House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Jul 1992

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balance between different aspects of the job, rather than seeking to make it entail less work overall, and it is important that we should emphasise that in our discussions.

The report draws attention to the principle of balance between Government, Opposition and Back Benchers. I emphasise in particular, as does the report, that the Government of the day, whatever their colour, should have a reasonable expectation of getting their reasonable business. That means that they must have sufficient time, or procedures must be so arranged, for them to implement the commitments on which they are elected, and their programme as set out in the Queen's Speech each Session.

But that--this is no less important--must be balanced by the right of the House, groups in it, Members and, in particular, of the Opposition to have a proper opportunity to scrutinise and, where they wish, to oppose Government business, especially legislation. Our procedures rest on a balance between those considerations. It is a delicate balance, in which the use of time and the scope for delay have sometimes been seen as the Opposition's main weapons. It follows that that change must be carefully balanced if we are to maintain the basic democratic values which our procedures exist to protect.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : It is not merely the main weapon. Often, as the right hon. Gentleman knows very well, it is the only weapon of the Opposition. Is that not a charter for the castration of the Opposition?

Mr. Newton : The hon. Gentleman is very familiar with the procedures and techniques of the House. He is expressing a view about one of the propositions underlying the report. I note that, and shall be interested to find out whether it is followed by other hon. Members from either side of the House.

Thus the Government's basic approach to the report is that, if the legitimate need of the elected Government to progress and have enacted their legislative programme and to secure their other essential business is accepted, and appropriately reflected in the procedures of the House, the Government would be more than happy for the working practices of the House to become more civilised--I suppose that that is one way to describe it--in terms of hours of work, and in other ways.

The central equation cannot be ignored, however, and the House needs to go into that with its eyes open and to appreciate the implications. If there is to be less time, proceedings will have to be more structured, debate may be less open-ended and the scope for obstruction could become more limited- -which picks up the point that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) just raised.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Is not the biggest obstacle to changing the hours in this place, perhaps to 9 to 5, the fact that more than 200 Members of Parliament--who happen mainly to be Tory Members--have moonlighting jobs, making money in the boardrooms and the law courts? They cannot afford Parliament regularly to start at 9 in the morning because they want to be able to come here when it suits them, when they have finished in the City or the law courts, and to vote at 7 or 10 o'clock. That is the basic problem. It is not a question of merely playing around at the edges. The real problem is stopping moonlighting. Then we could get some regular hours.

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Mr. Newton : It will not surprise the House to know that I do not readily accept the hon. Gentleman's interpretation of the reasons for our existing procedures. Incidentally, it is also important to recognise, although it is not universally the case in all Parliaments which might be compared with this one, that members of the Executive--Ministers--are also Members of Parliament, it is an important feature of the way in which our Parliament and our democracy work, and has some relationship to the issue that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) raised.

Mr. David Harris (St. Ives) : Some of us are getting heartily sick of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) constantly talking such rubbish. Most Conservative Members work just as hard as he does--[ Hon. Members-- : "Harder."] Most of us work harder in one respect at least, because most of us are members of Committees. I am on five Committees, whereas the hon. Member for Bolsover refuses to serve on them.

Mr. Skinner : I was on one last week.

Mr. Harris : That must have been an exception. In general, the hon. Member for Bolsover refuses to serve on Committees, which is where much of the work of the House is done.

Mr. Skinner : That is not true.

Mr. Newton : I am sure that it was clear from the response to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) that many hon. Members, certainly on the Conservative side of the House, have some sympathy with his arguments. My aim in responding to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was to seek--so far without avail--to keep the temperature down in the interests of rational discussion of the proposals.

Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Newton : I shall give way to the hon. Member.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Janet Fookes) : Order. I am not clear to whom the Leader of the House was giving way, as an hon. Gentleman rose from each side.

Mr. Newton : I intended to give way to the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. John Garrett (Norwich, South) : Surely my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) raised an important matter. Many Members of the House, principally those on the Conservative Benches, have outside employment, and that is one reason why there is so much opposition to morning sittings. Will the Leader of the House give his view on the widespread use of outside employment by Members of Parliament?

Mr. Newton : I cannot add to my remarks in response to the hon. Member for Bolsover a few moments ago. It is by no means the case that Members on one side of the House alone combine a range of different roles, both in respect of their position as Members of Parliament and in other ways. By and large, those different responsibilities interact in a way that benefits the House and the service that Parliament provides.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : Has my right hon. Friend noticed that today is significant because the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) has graced us with his

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presence, even though it is out of prime television time? Does my right hon. Friend think that the hon. Gentleman's constituents might be interested to note that, whereas most of us are prepared to work in Select and Standing Committees and to spend time researching our contributions to them, all that the hon. Member for Bolsover looks forward to is £30,000 a year for a nine-to-five job?

Mr. Newton : As I said, one of my hopes is to try to keep the temperature down in the debate, although that hope looks a little forlorn. I hope that my hon. Friend will understand if I do not follow him. Nevertheless, I note his remarks carefully.

Mr. Peter Hain (Neath) : I appreciate the desire of the Leader of the House to keep the temperature low. If we were designing Hours for the House, starting afresh in a modern parliamentary democracy, which is what we are supposed to be, is it conceivable that we would come up with the antiquated, anachronistic and ridiculous hours that we now sit?

Mr. Newton : It is difficult for me to say. I plead the basic proposition that I sought to make in response to his hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett), who is sitting beside the hon. Gentleman. Experience from various quarters such as local government, business, trade union activities and being a teacher--whatever it may be--is a considerable help to Members when they perform their duties in the House, as constituency Members of Parliament and in other ways. It would not be sensible if the continuation of that experience were cut off as soon as people became Members of the House. Our proceedings would be the loser if we went down that path.

Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Newton : I shall, but one of the reasons why I wryly referred to my aim of keeping my speech to 20 minutes is being revealed--that interventions make it singularly difficult to keep speeches to the length that hon. Members would wish.

Mr. Flynn : The Leader of the House has said that hon. Members on both sides of the House have outside interests. It is worth putting on record the fact that in the last Parliament, 14 per cent. of Labour Members had outside paid interests, whereas 85 per cent. of eligible Conservative Members had such interests. Does the Leader of the House agree that the situation would be clarified if hon. Members were to declare not only their interests but also the amounts of money received?

Mr. Newton : I am not sure that what the hon. Gentleman has just said adds hugely to our debate. I am tempted to observe that it merely confirms my view that Conservative Members are of exceptional value.

Mr. Derek Foster (Bishop Auckland) : Not to us.

Mr. Newton : I accept that they are not of exceptional value to the Labour Chief Whip, but they are of exceptional value in the role that they play in the House. In saying so, I do not seek in any way to diminish the

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important contribution that the hon. Gentleman and many others play, with their particular types of expertise drawn from outside. One of the keys to the balance that the Committee sought to establish is the automatic timetabling of Government legislation. I stress the word "timetabling" as it is important that this should be seen not as a guillotine--which is how we have traditionally thought of such a device--but rather as an attempt to agree, in a prescribed way, a systematic scheduling of the stages of a Bill to ensure organised debate and effective scrutiny. That might or might not mean less time overall being spent on any particular measure than is spent at present, but it could be expected--at least in the minds of those who made the proposal--to be more productive time. In particular, it could be expected to ensure that all parts of a Bill were examined in Committee in a way that our existing procedures have not always managed to achieve.

If the House is serious about reforming sitting hours, it must recognise that this proposal is an essential element in the balance of the whole report, and therefore crucial to an overall package of change.

Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : With regard to automatic timetabling and the proposed change in hours, as well as other matters, can my right hon. Friend give the House an undertaking that consideration of the ratification of the Maastricht treaty will not influence the timing of the Government's recommendations? If it is proposed that there should be automatic timetabling, will that be subject to a vote in the House? If not, the Maastricht treaty might be timetabled automatically, without the House being able to express a view on it.

Mr. Newton : My hon. Friend may wish to develop that point in the course of the debate. Clearly, he may regard this as a reason for having reservations about the proposal. Indeed, for all I know, his reservations may well go wider than the measure to which he has referred. My purpose today is to describe the approach that the Government bring to the report, without seeking to pre-empt points about timing or about the detailed discussions that would have to take place to overcome some of the reservations that are being expressed in interventions.

Dr. John Cunningham (Copeland) : I urge the Leader of the House to avoid the trap that he seems to be setting for himself, or--to put it another way--the threat that he is issuing to the House. He seems to be saying that, if there can be no agreement on automatic timetabling, there can be no other changes--in other words, that this package must stand or fall as a whole. The nature of the report and of the changes makes it clear that that is not the case. In saying so, I express a personal view. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I am in favour of the timetabling of legislation. However, I should not like him to suggest that no changes could be made unless there were agreement on automatic timetabling, insisted upon by the Government.

Mr. Newton : If there is any misunderstanding about that, I should like to clear it up. I do not want to put words in to the mouths of the report's authors, but I think that it is fair to say that the report, including all its recommendations--for example, those about hours, non- sitting days and the handling of business on Thursdays--sees this as a balanced package between timetabling and the proposals as a whole. That is not the

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same as saying that, if it were not possible to make progress on timetabling--some reservations have already been stated very clearly--nothing at all could be done. Clearly, however, one's view of the balance of the report as a whole would be affected.

Mr. Shore : In relation to this point and the point about the Maastricht treaty, paragraph 69 of the report says explicitly : "Existing practice would continue in respect of bills taken in committee of the whole House."

That is an acknowledgement of the importance of Bills that are taken on the Floor of the House, which generally--at least, often--are constitutional measures.

Mr. Newton : I acknowledge the point that the right hon. Gentleman makes.

I recognise that the issue with which we are dealing is a controversial one, although, in the light of what has taken place in the last few minutes, it is hardly necessary to say so. Clearly, there has been growing support for a different approach to timetabling--scheduling, if that word is preferred--in recent years. Some might say--at least one hon. Member has implied this already--that such an approach could make things much easier for the Government. Whether or not that proves to be the case, there will certainly be some who see it as constituting good grounds for caution, as has been amply demonstrated in the past few minutes. However, it would certainly make things better for the House if that were what hon. Members wanted and if the House were prepared to make it work. As the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) has said, in his memorandum to the Committee he expressed his personal support--I emphasise that it was personal support --for the automatic timetabling of all Government Bills. In the debate of 2 March, the right hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme), who was a distinguished member of the Jopling Committee and whom I am glad to see in his place, was broadly supportive, but clearly he recognised the dilemma on which we have been touching during the last few minutes, while the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) was supportive with some reservations. The Liberal Democrats too, in their memorandum to the Committee, favoured the proposal. As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) said in the earlier debate, we must face up to this issue.

We have some reservations about the alternative mechanisms proposed in the report for deciding the timetable of a Bill, but if the general proposal for automatic timetabling were to find favour with the House, the details could be considered further, with a good deal of discussion through the usual channels, before substantive motions were tabled. Clearly this is a difficult and sensitive issue.

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, East) : If there were to be timetabling of a kind acceptable to the Opposition of the day, it could be detrimental to the Government, as Standing Committees could then discuss issues which, because of the traps set by Ministers, would not be reached. I say so as one who has been on both sides of these arguments. If there were timetables, and if we were able to discuss and vote on the controversial issues, that would be a benefit, rather than a detriment, to the House.

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Mr. Newton : The whole House will listen with respect to the views of the right hon. Gentleman, who has a great deal of experience, not least as a Minister piloting Bills through the House. Perhaps it is not proper for me to say so, but he may himself have employed some of the devices that he associates with current Ministers. In any case, he illustrates the fact that this is by no means a simple or clear-cut issue. There is a balance to be considered, and it is very important that we get the detail right-- something that I do not suggest I can do in a sentence or two this afternoon.

I turn now to the other recommendations in the report, which can be conveniently grouped in four categories--those dealing with the parliamentary week ; those concerned with procedures on Bills ; a group of three dealing with subordinate legislation ; and a fourth group of a more miscellaneous character.

Taking the first group in the context that I have already emphasised--that is to say, a balanced package--I have no difficulty in expressing support for the principle of a 10 o'clock finish as the norm. I do, however, doubt that it would be right for this to be achieved by the rigidity of a formal resolution or Standing Order, and I must, in particular, make clear to the House our reservations about the Committee's specific recommendation that suspension of the 10 o'clock rule be restricted to primary legislation taken as first Order of the Day. That would leave the way open for that first business to be talked out until 10 pm and any other business on the Order Paper scheduled for, say, 7 pm, would fall. That would plainly be very difficult for the Government to accept.

If the House is to rise at 10 pm, it should normally be accepted that the business scheduled for the day, agreed through the usual channels and announced to the House, should be completed by 10 pm on that day. It follows that, in our view, the Government should retain the right to ask the House to continue after 10 pm with Government business entered into before 10 pm. Having said that, I sense that the point to which the report attached most importance in this regard was to bring an end to the practice of scheduling completely new business to start after 10 pm. We can certainly accept that aim, when taken with the report's proposal for automatic referral of affirmative statutory instruments to a Standing Committee, which should in itself serve to make much of the business currently done after 10 pm unnecessary other than in exceptional circumstances.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : The right hon. Gentleman just said that affirmative statutory instruments would be considered in a Standing Committee. At the moment, such Committees meet on Wednesday morning in the main, and the report also proposes that the House should sit on Wednesday mornings. Does that mean that those serving on Committees dealing with the merits of statutory instruments would be denied the opportunity to be in the Chamber?

Mr. Newton : The hon. Gentleman raises just the type of point that we should, sensibly, consider in the debate. Perhaps his point underlines my reasons for believing that a general debate in which such problems could be explored should take place before we sought to table substantive resolutions. The hon. Gentleman's point is an obvious one that should be considered carefully.

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Thus, with what are quite limited provisos, we would be happy to see 10 pm become the regular finishing time for public business. Whether it worked out like that in practice is for the House to determine. However, with good sense and a spirit of co-operation on all sides, I see no reason why it should not.

Mr. Dalyell : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Newton : I will give way, but, obviously, my speech will be rather extended.

Mr. Dalyell : Is it not indicative that the proposals come from a Government in which almost uniquely in British political history, neither the Prime Minister nor many of his senior colleagues have ever been in opposition? That has not happened before. They do not know what it is like to be in opposition. I can see the attraction from the point of view of those on the Government Front Bench of streamlining things to make it easier, but if it were to happen that they had the duty of opposing and really meant what they said, rather than going through the motions and posturing, which is a fat lot of use to anyone, would they then take a similar attitude?

I beg the Leader of the House to understand that those of us who have been in opposition for a long time also have feelings about this. Those who have occupied the Government Benches for so long--uniquely in the case of the Prime Minister, who has never been in opposition--should understand precisely what an adversarial system is about.

Mr. Newton : As it happens, I have clear memories of my time in opposition between 1974 and 1979. It is because of my consciousness of the type of point that the hon. Gentleman has raised that I have gone to some length to emphasise in that part of my speech that I have so far been able to deliver that there is a balance to be struck, with consideration on both sides. I am not in any way dismissing, nor have I sought to do so far, the type of considerations that the hon. Gentleman has in mind.

I can give general support to the proposal for Wednesday morning sittings, although, as the report acknowledges, the structure of those proposed sittings needs to be carefully considered. The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) has thrown in another fact that needs to be considered. The Committee recognised the need to avoid Divisions and for that reason, rightly in the Government's view, decided that private Members' Bills should not be taken on such mornings.

The Committee did, however, propose that opposed private business might be taken at a morning sitting, and while I understand the reasoning behind that I see it as presenting rather more difficulty. Opposed private business is by defintion liable to be controversial, with the prospect of Divisions. Although the Committee recognised this and suggested that Divisions could be deferred to a later hour, I doubt whether that would generally be thought to be very satisfactory, and it could undoubtedly be potentially disruptive of the main part of the parliamentary day. I think that we should be looking to establish a position in which business taken at morning sittings is self-contained.

In any event, following the recent changes in the arrangements for dealing with private Bills, the House may

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feel that this is not the time to propose further changes to the Standing Orders relating to private business. The number of private Bills brought before Parliament is likely to decrease significantly following the recent reforms, and at the very least it would surely be wise to await experience of the new regime before considering whether any further step is needed.

The counterpart to the introduction of morning sittings on Wednesdays is the proposal that 10 Fridays in each session should be designated as non- sitting days. We are ready to accept that recommendation. We find it more difficult to endorse in the same way the other proposal with which it is associated, namely that on Thursdays before non-sitting Fridays the House should rise at 7 pm, which would bring us very close to a position in which for 10 weeks a year the House was reduced to a three-day week for the handling of Government business. Obviously, however, there would be scope, in discussions through the usual channels, to consider the business which might be taken on such Thursdays, with a view to minimising the demands made on Members. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Bolsover has already referred, from a sedentary position, to the difficulty of deciding, as the report suggests, what is non-contentious or non-controversial. At least, that is what I took him to mean.

The second group of recommendations, which deals with the procedure on Bills--in particular, Ways and Means and money resolutions, and ten-minute Bills--is largely acceptable, subject to the detailed points I have already made about automatic timetabling of Government Bills and the handling of opposed private business.

The recommendations relating to subordinate legislation are generally sensible and right. In particular, we welcome automatic referral upstairs to statutory instruments. The only significant reservation that I must express in this connection relates to the proposal, relevant to what has happened in the past few minutes, that Front-Bench speeches should be formally limited to 20 minutes or 15 minutes in debates on statutory instruments and European Community documents. However desirable such economy may be--I have already made it clear that I am willing to endorse it on a "best endeavours" basis--the potential difficulties of a formal rule are obvious. They have become even more so in the past few minutes.

Mr. Marlow rose--

Mr. Dalyell rose--

Mr. Newton : I wonder whether hon. Members would now let me get on.

Mr. Dalyell : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just rose to prove the point--it is made.

Mr. Marlow : My right hon. Friend has suggested, according to the report, that statutory instruments should go automatically upstairs. Often, those statutory instruments are controversial and the House would prefer to debate them on the Floor. How, in my right hon. Friend's opinion, should they be dealt with?

Mr. Newton : My hon. Friend raises a point that needs to be considered as we study the details of the report. That was precisely the type of point that I hoped would be elicited as a concern among some Members during the debate. The purpose of the debate is to address such concern. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it.

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The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) should recall that I said that it would be difficult to accept the specific

recommendations about a formal 20-minute limitation on Front-Bench speeches precisely because that would constitute a grave inhibition on the type of exchanges that have taken place in the past few minutes. If that is what the House wishes, I would certainly not wish to put a block on it.

Mr. Michael Jopling (Westmorland and Lonsdale) : May I refer my right hon. Friend to paragraph 74 of the report :

"It will, of course, continue to be possible to debate the more important and controversial affirmative instruments on the floor of the House."

Mr. Newton : I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that clarification, but I believe that the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) raised, which he might seek to develop if he has the opportunity to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, relates to what mechanism should be used to determine what is or is not controversial and important. My hon. Friend is concerned about the problem of definition when determining what business should be taken in which way. We should not disguise the fact that there is scope for disagreement and difficulty, because different Members take different views about the importance and controversiality of particular proposals.

Of the other proposals in the report--those which I described earlier as miscellaneous--I judge that those of most interest to the House would be those relating to the notice and timing of recesses, and the making of business statements to embrace two weeks rather than one.

On the first of the issues, I need hardly say that I understand and sympathise with the wish for greater certainty and earlier notice of recesses, but it would be wrong for me to disguise from the House the fact that the setting of immutable dates many months in advance would give rise to problems similar to those I referred to earlier in relation to specific commitments to a 10 o'clock finish to Government business--that is to say, of strengthening too much the scope for mere obstruction of business. Dates that had to be changed could be the worst of all worlds for everyone.

I certainly can and will seek to build on the steps already taken by my predecessors in recent years to try to give the House an earlier and clearer indication of when it is intended that it should rise for the next recess, as was perhaps most clearly exemplified by what my immediate predecessor did when Easter fell late, to give an early indication that the recess would include the week preceding Easter.

I am of course conscious that the date for the summer recess is of particular concern, especially but by no means only to Members from Scottish constituencies with children at school, whose holidays fall earlier than those in England and Wales. I hope that what we have been able to do this year, in terms of both timing and announcement, may be taken as an earnest of good intentions to move as far as I can in the direction the House would wish.

Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Newton : In the light of the number of times that I have given way already, it would now be appropriate for me to seek to bring my speech to a conclusion.

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Similarly, although I well understand the wish to see business statements covering a longer period ahead, I am also conscious that a situation in which business was announced on a basis which would inevitably be much more provisional that at present, with a correspondingly much greater risk that it would have to be changed, could prove even more inconvenient than the present convention. Of course, an overall package of reform may reduce the range of uncertainties and make it easier to plan over a longer period with reasonable certainty ; but for the moment I think that I must confine myself to an understanding of "best endeavours", and in particular aim for rather more notice of what might be called "setpiece" occasions.

In seeking to set the scene for this debate today, I necessarily sounded some notes of caution, and not least thought it right to emphasise to the House, as I must again in concluding, the central importance of the balance that will have to be struck between the report's proposal on timetabling and many, if not all, of its other recommendations. But I hope that it is clear that I have done so in a constructive and positive spirit that, with co-operation on both sides of the House, can pave the way, in the wake of this debate, for important and worthwhile procedural reform in the interests of Members, the House as a whole and, above all, the essential democratic process which we are all here to serve.

5.22 pm

Dr. John Cunningham (Copeland) : My view that Parliament needs reform is widely shared not only in the House but increasingly outside the House, too. It is in the interests of the reputation of the House of Commons that we should make a serious attempt at reform.

I submitted a memorandum of evidence to the Jopling Committee. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the right hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling), on managing to secure a unanimous report. I shall not bore the House by reading out all my views but shall simply rehearse one or two to point out that the report falls far short of my views and recommendations to the Committee. I favoured morning sittings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays ; the ending of business at9 pm from Monday to Wednesday and at 7 pm on Thursdays ; no sittings on Fridays ; a fixed parliamentary year ; and the timetabling of legislation. I made many other recommendations for change.

The House sits for more days, and more hours on more days, than almost any other western democratic legislature. However, there is no evidence that we are conspicuously more effective at checking the Executive, scrutinising public expenditure or stopping Government legislation going through. I can say that with feeling, having spent seven years as shadow Environment Secretary dealing with numerous large and controversial Bills.

In the 1988 parliamentary Session, for example, environmental legislation took up one third of the parliamentary work load in the House, and it was not much different in earlier years. Of the 1,783 hours and six minutes-- for what they are worth--for which the House sat, 606 hours were spent discussing environment business and my hon. Friends and I dealt with virtually all that legislation.

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Almost all the major Bills that one can recall were guillotined sooner or later. The housing finance Bill, the abolition of the Greater London Council and metropolitan counties, many other local government finance Bills, the poll tax Bill and water privatisation all inevitably ran into the guillotine procedure. That was not because hon. Members were filibustering--we were not. I gave up the idea of speaking for its own sake in this place long ago. I favour more effective scrutiny of the Executive, better-quality checks and balances, not simply of the quantity of time spent in this place, whether in the Chamber or in Committee.

Mr. Tim Devlin (Stockton, South) : My first year in the House was 1988, and I served, as the hon. Gentleman probably recalls, on the Standing Committee on the Local Government Finance Bill. We sat many a late night in the Committee Room for six or more weeks before a guillotine came down on that Bill. We then reached the stage when several hon. Members like myself, who had reservations about various parts of the Bill, were able to start debating many of the issues in later parts of the Bill. Would not it be much better to guillotine all Bills from the beginning so that hon. Members who support the Government would not have to sit silently listening to the first six or eight clauses being exhaustively debated by Opposition Members alone before they, too, can discuss the Bill?

Dr. Cunningham : I shall return to timetabling in a moment. First I wish to make two or three general points.

Many of my constituents and the people with whom I discuss the affairs in the Chamber agree that the antiquity of our proceedings and the inadequacy of the facilities to help us deal with those proceedings are simply bringing Parliament into disrepute. People do not regard this place as effective and it becomes less and less attractive to many people, particularly women, to want to try to operate under the existing rules. It has been my strongly held view for many years that we should do more to attract women into the House.

Improving our procedures can make us more effective watchdogs of the Executive, which is one of our principal reasons for being here, but also more effective in representing our constituencies and the individual constituents who come to us for redress. I make no apology for being in favour of reform.

Mr. Barnes : How can hon. Members act as watchdogs when we are about to go into recess for three months? Avenues of scrutiny and the pursuit of grievances on behalf of constituents will not be available to us. Instead of a three-month break, why do not we spread six or seven of those weeks throughout the year as "constituency weeks"? We would then not have an excessive gap when we cannot keep the Executive in check. The Prime Minister now has the presidency of the European Community for six months and we cannot ask simple questions about it for three months.

Dr. Cunningham : I say this with some deference to my hon. Friend, but if interventions last as long as that we shall all end up making very long speeches from the Dispatch Box.

I do not accept my hon. Friend's basic premise. I do not accept that the work that I do as a Member of Parliament

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stops because the House of Commons is not sitting. I do not accept for a moment that, if I am not present in the Chamber, I cannot write a letter, demand a meeting with a Minister or take a deputation to see people in Whitehall.

I shall say this as humbly as I can. I remember when Labour was in government--my memory is as good as that--and I had the privilege of serving as a Minister. It is often far more difficult for a Minister to deal with well-researched, well-informed, well-constructed letters from parliamentary colleagues than it is for him to deal with questions at the Dispatch Box. I do not accept that I can act effectively on behalf of my constituents only if the House is in session.

Furthermore, I do not accept that our proceedings are effective only if they take place in the Chamber. That is why I am in favour of more business being dealt with in Committee. The lessons learned from the development of Select Committee work over the past few years have led to an increase in the effective scrutiny of Government Departments, public expenditure and Ministers' conduct of business through Select Committee procedures.

When I became a Member of Parliament in 1970, I volunteered to be a Select Committee member. Some of my colleagues thought that rather odd, if not foolhardy ; but I served on a Select Committee for six years. I enjoyed it, and I learnt a great deal about the behaviour of Ministers and civil servants in Whitehall and the tricks that they play. That stood me in great stead. I believe that the House's Select Committee work has been one of its successes. At the time, many people opposed it on the ground that it would diminish the effectiveness of Parliament and take too much important business away from the Floor of the House, but I do not believe that that has happened.

We shall study with care what the Leader of the House has said. He has read a good deal into the record about the Government's attitude to the proposed changes. I am speaking for myself, but I hope that it will be possible for us to agree a way forward. I accept the argument of Committee members, and others on both sides of the House, that unless there is a broad consensus in favour of change, no change will come about. It was, after all, Conservative Back Benchers who wrecked the Crossman changes which were introduced in the 1960s.

Mr. Dalyell : I was the late Dick Crossman's parliamentary private secretary at the time, and I recall that that was done not so much by Conservative Back Benchers as by his Cabinet colleagues. That is another story, but I know quite a lot about it. My hon. Friend need go no further than Lord Callaghan for a explanation : he knows that what I have said is true.

Can my hon. Friend name a single crunch issue in regard to which a Select Committee has been really effective? What happened in the Westland case? At the end of the day, hon. Members gave in to Leon Brittan. Ultimately, party always comes before Government. Arrangements were altered when a guillotine could not be secured on the Floor of the House, and certain Bills were affected, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) will recall--

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. Interventions have become progressively longer. The hon. Gentleman's intervention is now becoming a speech.

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