House of Commons Hansard Debates for 17 Jan 1991

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meet performance targets and indicators and to report regularly to the Commission and the House on their success or otherwise in meeting the objectives set for them.

Mr. Ray Powell (Ogmore) : Did the inquiry find that previous Governments had been mistaken in regard to the allocation of funds, especially for accommodation? Is that why the accommodation that Members require has not been provided, and is it why the central complaint in the report relates to the lack of such accommodation?

Mr. Beith : The hon. Gentleman--who is very knowledgeable about such matters, because of his Committee service--must draw his own conclusions about the effectiveness with which the report deals with that complaint. His view, however, is echoed by many other hon. Members, especially those who have been in the House for a long time. Implicit in the report is a belief that it would have been much better had the maintenance, improvement and extension of our buildings been the subject of a proper system of management and control run by the House itself, with the House determining its priorities and ensuring that they could be met over a period. To cope with the more demanding financial regime, the report proposes the appointment of a new director of finance to head the reorganised Finance and Administration Department, and the introduction of improved financial information and management systems in all Departments of the House. At the same time, the National Audit Office will be invited to take a much closer interest in the financial administration of the House.

The main initiative for the appointment of Sir Robin Ibbs to lead the inquiry came from the former Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe). During his short but productive tenure, the right hon. and learned Gentleman became acutely aware of the difficulties involved in improving facilities and services for Members in the face of the multitude of decision-making bodies in the House. I recall discussing with him, for example, the request often put to us for a cre che or day care facility for the children of staff. Let me leave aside for the moment the arguments for and against that proposal ; the number and complexity of the bodies involved in assessing such a proposal is mind-boggling.

The former Leader of the House met many such requests, and was under sustained and increasing pressure from Back-Benchers on both sides of the House for better accommodation and services. He was made only too aware of the lack of a central focus for decisions. The effect of the Ibbs proposals will be to establish the House of Commons Commission as just such a focus, although it is important to emphasise that the Commission will not be acting on its own. Valuable work is at present undertaken on our behalf by the Services Committee and, in particular, by the Sub-Committees of that Committee. The right hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme) and the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Sir C. Irving) and for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) carry especially heavy responsibility on behalf of the House, both advising on Members' needs for services and, not infrequently, giving what amount to directives to the Departments of the House and others responsible for providing those services.

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Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : The Ibbs report recommends the replacement of the Services Committee by four free-standing Committees, plus one rather important Finance and Services Committee. It is proposed that the membership and chairmanship of the two groups should be interlocking, and that they should make recommendations to the Commission.

What are the distinct advantages of that system, as opposed to any modifications of the present one? The absence of comment on the work of the Services Committee, much of which is done by word of mouth, is testament to its present efficiency, and I cannot for the moment see any benefit in the Ibbs proposals.

Mr. Beith : The key disadvantage of the present system is the lack of any clear focus of responsibility on determining priorities and assessing how recommendations can be acted on, how requests can be met, how funds can be found and what costs can be reasonably incurred. I do not think that the House can advocate procedures for others to ensure that costs are provided efficiently and cost-effectively and then not adopt such procedures itself. In many instances, the wishes and ambitions that are expressed through the Committees--particularly the Services Committee-- cannot be met by those Committees, which may not be part of any mechanism whereby such requests can be dealt with. No one starting afresh would set up such a system to ensure that money was spent well and wisely on the provision of services for Members.

The Committees to which the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) referred--the free-standing Committees that would replace the Services Committee Sub-Committees--are designed principally to represent the interests of Members, as consumers of the services provided for the House. In addition, a new Finance and Services Committee, on which each of the new "consumer" Committees will be represented, will act as a filter for financial advice to the House of Commons Commission. The Commission has felt the need for a more effective filter for such advice, although it is advised very effectively on demands for specific services.

Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland) : In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend pointed out that the present Commission has an interesting party balance : at least the minority parties are represented, as my hon. Friend is now eloquently showing. Will the new proposals give a proper place to the interests of minority parties?

Mr. Beith : Naturally, I agree with my hon. Friend that this is an important matter. It was certainly considered when Sir Robin and his team talked to Members in the House and prepared their reports. In those discussions, it was felt--I shall continue to express this view on the Commission--that minority parties must be represented, certainly on the Finance and Services Committee, and perhaps providing a Chairman for one of the specialist Committees. I am sure that my hon. Friend's point will be noted.

What is important is that, ultimately, one body--the Commission--will carry responsibility for decisions about services and the allocation of resources to them. At present, responsibilities are so widely diffused that it is often impossible to know who is answerable for what. I suggest that any hon. Member who doubts that should attend Monday's Question Time and note the amazing overlap of responsibility between myself answering on

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behalf of the Commission, the Leader of the House and the hon. Member for Cheltenham, who replies on behalf of the Catering Sub-Committee from time to time.

Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East) : If there is to be a sharper focus on costs, what is likely to be the impact on catering losses? I understand that there is a true loss of £2.5 million, which works out at about £100 a week per Member while the House is sitting.

Mr. Beith : The hon. Gentleman should recognise that the House catering services are a major facility, although they are used primarily not by Members but by their staff and the staff of the House. It is important that those services are provided cost-effectively, and that the extent of any subsidy that is thought appropriate--as is often the case in many commercial and industrial concerns--is fully understood and properly accounted for.

Hon. Members may know that the Commission has recently received a separate report from outside consultants on the management of the Refreshment Department. That report was placed in the Library. The Commission is to consider representations from Members and staff on that review. The Commission has a continuing concern to ensure that the catering services are efficiently and cost-effectively provided. It is our view that the structures proposed under the Ibbs report will provide the most effective framework within which that can be done. The report does not address itself to all the questions that have to be considered in restructuring the management of the refreshment services, but it provides the best overall framework within which it can be done.

The Ibbs reforms will place responsibility for the Refreshment Department, as for other services, squarely on the shoulders of the Commission. But the new Select Committees will have a vital role in advising the Commission about how the services of the Refreshment Department, and other Departments of the House, should be organised to meet Members' needs.

The overall aim of the Ibbs report is to produce a single, coherent structure responsible for funding services for the House, and greater efficiency and accountability in the delivery of services. I believe that its implementation will assist the process of democracy by ensuring that the facilities Members need to represent their constituents and to bring the Executive to account can be provided efficiently and cost-effectively. The Commission looks forward to considering the views of hon. Members on the various aspects of the report, which we commend to the House.

7.51 pm

Mr. Michael Jopling (Westmorland and Lonsdale) : The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) has given us a most helpful introduction to this debate by explaining, as a member of the Commission, how he sees the implications of the Ibbs report. It is a welcome document. As the hon. Member said, it is necessary for things to be changed. I see it as a natural progression in the management of the affairs of the House from former days, when it was a royal palace where Parliament was present on sufferance, through to the proposal under which Parliament will have control of its own domain. I remember, when I first came to the House, that one of the first steps in this direction was the setting up by the late Dick Crossman of the Services Committee in 1965 or 1966.

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All I remember is that I was a member of that Committee for a number of years in the 1960s. It is right to make this further move, partly because of the massive growth in the cost of Parliament to public funds, and it is right to have it under what appears to be more sensible control.

During his introductory speech, the hon. Member for

Berwick-upon-Tweed did not say how big the Commission should be. I hesitate to become involved in this, but I wonder whether only six members will be enough when one considers all its new, large and important functions. It might be better in the future if it were rather larger.

The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed pointed out the result of the MORI poll, which demonstrated the view of virtually all hon. Members that the accommodation in the building is abysmal. I know that those who have to deal with accommodation do a heroic job in spreading around among a number of demanding people a very limited amount of accommodation. You and I, Mr. Speaker, in previous incarnations have had some experience of dealing with the demands--they can be extremely bad-tempered--for accommodation. It is absurd to expect hon. Members to work, as they do, in corridors, cubbyholes or cleaning cupboards, particularly with the new pressures that have been placed upon them over the years.

I welcome what is being done to improve that situation. I have not been to look at the new office premises that have been constructed across the road, because I do not particularly want the inconvenience of crossing the road to get to my office. However, I hope that the Commission or whoever deals with these matters will not go mad. It is easy for authorities to go mad in supplying what is said to be adequate accommodation.

I remember about 25 years ago going to visit one of the office buildings adjoining the Capitol building in Washington just after it had been built. I was taken into one of the new offices by a friend of mine, who was a distinguished Republican Member of the House of Representatives from California. He was the ranking Republican on the maritime committee and the second ranking Republican on the foreign relations committee.

He showed a number of us the absurd bank of safes that had been constructed. He said that the committees received some confidential documents but we were looking at a massive bank of safes in a fairly large room alongside his office. He ferreted in his pocket and produced some combinations, opened the doors and invited us in to see that the safe space was too large for his needs. We all went in and found that all he kept there were two bottles of whisky and one bottle of gin.

I hope that that sort of thing will not happen here. I hope that there will be some sensible prudence in ensuring that hon. Members have acceptable office accommodation.

I want to draw my principal point to the attention of the Commission and the Government. I want to put down a marker on behalf of a number of groups referred to in annex D to the Ibbs report, to which the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred. Those groups are the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the

Inter-Parliamentary Union, the History of Parliament Trust and the British American Parliamentary Group, of which I am the honorary secretary. Those four bodies are currently grant-aided bodies in Parliament, sponsored and directly paid for by the Treasury.

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A year or two ago--I forget exactly when-- the Treasury proposed a change in the system of support for those bodies. It suggested that the support should be shifted to the budget of Parliament. The executive committees of those four groups came to the conclusion that that was not a good thing. We had a meeting with the Treasury and, after discussions, it was agreed about a year ago that it was better to leave the funding with the Treasury and allow it to continue to sponsor the four groups.

Immediately after that, we had the Ibbs report, which in annex D seems to suggest again that the costs be transferred from the Treasury to the House of Commons Commission. Since the publication of the report, those four groups have had a meeting, at which I presided, to discuss the report. All four groups took an open-minded approach to whether it would be sensible to move the support and funding from the Treasury to the Commission. There are strong arguments both ways.

However, two of the executive committees that I know well--the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association executive, of which I am a member, and the British American Parliamentary group--have not yet discussed in detail the decision about which way we should move. Although Ibbs has recommended that, I hope that the Commission and the Government will not embrace it but will, please, engage in discussions with representatives of the four groups to try to reach agreement, which should not prove too difficult.

There are several problems. For instance, all the groups have substantial membership from the House of Lords. Therefore, joint funding from the House of Lords and the House of Commons would be a problem. That problem could be overcome, but it would arise if we moved to obtaining funding from the Commission's budget.

The groups receive grant from the Treasury, which leaves them to manage their own affairs. If we changed to support from the House of Commons Commission and the House of Lords Commission, if there were to be one, would it lead to a loss of autonomy? Would it mean that ultimate responsibility for the management of the groups passed to, perhaps, the Clerk's Department or the new reinvigorated Services Committee? Here, again, a further problem arises with arrangements for accommodation and staffing.

Those problems must be resolved, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and the hon. Member for

Berwick-upon-Tweed will agree to discussions with the four groups to try to work out the most sensible and reasonable solution to what is not too serious a problem. However, we do not want the problem pre-empted by decisions being taken without discussion.

8.1 pm

Mr. John Garrett (Norwich, South) : I find the Ibbs report disappointing, although it is a useful start to a discussion on these important issues.

It is true that the terms of reference of the Ibbs team were restricted, but the report is superficial and fails to follow through its own logic. Its most culpable fault is that it is too deferential to the established order.

The central feature of House of Commons services is that they are well administered. Hon. Members get all the service we could possibly ask for from the Clerk's Department, the Library, the Refreshment Department

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and the Department of the Serjeant at Arms. The House is well administered but poorly managed, due to an amateurish House of Commons which has never sought to improve the services of the House. Sir Edmund Compton's report on the same subject in 1974 got much closer to the central issue. Its key passage states :

"My assessment of Members' requirements of service from the staff of the House is that the time has come for a significant shift of activity from procedural services to administrative and management services--that is, to develop the organisation and staffing of the services that support and assist Members in their life and work in the House."

That led Sir Edmund to the inescapable conclusion that the services of the House had to have a chief executive. That still seems to be true, and to be the logical conclusion of the findings of the Ibbs report. It is dismissed by the Ibbs report in a single line. We may not have to look too far to find out why the Ibbs team did not take up the possibility of a chief executive. The Compton report's recommendation produced an irate response from the then Clerk of the House, who wrote a furious memorandum to the Bottomley committee, which considered the report, claiming that what happened in the Chamber was of paramount importance, that it dwarfed all else in the service of the House and that that made him the senior officer of the House. He suggested that all Departments report to him. It is true that, as accounting officer, the Clerk is the senior officer of the House and, nowadays, de facto chief executive, but in recent years the Treasury has greatly enlarged the role of all accounting officers. In 1866, when they were invented, their job simply was to sign the accounts as correct, but nowadays the Treasury memorandum on the duty of an accounting officer requires an accounting officer to ensure that all managers under his command--his or her command ; there is one female permanent secretary-- should have objectives, performance measures and management information systems. The Clerk of the House, with all his heavy and complex procedural duties in direct service of the House, as well as running a complicated Department of his own, cannot fulfil those terms of reference. He cannot act as a managing director of an institution that costs more than £130 million a year to run.

Worse still, the Ibbs report proposes that ultimate responsibility for management should continue to be shared between you, Mr. Speaker, who would handle non-financial matters, which I suppose includes labour relations of 1,000 members of staff, and the Clerk, who would handle financial matters. You, Mr. Speaker, know best. I know that you cannot intervene in this debate, but you will agree that you are in no position to act as chief executive, bearing in mind all your many representational duties and the fact that, since the televising of the House, you have become a substantial international figure. With all the demands on your time, it is ridiculous to require you, with the Clerk of the House, to act as the managing director of an institution which costs more than £130 million a year to run.

Mr. Spearing : I am glad that my hon. Friend has given way. I assure him that I have not consulted the Clerk or you, Mr. Speaker, on what I am about to say. Is it not

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possible that the former Clerk may have been over-egging, but justifiably egging, the pudding? Although a chief executive may be more efficient in dealing with technical matters and the matters of importance that my hon. Friend mentioned, is it not vital that services be oriented to the demands of the Chamber and what happens here, not to the administrative convenience of a chief executive? Therefore, the priorities of serving the House must be related to the services required by Members, as seen by the Clerk and by Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Garrett : No, my hon. Friend is quite wrong. He confuses the Chamber with the House.

Mr. Spearing : It all happens here.

Mr. Garrett : It does not all happen here. It happens in Committees, in our constituency case work and in the way in which we relate to the communities that we represent. The Chamber is no longer necessarily the focal point of the House of Commons. My hon. Friend may think that, and when he makes his speech he can explain why he thinks so. I referred to the Compton report, which said that the procedural demands of the House should no longer be paramount--a conclusion with which I agree.

Most of the Ibbs report is taken up with describing the chaos of the accounting systems. There is no costing, no planning and no budgetary control and its analysis of the antiquated systems that we operate is very useful. The Ibbs report is right to propose that all House of Commons services should be brought under the control of the Commission.

It is ridiculous, for example, that we do not have control of this building. It points out that the costs of the House are covered by seven votes, for which responsibility is distributed among five accounting officers. Those seven votes cover our expenditures, but not all the accounting officers are in the service of the House. That still leaves Members' pay and allowances with the Treasury. It is wrong that the Executive should impose conditions of service on the legislature ; only a supine legislature would allow that. All the costs, including Members' pay and allowances, should come under the control of the Commission.

Mr. Beith : Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should express the present position a little more clearly. The Top Salaries Review Body makes recommendations about Members' pay and allowances, and the House determines whether those or other recommendations should be acted upon, sometimes in defiance of the Government's wishes. The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point about whether it would be appropriate to bring that duty within the Commission's responsibility, but there is another view--that it is better for the recommendations to come from an outside body and have them determined on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Garrett : I am familiar with that argument, but, more often than not, the amount of money given to Members of Parliament in, for example, allowances is determined by the Government and is not determined often enough by the House.

The Ibbs report creates the position of director of finance--which is necessary--but makes him adviser to the Clerk. If accounting and budgeting matters are so bad, I believe that the director should be independent.

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Ibbs also creates a director of works with, I am glad to see, a direct labour organisation--which is also necessary but makes him report to the Serjeant at Arms ; so an Officer with a proposed annual spend of £35 million and a backlog of work involving no less than £220 million will report to an Officer of the House whose spend is £3 million. I believe that that director should be independent, too. There is a great silence at the centre of the Ibbs report the Comptroller and Auditor General is missing. There is no doubt that, since the National Audit Act 1983, the Comptroller and Auditor General is an Officer of the House. He is an expert on financial control. Why is he not therefore on the Board of Management? The reason is that the Treasury has never accepted him as an Officer of the House and would strongly resist any such formal appointment. The top structure for the management of the services of the House should be six departmental heads and should include a director of finance, a director of works and the Comptroller and Auditor General--all under a chief executive reporting to the Commission. I do not think that, with a chief executive charged to improve the services of the House, it would have taken the 30 years it took to establish the need for and location of a new parliamentary building. After all, it took only 15 years to build the entire Palace of Westminster.

If I understand the Ibbs report correctly--perhaps someone will explain to me if I am wrong--a further weakness is that it proposes the abolition of the Services Select Committee, although it appears to recreate it as a Finance and Services Select Committee. The proposed new Committee is a management body, preparing estimates, advising the Commission and carrying tasks out on its behalf. It is not a Select Committee, holding hearings, examining witnesses and producing reports and recommendations for change and improvements on behalf of the House--it would not be empowered to do so.

We know from the Ibbs recommendation that the proposed Committee should move away from a process of taking evidence. It would be there to serve, not prod, management. The House would thereby lose its only machinery for advocacy in these matters. In my view, the distinction between the providers and the users of services us, through the Services Committee-- should be clear, with the users being empowered to produce reports on the services required for Members, based on the examination of evidence put before them.

The Ibbs report also took the MORI survey of Members' opinions at face value, without looking into services that Members need but did not have sufficient knowledge to articulate that need or were not asked about. The poll showed that Members cared most about accommodation and catering. Both those problems are largely dictated by the size and age of the Palace of Westminster, and, until new buildings are available, they will have to be lived with. However, there is no reason why the people who work in this place should be under Crown immunity from health and safety and food hygiene regulations. There is no reason why those regulations cannot be made to apply to the staff of the House.

For someone trying to do a professional job as a Member of Parliament, another issue, which was missed by Ibbs, looms much larger--the primitive state of the information technology available to Members. Information technology services here are pathetic, and

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there have been several reports on this matter. The Government have always refused to upgrade our office equipment or even to discuss it.

The only information technology we have is a telephone line and the annunciator system, which is 30 years old and costs nearly £200,000 a year to maintain. Each box costs £1,000 because it is obsolete and has to be converted from a 425-line television set. Not long ago, a junior Minister in the Department of the Environment had the temerity to say that no replacement was necessary.

Worse still, the new building across the road is not cabled for the information technology services that we need. We need a properly cabled parliamentary estate so that we each have work stations provided by the House for word processing, for paging, for electronic mail, for accessing the Library and for a clean feed from the Chamber, as other legislatures in France, Germany, Canada and the United States have. Every attempt by the Services Committee to improve our information technology equipment has been refused by junior Ministers at the Department of the Environment, which is an abuse of Parliament.

The Ibbs report left far too much power with the Treasury. It frequently referred to the oversight of the Treasury and to arrangements for making applications for funding to the Treasury. There is a serious defect in arrangements that allow the Executive to control and ration expenditure which makes the legislature effective.

There is no evidence that the House would be profligate but for Treasury control. The House of Commons Commission has a reputation for miserliness. Look how it recently refused funding to enable Select Committees to take evidence in Europe. The Commission should be trusted to produce a plan for the development of services and directly present all the estimates for what we need to the House for its approval and its works should be scrutinised by the Services Committee.

The real problem is that Leaders of the House are not, on the whole, defenders of and advocates for the services that support the House, but are primarily concerned to defend the interests of the Executive. Perhaps the new Leader of the House will be different, but I very much doubt it. We should establish our own unilateral declaration of independence and have a Commission that is responsible for all our costs, puts them to the House and lets the House vote on them. 8.16 pm

Sir Ian Lloyd (Havant) : To a large extent, what the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) said in both parts of his speech was music to my ears. I shall not be tempted to follow him in the earlier part of his speech, except to say that he reinforced a conclusion which I reached many years ago--virtually all political problems are boundary problems. The moment the boundary is moved, all hell breaks loose.

I could not help but profoundly concur with the hon. Gentleman's comments on information technology. I was a member of a Committee which went to Canada many years ago and produced the report to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and I was also a member of the Committee which produced the subsequent report which said that it was time we began to look towards the 21st century with equipment comparable to that available to our colleagues in Canada and, more recently, in Canberra.

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That is essential. Whether we go back to the original Services Committee or whether we accept the Ibbs proposals, this must be a high priority in our thinking.

The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) used an interesting phrase when discussing the history of the House of Commons Commission. He referred to the balance of advantage between Parliament and the Executive. I share the view that the responsibility of the House for its expenditure should be total, detailed and visible, and that we should be responsible for it and no one else. The dilemma arises for a simple, fundamental reason --after every general election, whichever party is returned to power, the Executive is, as it were, carved out of this place by caesarean section, which creates a fundamental dilemma. Once that has happened, there is a marked change in the general character of this place. I do not see how that will be easily remedied or altered. However, we must accept that that does take place and that the basic responsibility of the House of Commons for the control of the expenditure of the nation is in a rather unsatisfactory state.

If, as has been implied this evening, the efficiency of that control demands that we as a parliamentary body and as a legislature should decide which instruments and information we need, no part of the Executive should have any say in that. If we should be extravagant or wasteful in providing ourselves with expenditure, we alone should be answerable to the nation for that extravagance. As the hon. Member for Norwich, South has said, we should not be able to blame a junior Minister for acting in between what we want and for applying his ruling to the Treasury.

We are all indebted to the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed for his useful and comprehensive survey of the Ibbs report. The report is long overdue ; it will be much discussed and there will be many views about it. I merely conclude that, in my experience of this place, a change in the procedures of the House is the only event that requires a longer gestation period than that of the elephant. It is very slow.

I support the main recommendations of the Ibbs report because we must move quite fundamentally. The House must take a stronger grip on its own affairs. Whether we accept the new structure proposed by Ibbs or some other structure that will eventually evolve, it must, in the words of the Ibbs report,

"respond adequately to Members' needs and to determine priorities between them."

I want to turn now to such a priority and I want to begin by declaring an unusual interest. It is not a personal or financial interest, but an interest in a subject that I believe to be a fundamental necessity for the House. I have the honour at present to be the president of the parliamentary and scientific committee and the chairman of the principal organisation about which I shall speak--the parliamentary office of science and technology. That is the technical limit of my interest which I felt that I should declare. It is entirely altruistic.

There is more than palpably today a fundamental need in all modern democratic legislatures for scientific information of the highest quality, relevance and objectivity. I can give two examples which may be of interest to the House. The Gulf war suggests to us that all modern weaponry is fundamentally dependent upon the most advanced science. The House has to decide, at least

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in principle, on the weaponry with which our armed forces are equipped and whether that weaponry is appropriate and cost-efficient. It will interest the House to know that one of the current projects of the parliamentary office of science and technology is on the inter-relationship between defence, and civil science and technology. That report has yet to appear, but we are working on it.

On the political side, I refer to the political impact of all the scientific work on DNA--deoxyribonucleic acid. In that context, the parliamentary office of science and technology is in the process of producing a report on research in the national health service. However, I can probably illustrate the political significance of that rather more vividly than those dry titles might suggest by referring hon. Members to an article that appeared in the most recent issue of New Scientist and referred to a gentleman by the name of John Moore. I wonder whether many hon. Members have heard of a Mr. John Moore--apart from our own colleague. We shall hear a great deal more about him because the case that is described in the magazine is fascinating and will have far-reaching effects on public and political life.

It is an extraordinary story. Mr. John Moore had an oversized spleen, which grew from 0.5 kg to 6 kg. When doctors took it out of his body, they discovered that he had produced a unique type of white blood cell. Given modern technology, scientists decided that that unique type of blood cell would probably be very effective against many other diseases and possibly even against cancer. Using modern technology, the scientists have taken that blood cell and reproduced it on a large scale. Two companies are now selling it.

The sale of that commodity--if I may call it that--has aroused immense interest in the United States and the case has even reached the Supreme Court because Mr. John Moore thinks that it belongs to him and the scientists think that it belongs to them. Naturally, the public think that it should belong to them. This is precisely the type of problem and dilemma that scientific research, not least in biology, will present to us. It is interesting that a senior legal analyst at the United States office of technology assessment--to which I will refer in a moment--said :

"Few people have thought through all the arguments and the many different ways of interpreting existing laws."

I want to give the House a brief history of the parliamentary office of science and technology. We have based it unashamedly on the American example, as I have said many times. We first discovered the American office in the early 1970s. A number of us visited the office in 1986 and we made a recommendation to the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), that our legislature needed a similar office. She was sympathetic, but reluctant to do anything other than suggest that the parliamentary and scientific committee should take full responsibility for the development of such an organisation.

We said, "Right, we accept that challenge" and there was only one way in which to do that. We had to go outside both Houses of Parliament to the rest of the country and seek financial support from industry and from foundations such as Nuffield, Leverhulme, Wellcome, the Royal Society and the British Association, all of which were generous. We received surprisingly generous support from Members of both Houses--although proportionately that support was small--and we even received some support from universities and polytechnics. As I am sure

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you are aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, POST has, as a result, produced 20 briefing papers on a wide variety of subjects and only yesterday it produced its first major report, which I have here, entitled "Technologies for Teaching", which is a subject of great current interest.

We have also introduced the concept of the Westminster Fellow. Young scientists of some experience attach themselves to both Houses of Parliament, under the umbrella of POST, for a brief period and are financed by POST. We reached the position where we proved that such an organisation could work, that it was required and that Members of Parliament found it of great interest--and not only Members of Parliament. We have had requests for papers from as far afield as the United States and Australia as they are regarded as being of considerable quality.

I was instructed to explore the possibility of some form of central funding of a service for Parliament by Parliament itself. I wrote to the then Leader of the House, who is now Secretary of State for Energy, and asked him what he thought he could do about this proposal. His successor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe), replied and gently equivocated. He said, "Not now. We do not think that the time has come."

I was then instructed to write to the Commission, as the Leader of the House had also suggested. I was told, "Not now. Everything is in the melting pot. Sir Robin Ibbs is doing an inquiry. Why don't you write to Sir Robin Ibbs?" I wrote to him and he sent me a polite letter saying, "This is not a matter for me." So it goes round and round. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed spoke about the great diversity of responsibility and that was shown in this instance. Improved arrangements for considering the provision of new services are most certainly required.

Where do we stand now? Our Parliament is well known to be a long way behind the United States legislature, which is the prime example of a legislature with an advanced technology assessment facility. That organisation employs a staff of 200 for technology assessment alone, with a budget of $20 million. I have never argued that we should even begin to approach that level. It is not required and it would not be appropriate ; it would be extravagant in relation to our national resources. I would not dream of making such a case. But what about Denmark? The Danish Parliament has a technology assessment staff of 11 and spends 10 million to 12 million krona per annum. France has a staff of six and spends 6 million francs per annum. Germany spends DM2 million on its parliamentary assessment facilities. The Netherlands--a much smaller country than the United Kingdom--has a staff of nine and spends £1.5 million. The European Parliament--one of the most recent to embark on this path--has a modest staff of five and spends about 500,000 ecus, which is equivalent to £350,000 to £400,000.

It is interesting to note that all the technology assessment organisations to which I have referred are properly funded by the Parliaments that they serve. Ours is not. Those of us who believe that such facilities are necessary find it difficult to imagine going back to all the organisations which said, "We think that this is a good idea. We shall support it on an experimental basis and, if Parliament likes it, Parliament must fund it," and say, "Parliament likes the service. We find the reports and service that POST now supplies to Select Committees and

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other bodies valuable, but you--private industry and the foundations--must go on paying for it." That is illogical and, in my judgment, we should change it.

I come to my final comparison. Japan has decided that its Parliament must have an organisation of technology assessment. I hate to think what the funding for that will be. It will certainly be on a very generous scale-- not surprisingly as the Government science budget is now running at about 780,000 million yen per annum, which I believe is equivalent to about £3 billion. According to the latest figures, total research and development expenditure in Japan amounts to about £32 billion.

My plea is simple and fundamental. The parliamentary office of science and technology is not just another peripheral committee. It is an organisation established by the oldest all-party committee of both Houses--the parliamentary and scientific committee, which was 50 years old last year-- to supply both Houses of Parliament with a basic information service. POST has operated on an experimental basis for nearly two years with the support of the country. It needs to be firmly established on a long-term basis. It needs to be properly funded by Parliament as the basic information service for Parliament. That needs to be done as soon as possible. By that, I mean not tomorrow or next year, but now.

8.32 pm

Ms. Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North) : When I first joined the House of Commons (Services) Committee, I had certain illusions about what I could achieve by attending its meetings, held once every eight weeks or whenever the Committee decided to meet, and the meetings of the Catering Sub-Committee, the only Sub-Committee of which I was a full member, which met whenever the Chairman thought it appropriate--often, it seemed, determined by the number of wine tastings that needed to be held rather than by the need to deal with real issues concerning food. I thought that I could do something to change the way in which the House was run. I have been under that illusion ever since I was elected to this place.

I am still committed and determined to ensure that, even if the Ibbs report is not the answer to everything, we treat it at least as the best starting point that we have had for a good many years. I have the distinct impression that the Committees on which I have served provide us with little more than a history lesson. One goes along only to be told, "This matter was raised back in 1950", or, "We thought of having a new office block then." When the managing director of ICL in my constituency came to the House for a meeting, he burst out laughing when he saw the annunciator screens. We are constantly told that people have tried but failed miserably to get anything done to change the way in which this place works. That is simply because there has never been the political will to do anything about it. Quite apart from anything else, that is one of the main reasons why we have so few women in the House. As was said earlier, one has to be almost mad to work in this place.

We need decent working conditions not only for Members of Parliament who are elected to serve democracy but for their staff and all those behind the scenes--those who run the Library so efficiently, those in the Fees Office who deal with our expenses so well and those in the Refreshment Department who do their best to

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provide food. I am not advancing an elitist argument and saying that we should do something for Members of Parliament alone. I am talking about all the people who work here. Hon. Members almost live here, as well as working here. Sometimes, I have been here for 17 hours at a stretch. I have taken the one bed available, perhaps to get three or four hours' kip before coming to the Dispatch Box. Often, I have had to get into that bed when it has just been vacated by another lady Member who was about to come to the Chamber for a debate. That is an absurd way of going about our business. I am not being sensationalist in suggesting that we should consider the number of premature deaths among hon. Members--even during my short time in this place. If we are serious about the House and about democracy, we must take all those points on board.

The way in which the House is run is nonsensical. We are all elected to represent our areas, and we may have 70,000 constituents or more. We do not have the tools to do our job. No authority--other than one cash-starved by central Government--and no private company would expect its managing director or its employees to do their job, with all the targets that they must achieve, in such conditions. Like everyone else, hon. Members want to do a good job. We want to serve our constituents well. To do that, we need the tools. That applies not only to us but, for example, to the Refreshment Department staff. They need changing rooms and somewhere to which they can go and have a break. At the moment, they sometimes have to go to the ladies' toilet because there is nowhere else.

We also need somewhere to meet our constituents. It is all very well having banqueting rooms that one can book for a prestigious do at £15 or £20 a head. But what about the pensioners who legitimately want to lobby their Members of Parliament? Where is one to take them? One cannot even give them a cup of tea. It is no good saying, "The building is too small ; we can't do anything about it." We have been waiting for the new building for years and the plans may be put back again. What difference will the extension of the Jubilee line make to the new building programme? We have nowhere to bring pensioners, school children and those who legitimately wish to lobby their Members of Parliament as part of the democratic process.

What do we need to do our job properly? What do the staff need? We need an office. I do not want to share with four other hon. Members and their researchers an office in which I have to climb over bags and bins and piles of paper to get to my desk and where there is not even room to sit at my desk. I do not want my research staff to work in such cluttered conditions. When someone comes to this place and goes beyond the lovely, well-appointed state rooms for which the House is so special they find a different story. I am often told off for raising questions about lights that do not work on the stairs behind the corridor, but if my colleagues break their wrists or injure themselves in other ways when walking down unlit corridors or over threadbare carpets there is no possibility of compensation and no one has responsibility.

If there is no way in which the Serjeant at Arms, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Commission, the Leader of the House, the Chairman of the Services Committee or the Clerks can get the lamp changed, the matter should be brought to the Floor of the House. I note

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