House of Commons Governance

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow a thoughtful Burkean speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who kick-started the process that led up to the report from a hill top in his constituency. It was just over four and a half months ago that we debated his motion, which set up the Committee. I join him in congratulating the Chair and, indeed, the Committee on a first-class piece of work. It is appropriate that we should debate the report this week, when we are focusing on how Parliament has evolved over time.

I want to make a very brief contribution. The Governance Committee represents a new approach to the issue in the sense touched on by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), as the previous reviews have been led by people outside Parliament with no direct stake in the outcome—Ibbs, Braithwaite and Tebbit. This approach was intrinsically led by people in the thick of it. The previous reviews had no time pressures, but, as I said in the debate that established it, this review had a challenging deadline. The quality of the report shows that we should not underestimate the capacity of this House to tackle complex issues seriously, promptly and in a collegiate way.

I draw a parallel between this report and the report of the Wright Committee at the end of the last Parliament. A Select Committee was set up right at the end of that Parliament alongside the existing Select Committees that had a specific remit, reported promptly and produced a groundbreaking report charting the way forward and leading to long-term improvements to how this place works. The Straw report will join the Wright report in the history of how this place is reformed.

Part of the success of the Governance Committee was its size—eight—and there is a lesson there for other Select Committees whose effectiveness can be diminished by their size. They become too large to manage and the law of diminishing returns kicks in, in my view, somewhere above 10. I commend the members of the Committee for their attendance record, which was exemplary.

Before dealing with the substance of the report, I want to mention three matters briefly in passing. First, I have a minor quibble with paragraph 200, which says:

“One of the consequences of the reforms introduced by the Wright Committee is that there is no clear route by which House business reaches the floor of the House”.

In fact, the Wright Committee could not have been clearer. It states:

“Backbenchers should schedule backbench business. Ministers should give up their role in the scheduling of any business except that which is exclusively Ministerial business”.

To my knowledge, there has never been a problem about allocating time for Standards and Privileges or Procedure Committee reports. I welcome the rather tactful letter of the Leader of the House pointing out this minor error.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was here earlier today, but there was an exchange between the Leader of the House and me about timetabling, because a large number of reports await debate, some of which have been waiting for more than 18 months.

[Sir George Young]

None the less, the Wright Committee could not have been clearer. A certain number of days a year are allocated to the Backbench Business Committee specifically for the purpose of debating Select Committee reports. The Government, generously, have made additional time available over and above that which they had to, and that shows the generosity of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House in going beyond what he had to do to facilitate debate.

Secondly, I very much support the proposal in paragraph 138 that we should make wider use of the Deputy Speakers. This is a good week in which to make the point, because looking at the number of commemorative events taking place, it is impossible for Mr Speaker to represent the House at all of them, and it would be absolutely right for the Deputy Speakers to do so in his place. Pressure will continue throughout the year. The Deputy Speakers, as I am sure you will agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, are experienced parliamentarians who have a mandate from the House and are an underused asset.

My third minor point touches on paragraph 144, which states:

“The overlap between F&S and Administration is unfortunate”.

It goes on to make the point that

“Finance can never be separated entirely from services”.

The Chairmen of both Committees are rightly praised for their work in this Parliament, but given that services and the money that pays for them can never be separated, I ask myself whether, in the longer term, we need to have two separate Committees of MPs, neither of which has an executive role, but both of which advise the Commission. That might be something to revisit.

The key question addressed by the report appears at the foot of paragraph 68, which states:

“Some Members argued that the Clerk…should be the senior post. Other Members argued for two separate posts…of equal status”.

Looking at the questions that the Committee asked, it was clear that both sides of the argument were held in the Committee. Skilful chairmanship and a willingness to compromise enabled the Committee to produce a unanimous report, for which the House is grateful.

The Committee’s proposals appear not in chapter 5, headed “Our proposals”, which contains three tentative suggestions, but in chapter 6. Eight words at the end of paragraph 156 encapsulate the skilful settlement negotiated by the Chair to achieve a unanimous report:

“The Director General would chair the Executive Committee.”

But on that Committee sits the Clerk, who is the line manager of the director general and the head of the House service. The Clerk remains the accounting officer, is responsible for providing strategic leadership to the service overall, but he is a junior partner on the executive committee responsible for doing this. The House of Commons Library says that the executive committee’s role

“is to lead the House of Commons Service by setting its strategic aims, priorities, values and standards, in accordance with the decisions of the House of Commons Commission; approving business and financial plans, ensuring controls, managing risk, monitoring performance and making corporate policy decisions.”

Those are key responsibilities. Chairing it will mean leading the discussion, achieving a consensus, and, at times, possibly taking a different view from the Clerk.

I do not say that that cannot work; there may be other examples where a subordinate chairs a committee on which his boss sits. But my eye was caught by that because it sits a little uneasily with the injunctions at the beginning of the report about clarity. Paragraph 8:

“Governance must start with clarity”.

Paragraph 9:

“Governance…must deliver clear decision-making”.

Paragraph 14:

“There is normally a single senior executive—a single head—who then delegates specific responsibilities further down the organisation.”

Paragraph 16:

“those who are accountable”—

the Clerk will remain accountable—

“must have the ability to manage that for which they are accountable, and therefore a single line of command, at executive level, is critically important.”

I understand why the Committee ended up where it did, and I am not saying that the proposal cannot work. Indeed, the report mentions other examples, such as the Olympic Delivery Authority. Key will be a determination to make it work. The fact that the Clerk will have a role to play in choosing the director general is very helpful. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire summed it up when he said that success will depend on harmony.

That is the only part of the report that one needs to keep an eye on, and I understand why we arrived at that decision. Subject to that, I think this is a brilliant piece of work and I am grateful to the Committee and the chair for producing it. I hope we can now build on it and move forward.