House of Commons Commission Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The Bill proves that great things come in small packages. Brevity in a Bill can lead to excellent clarity of statute, a model that anybody forming a Government could look to follow in the future.

I thank the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House for having been able to bring the Bill before the House so that the provisions can be put into statute to enable the next Parliament, we hope, to get a flying start as the new Commission is set up.

I associate myself with the remarks of the Leader of the House and others who paid tribute to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), as I did when we debated these matters. May I assure him that I am called after the railway station, not the railway station after me? It is an excellent report which found an extremely good way forward and has found favour with everybody.

I should make it clear that I do not make these short remarks in my position as the spokesman for the Commission. The Commission’s position is set out in the written statements that I have issued in my name as the spokesman. That makes it clear that progress is being made to have the Clerk in place before Dissolution; and because of the sequential nature, as recommended by the Committee, the Director General recruitment has started but cannot be completed until that recruitment is in place, and that will be an early order of business for the new Parliament. Other than that, I would say that the Commission has sought simply to give effect to everything that was set out in the report as much as it can and as quickly as it can.

Speaking personally, I am delighted to see the Bill before the House. I do not want to go into any of the detail particularly. It does the important job of putting into statute the provisions that needed to be changed in the House of Commons (Administration) Act 1978, and we had the chance to debate the other matters earlier.

One small regret is that we did not find room in the Bill for an enabling clause, which would have permitted a future Commission to look at bringing the administration estimate and the Members Estimate Committee together, which was a sort of recommendation—a “think about” recommendation—that would have been useful at a later stage. However, I completely accept that, in order to get the Bill through quickly, that was a provision that had to wait for another time. My worry is that House of Commons Bills do not come along that often, so it may be a very long time before there is a possibility to do that.

The only other point that I would make, since it has been mentioned both by the shadow Deputy Leader of the House and others who have spoken, concerns election remuneration. It is important that these posts be elected by the whole House so that the whole House has confidence in each of the Members. I also feel, as I mentioned before, that the four posts should be equally remunerated. The reason for that is that I have not the slightest doubt that both of the posts that are currently not filled by Chairmen of Committees, where there is no question on this, will end up with Cabinet-style portfolios, and should end up with Cabinet-style portfolios. One of the most obvious places for this to happen is around human resources, change and diversity. It is an area that we do not scrutinise particularly well. One of the commissioners should take specific responsibility for that, and one of the commissioners who has done so extremely well in this Parliament would have been the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran). There is a strong case for using commissioners—not saying that commissioners should not do the work, should just turn up and make some decisions, but actually saying that this is a new Commission, operating in a different way, and these commissioners should be used to undertake work.

Apart from that point, this is an excellent Bill that puts into effect the recommendations of the Governance Committee, and I, too, commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

That is something that we will look at. My position is that the current arrangements for the Select Committee Chairs have worked well in this Parliament and they should continue in the next Parliament.

It is critical that there is no ambiguity about the position of the parliamentary Labour party. We do not believe that the other commissioners should be paid, because the work is no more onerous than being a member of the Finance and Services Committee or the Administration Committee or the Foreign Affairs Committee, and they do not receive payment. My understanding is that the Commission meets once a month and it would be slightly strange if the only member of the Commission who was not receiving an additional payment ended up being the shadow Leader of the House, because the shadow Cabinet are not paid. The Commission itself does not have an onerous meeting schedule—

[John Thurso]

I quite understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, I just fundamentally disagree with it. It is not in the Bill, so we can leave it until later.

[Thomas Docherty]

Perhaps that is a sign of our democracy at work.

As I say, that is the position of the parliamentary Labour party. We are absolutely clear. We want to see more cost-saving measures. We welcome the steps that the Commission is taking in looking at the shared services. That was something that came out of the Governance Committee’s report. We are clear: my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and I have said on more than one occasion that it is absurd that we continue to have two catering operations and two research operations. We already have shared services. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has done a lot of work on this. In the next Parliament the goal should be to reduce the costs of our democracy, not to drive them up further.