difficulty. If it is possible to get hold of it so easily, it surely ought to be possible for others, including the shadow Leader of the House.

[Chris Grayling]

The versatility demonstrated by my hon. Friend may explain why we are sitting on the Government Benches, in government, and those on the other side are not.

House of Commons Business

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

There are some very eminent Members, of course, who know absolutely everything, and that is why I always bow to their view. But similarly, in many of those 29 debates, although a petition was tagged to the subject, the petition was never even referred to in the debate. Those were the debates, actually, that Members got going, and petitions were tagged to them. If we get to a position where that is reversed—where, if there is an inference that if you can get to 100,000 signatures, there is an expectation, not that Government should find time, but that the agent of Government, the sub-office, Parliament, will have to look after those things—I can tell Members what happens next. It is that their time, as Back Benchers, starts to get squeezed out.

If there is a petitions committee, let us imagine being the Chair of that petitions committee. Will they just pass the petitions through? Or will they ask, “Would my hon. Friend on the Backbench Business Committee give us a little bit of time? This is so important; I have had more than 100,000 signatures and my petitions committee thinks it is really important”? Is it likely that members of the petitions committee will go to the Government? Will they pop up at business questions and will the Leader of the House say, “Absolutely; very important. I will find you a couple of hours next week”? No, they will not. They will go to our Backbench Business Committee.

I remind new Members that the Backbench Business Committee did not pop out of thin air. It was fought through against the wishes of the Labour party, fought through, it seems now, against some of the wishes of the governing parties. The Committee is a very precious thing and its time is very precious. It is not to be bandied about and traded to a petitions committee in order, really, to salve the conscience of the Government, who, if they are interested in specific issues, should be using the vast majority of the House’s time, which they own and control, to hold debates on them. We do not need to be manipulated into using valuable Backbench Business Committee time for Government debates.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

On that point, I am interested in the subject of a petitions committee and the Scottish Parliament comes to mind. Would not the best role of a petitions committee, if it were working properly, be not to fight for time from the Backbench Business Committee but to sit in public, calling Ministers of the Government in front of it to account for the problems that were brought before it by petitioners, and to insist that Ministers explain to it—the petitions committee—what was going to be done to address those problems?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman has probably put the final nail in the coffin of a petitions committee by making it clear that Ministers should be brought before it to answer on matters that are in the Government’s, rather than Parliament’s, domain. Either that, or it may well be that the people who are members of the petitions committee will be so pliant that they will never bother to do anything like that and will just pass most of the responsibility over to the Backbench Business Committee, pretending that the job has been done, and that those petitioners have really been listened to. They do not get listened to easily. Every Member of the House knows that they have to fight for time. We have to fight for airtime. we have to campaign. We have to really demand that something that incites us as individuals gets in front of Government. We should be extremely careful about compromising that.

My final point was pre-empted by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, the Chair of the Procedure Committee. It is about gateways. I do not pretend to be an expert on these things, but I do know that when people log on and have a look at how they can progress a petition, it is really important that they are given good advice from the first moment, just as we are in the House. If a Member goes into the Table Office with an idea for a question, they will get some good advice about who to send it to and how to word it. The same standards should apply in the House to petitions. That is why each petition should be in the ownership of an individual Member. Rather than the petition starting with the words, “We, the petitioners, call upon Parliament to declare world peace”—or free beer for everyone—there should be a check, and advice to the effect: “Hang on a minute. You are the Member in charge. We need to get the words right and ensure that your petition is in order. Then you may go crazy and get 100,000 signatures if you can.” But if we leave things as vague and open as they are at the moment, we again do the public a disservice, because they will not know, any more than they do now, the difference between Government and Parliament.

As the Chair of the Procedure Committee said, people need to know what other options exist. Petitioning may not be a very effective way to proceed. It may be better to write to the local Member of Parliament and get them to ask a question or appear before a Minister or write a letter to a Minister. Unless the gateways are really clear—the parliamentary gateway being very different from the Government gateway—I am afraid we are again perpetrating that deceit upon people. It would be no better than the origins of petitioning—prostrating oneself before a mediaeval monarch in the hope that they might grant a favour. I think we can do better than that.

My hope is that if the Leader of the House or the Deputy Leader of the House respond positively, the Procedure Committee will take what is before us now and do a really great job on it. I say to the Chair of that Committee, directly across the Chamber, that the responsibilities are onerous. People have been kidded about e-petitions. It has been confusing. It has not been clear even to many Members of the House, let alone to members of the public. It is easy to misrepresent. He needs to clean this up, and his Committee has a job to do that. One of the best ways he can do that is to ensure that a separation between Government petitioning and parliamentary petitioning is clear in the report that he produces for the House. I wish him well.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I do not intend to go back to the 1300s, but I do intend to go back to the 1600s. In 1624, the master of the felt-makers was arrested while attending the House to proffer a petition. The House considered that he had the protection of the House to proffer the petition and established a committee to consider whether the arrest itself was a breach of privilege. In 1696, Thomas Kemp and other Hackney coachmen were arrested as a consequence of proceedings by Richard Gee, a commissioner of Hackney coaches. The House concluded that Mr Gee was guilty of a breach of privilege and a high misdemeanour and that he was to be imprisoned by the Serjeant. In 1699, John Kelly was imprisoned in consequence of having given Members an abstract of several articles against the commissioners of victualling. That was referred to the Privileges Committee. The fact that people used to be imprisoned for petitioning Parliament shows how important petitions were.

To return to the current day, about a month ago the London borough of Redbridge was upset that a 94-year-old woman wanted to petition Parliament. Sadly, before it could get an injunction to stop her petitioning Parliament, she did so and the petition is now bagged behind Mr Speaker’s Chair and in Hansard. Obviously, there are still issues with regard to petitioning Parliament.

One of my fundamental principles in politics is that people have a right to complain to Members of Parliament. An issue about schools in my constituency and others in Birmingham has been debated. It is a particular principle of mine that nobody should be frightened to speak to me. There is no question but that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) did excellent work, with the support of the Business Secretary, in getting a statutory instrument through that stated that disclosures to Members of Parliament are protected disclosures for the purposes of employment tribunals. I have asked the schools to put in their staff room a copy of the Library briefing saying that a disclosure to a Member of Parliament is a protected disclosure, and they have both agreed to do so. The staff at those schools can therefore have absolute certainty that they are protected, from the perspective of employment law, in talking to Members of Parliament.

Parliament should go further and do what it used to do in the 1600s, because it used to protect people’s right to complain to Members of Parliament. In our debates, that is what privilege is about. It is about the people of this country being able to use Parliament to redress all grievances. Although the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) referred in his excellent speech to article 5 of the Bill of Rights, he did not mention article 13, which defines one function of Parliament as the redress of all grievances. However, if we do not know what people’s grievances are, how can we redress them? Through parliamentary jurisdiction, Parliament has powers to protect people when they talk to Members of Parliament. I have two live cases: in one, somebody has recently been injuncted in an attempt to stop them talking to me; in the other—I have only just got the e-mail on my phone—somebody is frightened that they might face litigation if they petition Parliament.

There is an issue about e-petitions, which are not proceedings in Parliament, although paper petitions are. I agree with the Government motion, which is sensible. I am a member of both the Procedure Committee and the Backbench Business Committee, and I congratulate both the Chairs on their able work. I agree that e-petitions need to be looked at, and I disagree with the amendment of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), which would fetter the Procedure Committee’s discretion. Although I accept some of the amendment’s content, if it is pushed to a vote, I will oppose it.

As a House, we must emphasise that parliamentary privilege is a form of privilege akin to absolute privilege, qualified privilege and legal professional privilege, all of which are about protecting people’s rights. Parliamentary privilege is about protecting our citizens’ or constituents’ rights to complain to us, with those complaints being addressed in some part or other of the system. Frankly, we should explain that fact, rather than change the name, because privilege has an important function. How else can people ask somebody to stand up on their behalf to complain about what has happened to them without fearing that they will be imprisoned?

Lots of things still go wrong in this country. Hon. Members will be aware that I have often complained about people being intimidated in an attempt to stop them talking to me. Normally, it does not work; sometimes it does. Obviously, I do not know the circumstances when intimidation has worked in that way, because the people stop talking to me. We need to protect people’s rights to talk to us.

[Mr Bacon]

I am listening to my hon. Friend’s speech with interest. If I had to explain privilege, I would describe it as the unfettered right of Members to stand up and speak on behalf of their constituents. That is the simplest way to describe it. Does he not think that it is extraordinary for an English judge ever to believe that there are circumstances in which it is appropriate for them to name a Member of Parliament as a person to whom a constituent should not speak, as has happened in an injunction?

[John Hemming]

Indeed; it is extraordinary for a judge to go so far, but there has been some pulling back from that position. The Neuberger committee considering the issue of super-injunctions concluded that it is not possible for an injunction to prevent people from talking to Members of Parliament. However, not everybody has read the Neuberger committee’s report. I am the sort of sad person who reads judgments, committee reports and the like, but most people who are told that they will be imprisoned if they talk to an MP believe that that is true—in fact, it is not true—and that, sadly, guides what they do.

A very serious concern is therefore a live one in 2014. Even if petitioning has gone on since the 1300s, it is a live concern today. Although the work of the right hon. Member for Haltem and Howdenprice or whatever it is—[Interruption.] I apologise to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden for not getting his constituency name right. Notwithstanding the complexities of his constituency name, his work is excellent. That work has gone part of the way, but we need to go further. It is a job for Mr Speaker through referring issues to the Privileges Committee, because we need to stand up for our constituents’ rights to talk to us.

On timetabling on Report, I want to make two points. The first is that procedure is how one exercises power and is therefore crucial. From time to time, all Governments want to use procedure to prevent difficult votes from happening. I do not think that Governments are frightened so much about debates as about votes in which difficult Members—perhaps like me—will not necessarily vote with the Government, so if they can avoid such votes, all the better. That will always be a difficulty, although we are making useful progress in the form of the motion on programming before us.

The second point about process is one that people should be aware of when they consider votes in Public Bill Committees and whether amendments should be made in the Commons or in the other place. The reality is that for amendments to be accepted by the Government, there has to be a consultation process throughout Whitehall, which is sensible, but takes a certain time. If an amendment is tabled in a Public Bill Committee to be voted on three days later, the consultation process will not have happened and the Government are not therefore in a position to agree to it. That is why many amendments, however well argued, are not generally accepted until they appear again in the other place. The Procedure Committee has suggested using the recommittal process, and I believe that there are mechanisms to facilitate the Government’s accepting amendments in this place rather than the other place. We must, however, take into account the real and realistic requirements for a process of consultation, and the fact that a vote in a Public Bill Committee at short notice is insufficient. In other words, we are making glacial progress, although in some areas we should assert ourselves, as Members did in the 1600s.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), for whom I have a great deal of respect. I do not plan to speak at length, and I have already made my primary point about parliamentary privilege in an intervention. Privilege—we should not seek to re-label it, but we should explain it—is the unfettered right of Members of Parliament to speak up on behalf of their constituents without any fear of the consequences, and it includes the unfettered right of people to go to their Members of Parliament so that that can take place.

I want to dwell on what happens to petitions. I recently re-read the obituary of Lord St John of Fawsley in The Guardian on 5 March 2012, which I recommend to anybody who wants a bit of entertainment on a wet Thursday afternoon. I particularly recommend my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal to read it. The first paragraph states that Lord St John of Fawsley

“was as vivid a personality as politics can bear.”

I do not think that I am doing my right hon. Friend an injustice if I say that people have not often said that of him, but he has an opportunity to go down in history every bit as significantly as Lord St John of Fawsley.

The issue of petitions cuts to the quick. As hon. Members have said, the right to petition goes back a long way and it is part of why we are here. Indeed, we might say the same about the English courts. The whole development of English administrative law was about the process of seeking remedy for specific grievances. That is how we have grown as a polity during the past 1,000 years.

What interests me is not so much whether there is an “e” in front of the word “petition”. I was particularly intrigued and delighted by the excitement my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) showed for technology—it seems slightly out of place with his normal demeanour and with his area of expertise, which usually dates back several centuries—and that was interesting to witness. However petitions end up in Parliament, it is what is done with them that really matters.

I know that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker)—he is rushing back to his place—is at an early stage of thinking about these issues. I encourage the Leader of the House, too, to think about what happens to petitions next. It seems to me that, later in the process, we should have a petitions Committee that has real teeth and before which Ministers have to appear.

For example, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) presented a petition about Alphonso mangos last night. He had only 329 signatures because he had only since the middle of last week to arrange his petition. The petitioners included significant street traders and representatives of traders in his constituency and elsewhere. That is an issue that will affect many people, that will damage many businesses to the tune of many millions of pounds and that outrages many people.

It ought to be possible for such issues to be addressed quickly in Parliament, not only through a debate but in Committee. If a Committee member does not like the answer that they receive from a member of the Executive, they should be able to press them further and harder to answer the question again and again until they get the answer that they want. They should be able to hold the Government’s feet to the fire, as it were, until they get a sense of what action they will take. In the case of the Alphonso mangos, that will be the pressure that they will put on Brussels to ensure that there is a quick solution.

Having a petitions Committee with teeth could transform the level of respect for this House among members of the public. They should feel that when they bring their grievances and concerns here, there is a swift mechanism for dealing with them that does not relate only to the number of people who have petitioned. I agree on that point with the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). The number of people who petition should not be the only criterion. A small number of petitioners could be just as important or even more important. That ought to be down to the judgment of Members of the House and members of Committees, such as a putative petitions committee. In that way, we can retain and strengthen the respect with which Members of Parliament are viewed.

Business of the House

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which allows me to say that I had hoped that we might have resolved those issues before now. We have not and I hope that we will soon. We and other stakeholders across the House need to establish consensus not only on that important issue but on how we might take forward the issues that the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee are considering as regards a more general revision of the code of conduct. I hope that in our conversations and my representations to his Committee we might be able to strengthen the work of the Standards Committee and give greater reassurance to the public and our constituents about the independence and robustness of the processes we have in place.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

As chair of the all-party group on self-build, custom-build and independent house building, may I remind the Leader of the House that next week’s business includes a debate on this important subject, to which the Government committed £150 million in the recent Budget? Hon. Members who wish to intervene in that debate should attend at the end of the day next Wednesday.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is quite right and, in self-build week, he has managed to obtain an opportunity for an Adjournment debate that will highlight the support we are giving and the potential there is for people to increase our housing supply in this country through self-build. We do not do very well in comparison with many other countries and he is an advocate of our doing much more. I encourage Members who have the opportunity to do so to support my hon. Friend in his debate on this important subject.

Finances of the House of Commons

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) that outside organisations such as charities should be able to have access to these facilities. I am a patron of a charity that had its launch here two years ago, and many people were grateful for that opportunity to come here. However, I also share the concerns of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) to some extent. One of the reasons that the catering department has had to look so much more widely is that political parties and trade unions, which regularly used to use the facilities, were effectively prohibited from doing so following the reforms of a few years ago. We want healthy political parties and well-organised trade unions that serve the interests of their members, and it is something of an irony that those bodies in our civic society that are among the most closely connected to this place are now the least able to use our facilities. Should not that matter be addressed?

[John Thurso]

If I may, I will write to the hon. Gentleman about that, unless the Chair of the Administration Committee happens to know more about the exact criteria involved and can give him an answer now. I believe that the reforms involved removing sponsored events, and that it would still be possible for other events to take place under the new system, but I will find out exactly what the situation is and get back to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bacon]

I am sorry to labour this point, but the hon. Gentleman half makes the point for me. I was told last week by my secretary that a social housing provider in my constituency, which has held events here in the past, thinks that the new terms and conditions will be absolutely crippling and that it will not be able to hold events here in the future. My point, which echoes that of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), is that this is not the InterContinental.

[John Thurso]

I am very well aware of that. The principle is that we should recover the appropriate costs. It would be quite wrong for this House to subsidise anyone from outside in the provision of any facility. It is a matter of retrieving the appropriate cost for an event. That goes back to the principle that I set out at the beginning of the debate. I ask hon. Gentlemen to let me get the exact truth of the matter and give it to them, rather than carry on and possibly make a mistake. The Chair of the Administration Committee might be able to give a fuller answer.

The Palace of Westminster is a heritage site, an iconic building and a major visitor attraction. Most importantly, it is also a working institution in which we work throughout our time as Members of Parliament. It is also a building in which the fabric is at, or well past, its sell-by date. Some mechanical and electrical elements have been nursed on by brilliant engineers, but in any other building they might well have been replaced quite a long time ago. It is clear that a major project of renewal and restoration is required. The Commission’s internal report suggested a number of possibilities, and three broad strands were chosen. It was decided that, as the matter was so important, it should be looked at by external experts who can look both at the robustness of the business cases and at the cost, so that we have the very best possible advice. It has always been my experience that money expended at the start of a process on good understanding of the problem, so that we bottom out and scope the project, saves a great deal of money later on.

Broadly, the three main options are: a rolling programme with no decant—something like we are doing now—but with quite significant changes to working patterns; a rolling programme with a partial decant; or a complete decant to get everything done quickly. Those options will be appraised by the professionals. In order to get the best possible people to do the work, a contract has been put out to tender. I hope to be in a position to announce to the House before we rise for the Christmas recess who has won the tender and the details of it. They will then commence work, which will enable a decision to be made based on robust professional work at some point early in the next Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

I confirm that, in determining the appropriate resource for every activity, we always consider what we are seeking to achieve and the most effective way of achieving it, and we base the resource on that. That is how we wish to proceed.

[Mr Bacon]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the PAC is in a separate category because it has the resources of the NAO behind it, and of course the NAO seconds people to the Scrutiny Unit as well, but even the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I was a member some years ago, had 16 members of staff. It is curious that Select Committees, through the Liaison Committee, routinely undertake foreign visits—for very good reasons, I might add—but if a Committee wants to get even the smallest piece of independent legal advice for itself, it is inordinately difficult. In making the case for more resources, should that not be one of the things that is seriously considered? We need to make sure that Select Committees have access to the best legal advice and subject experts as a matter of routine within the warp and weft of their own activity, without being dependent on others.

[John Thurso]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. For most of last year I had the honour of serving on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. We had the opportunity to engage senior counsel, junior counsel and experts from a wide range of areas. We worked at breakneck speed and in a year came up with what has generally been accepted as a pretty comprehensive and far-reaching report that the Government are now putting into legislation—not enough of it, some commissioners believe, but most of it. The report was paid for by the Government because they had asked for it. That is an indication of how one might consider working in future.

I do not want to prejudge anything, nor do I wish to open a can of worms. It might be possible to say that a Select Committee should or should not travel or that it should spend more money on this or that. It is a debate that Committee Chairs and others involved in Committees need to have. They should do it in a thorough way and put forward something that is really robust, and then, at the financial end of things, we consider it based on fact rather than their saying, “Please give me 20% more.” The days when people just said, “Let’s have 20% more and go and do X, Y and Z with it”, are gone. The right approach is to work out what we want to do and how scrutiny can best be achieved, and then look at how best to deliver the resource.

Committee on Members’ Allowances

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

Indeed, it can make any recommendations based on the considerations into which it has entered. It would be a very odd restriction on a Committee if it were to be told that it cannot make recommendations when it has considered a matter. Of course, such recommendations would be the end result if the Committee so chooses.

Motion 9 also brings the Committee’s terms of reference up to date. The Committee has a number of specific functions, set out in Standing Order No. 152G(1)(a) to (d), in relation to the old allowances regime that was administered by the House until the election last year. They include, for example, approving practice notes for the now-defunct fees office. Clearly, those specific powers are no longer relevant—they are, in effect, spent—and the motion provides the House with an opportunity to replace them with a more general power to consider any matter related to Members’ expenses that the House might choose to refer to it.

I sense from the interventions from the hon. Members for Windsor and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) that they have received some reassurance from what I have said.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured as well, but I will allow him to say.

[Mr Bacon]

I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House can reassure me. He said that the motion brings the Standing Order up to date because the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is operating an expenses-based scheme, not an allowances scheme. I have looked at the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. It mentions the word “allowance” or “allowances” 37 times. Therefore, the authority under which IPSA operates—the Act—provides for allowances. It does not provide any authority to operate an expenses scheme. Can he clarify that for me?

[Mr Heath]

I can simply make it clear that IPSA does what it believes to be in line with the Act. The Committee will be free to consider those matters and to bring forward recommendations as it sees fit. I do not think that I can be more open than simply saying that no restriction is applied by the terms of the motions.

[Mr Bacon]

I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for being as open as he thinks he can be, but I am still not quite clear. The 2009 Act could not be clearer. The words “expense” or “expenses” are not mentioned anywhere—I just searched a PDF copy of the Act and found that those words are mentioned nowhere in it—but the words “allowance” or “allowances” are mentioned 37 times. How can it be that IPSA operates a scheme that it thinks is in line with the Act if it ignores the terms of the Act? That is what I simply do not understand.

[Mr Heath]

It is probably not helpful for me to rehearse the subject matter of considerations that will clearly take place in the Committee. I do not speak for IPSA, but it has made it very clear that the current system is one of expenses, whereby Members are reimbursed for costs that they can prove they have incurred. The previous, discredited scheme was one of allowances, whereby Members were allowed to claim, in many cases, with no proof of actual expenditure. I repeat that changing the title of the Committee would not prevent it from proposing that IPSA should introduce a new system that includes an element of allowances, but it would be better if the Committee’s title actually reflected the scheme that is in operation rather than one that is not in operation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I shall be very brief. I am delighted by the Government’s reassurances, although I share the disappointment that it has taken since the resolution was passed in May to get to the point of setting up the Committee. If something had been decided that our constituents expected would happen, but then six or seven weeks later it had still not happened, we as Members would be advocating hard on their behalf. I am therefore glad that the decision has finally been made.

I want to make one point about the National Audit Office report that was published this morning, to which the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) referred. I have had a look at it, and I think that it looks fairly reasonable. I know that one or two Members who have looked at it are slightly disappointed that it does not appear to tear IPSA limb from limb. However, given what had taken place—the MPs’ expenses crisis and the response that came forth with the new legislation—IPSA has done its best. We know that there is still further to go, and my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House drew attention to the terms of reference—the need for improved public confidence, better accountability and better value for money, and not deterring legitimate claims. We all know that legitimate claims have been deterred, that we need to get value for money and that there is still some work to do, so I am delighted that the Committee can now proceed with its work.