| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. James Couchman (Gillingham): Does my right hon. Friend agreed that the hon. Member for Hartlepool appears to have learnt a great deal about the Association of First Division Civil Servants, probably from the time that he spent as its parliamentary adviser?
Mr. Freeman: The hon. Member for Hartlepool must speak for himself. To be fair to him, I must say that he obviously had a typed speech making copious reference to the FDA press release. Doubtless he took the same attitude as I did long before the debate began--that the issue is important. It is an issue that we must take seriously, and that is what the Government will do.
I commend the White Paper to the House, and I am grateful for all the contributions, both serious and otherwise, to the debate.
Parliamentary Procedure
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton):
We now have a relatively rare opportunity to range widely, if perhaps somewhat introspectively, over matters of concern to many Members--matters, indeed, that affect all Members in the House. I can only hope that the debate will not attract the same degree of attention as our other introspective debate last night on a rather different subject.
I welcome the opportunity to review some of what has already been achieved in the reform of parliamentary procedure, and to look at some of the proposals for the future currently under discussion. I see from the number of my hon. Friends and Opposition Members who are present that there may be rather more of a wish to contribute to the debate than I expected at one stage, so I shall try to keep my remarks rather briefer than they might otherwise have been. So if people see me rather hastily disposing of pieces of paper during the debate, I hope that they will understand that I am doing so because of my wish to accommodate the evidently burning desire to contribute.
I shall therefore touch only briefly on some of the important reforms carried out earlier in the lifetime of the Government, including especially the introduction of the departmentally related Select Committees and the European Standing Committees that now carry out so much of our scrutiny. Both those developments have made important contributions to the reform of our procedures, especially the way in which the departmental Select Committees have established a high reputation both among hon. Members and outside the House. In my view, they have contributed significantly to improving the capacity of the House to scrutinise the work of the Government and of the Executive in general.
The most substantial changes with which I personally have been involved, together with the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), who I understand cannot be here tonight, are the Jopling reforms, introduced in January 1995 and subsequently incorporated into our Standing Orders. Those reforms have given the House more civilised sitting hours, but at the same time they have maintained the traditional understanding that, while the Government get their business, the Opposition get their say.
The reforms have also improved the opportunities for Back Benchers to initiate debates on subjects of their choice. One important aspect of the Jopling reforms--it is a fact that I never tire of emphasising to the many people from abroad who come to see me about such matters, because it applies to our proceedings in general--is that many important elements in the package, and, indeed, in the whole way in which this place operates, are not embodied in Standing Orders at all, but in informal and voluntary agreements. I often say to people that one
could read "Erskine May" from end to end, and Standing Orders from cover to cover, and still not know how the British House of Commons works, unless one had been at some stage part of the usual channels or a close observer of them.
I think that that approach, especially the voluntary timetabling of legislation, has improved the sensible scrutiny of legislation. It has certainly taken us away from the rather absurd situation that existed when I first became a Member of Parliament, in which, almost routinely, the Opposition, of which I was then part, talked endlessly about the early clauses of a Bill, which inevitably drove the Government to impose a guillotine, and the later parts of the Bill got very little discussion.
Since the Jopling reforms were introduced, we have had to use a guillotine only once--and that was in effect an agreed guillotine, imposed in exceptional circumstances to take through emergency legislation just before a recess.
We have also had considerable success in cutting down on late sittings. As the House knows, it used to be commonplace for us to rise after midnight, and often well after midnight. When I first entered the House, one took it for granted that one would probably be here until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning three or four nights a week. That is now rare; of the 228 sittings since the Jopling reforms were introduced, only 19 have lasted beyond midnight.
The new arrangements for Fridays take greater account of Members' constituency obligations. As I have already said, the new arrangements provide for Back Benchers not only more time but what could reasonably be described as better quality time, in the form of our new Adjournment debates on Wednesday mornings. Those have almost doubled the number of debates that private Members can initiate, which also now take place at a more convenient time than on a Friday, or, worse still, in the middle of the night on the Consolidated Fund.
I am trying to keep my speech short, so I shall touch only briefly on another important set of recent developments--the procedures that have enhanced the role of the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees. I know that there are some who tend to minimise their impact, but it is clear to me at least that they have been greatly welcomed, especially in Scotland, which so far has more experience of them. They are a worthwhile and important development in our procedures involving those parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
Will the Minister remind us of the costs so far of going to Dumfries, Dundee, Perth and elsewhere?
Mr. Newton:
I do not have a note with me of the precise costs, but I do not consider them large compared with the gain of making Parliament, via the Scottish Grand Committee, more accessible to, and more alive for, the people of parts of the United Kingdom which, simply because of their geographical distance from London, may sometimes feel a little remote from some of our procedures here.
I acknowledge that the hon. Gentleman is a Scottish Member of Parliament and I am not, but everything I hear suggests that, however much occasional carping there has
been here, the sessions in Scotland appear to have been very popular and very much welcomed by the areas to which the Grand Committee has been taken.
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South):
I hope that Scots Members will forgive me asking this question, but it is of universal importance. I understand that most debates in the Scottish Grand Committee are raised on an Adjournment motion. Is it possible to move opinion motions in those Committees? About 20 years ago, when we had regional committees upstairs, the disadvantage was that they were opinion only. However, they were allowed to reach an opinion, and not just to debate matters on the Adjournment, as I understand is the case in the Scottish Grand Committee.
Mr. Newton:
The debates usually take place on Adjournment motions. There would be obvious difficulties in making any other arrangements, as the pattern of membership of Grand Committees does not reflect the party balance in the House--unlike all other Committees of the House. That clearly has to be taken into account in the working of the Committee.
I should touch briefly on another important innovation--the power under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 to make deregulation orders. That was a pretty controversial procedural change when it was introduced, but I think it can be said--I hope not too controversially--that, with the benefit of more than a year's experience, the merits of the new procedure are more widely appreciated, and the anxieties it caused were unfounded.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, who played a large part in working out those procedures; and to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field), who has chaired the Deregulation Committee since it was established. It is quite striking that the Committee has unanimously approved every order so that it can seek the approval of the House without the need for further debate. So far, 21 orders--which would have taken significantly more time had they been presented as minor Bills--have completed all their parliamentary stages.
Before leaving this brief historical survey, I should refer to what has followed the Nolan report, although strictly speaking it cannot be regarded as a procedural change. It has certainly resulted in our putting in place--with a wide measure of agreement, despite controversy on some points--the most radical reforms of the rules governing Members' conduct for half a century or more.
The new Committee on Standards and Privileges is about to publish a draft code of conduct that the House will be invited to approve. There will also be detailed guidance on how the new rules will work in practice. The House will have an opportunity to return to the matter in due course when we debate the code; meanwhile, I should like to pay tribute to the members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, which I chair, not least the hon. Member for Dewsbury for her constructive role in its work.
I now turn to some of the procedural issues that are currently on the table, mostly as a result of the indefatigably energetic activities of my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and the Procedure Committee.
A report was published on Prime Minister's questions some time ago. It is easy to agree that Prime Minister's Question Time has some features that nearly everyone dislikes. The difficulty is finding a solution on which there is the slightest possibility of everyone agreeing.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |