House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Feb 1997 (pt 5)

Points of Order

3.31 pm

Mr. Kevin McNamara (Kingston upon Hull, North): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. In column 452 of yesterday's Hansard, in the reply to my written question, it appears that I suffered injuries that were shown in police photographs taken on 13 September; that the allegations of assault upon me were referred to the Cambridgeshire constabulary on 14 September; and that my solicitors were informed that the Crown Prosecution Service was to take no action about those allegations.

I was in Cambridgeshire on that day. I cannot remember what my alibi was, but I was not at Whitemoor prison. That is a bad example of a misprint. I do not know whether I am being paranoid, but, since the printing of Hansard has been privatised, my questions have been lost and there have been absurd failures in sub-editing and proofreading. Can something be done to protect us from the evils of privatisation?

Madam Speaker: I appreciate the point of order raised by the hon. Gentleman. He has a right to complain, and to make a second complaint in a short space of time about the printing or non-printing of Hansard.

Mr. Andrew Faulds (Warley, East): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: I am making a ruling--do you mind?

Mr. Faulds: I am sorry, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: I should think so.

Accuracy in the printing of Hansard is crucial to the work of this House. I have yet again instructed the printers to pay more careful attention to the detail of printing. A corrigendum will be printed tomorrow, but that does not resolve what has happened today. I reject and deprecate the inaccuracies in Hansard, which are all too frequent these days.

Mr. Bill Walker (North Tayside): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I wish to draw your attention to a press release entitled "News from Scottish Labour." Its headline is "Public spending watchdog to inquire into Tory ad blitz on vouchers". It goes on to say:

"Shadow Secretary of State, George Robertson MP today announced that the Hon Robert Sheldon, chairman of the powerful all party House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, will be raising the Scottish Office advertising campaign on nursery vouchers with the Comptroller Auditor General, Sir John Bourne, when he meets him tomorrow.

The issue of a £800,000 advertising campaign just before a general election was raised with Mr. Sheldon by George Robertson yesterday, who questioned whether this was a proper use of public money."

The press release continues:

"Mr. Robertson said . . . 'Ministers may be operating within technical government rules, but the fact that they will piggyback Tory posters on taxpayer funded advertisements shows what a shabby exercise all this is.'"

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The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) has received a letter from Sir Robin Butler. I shall quote parts of it--

Hon. Members: Order.

Madam Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to examine written material, I think that I ought to have an opportunity to do so. He ought to send it to my office. I cannot comment on something that the hon. Gentleman is reading on the Floor of the House. What is the point of order for me?

Mr. Walker: I have no hesitation in coming to the point of order, because I believe it to be fundamental and important to the Chamber. You know, Madam Speaker, how deeply I care about the way in which things are done in the Chamber.

Is it in order for a Front Bencher to put out a press release about the possible action of the Chairman of a Select Committee in regard to matters that may or may not be discussed at a meeting with the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn? Is that not a hijack of the procedures of the House--as if the Public Accounts Committee were part of the Labour election machine, as per the headlines in the press release?

Madam Speaker: I should like very much, if I may, to have the material that the hon. Gentleman has. I shall want to look into it very carefully. It certainly concerns the activities of the House--I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman about that.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I know that it is said that Prime Minister's Question Time generates more heat than light--but am I having a heart attack, or could it be the light at the end of the tunnel? The luminosity in the Chamber seems to have been significantly increased, to the extent that I now realise how ugly Conservative Members are. Some of us like to skulk in the dark at the back of the Chamber. Were you consulted about the change, Madam Speaker, and can we have an opportunity to say something about it?

Madam Speaker: I thought that it was very illuminating to have improved lighting in the Chamber. I heartily endorse it. For a while, I thought that it was because I had cleaned my spectacles rather carefully this morning.

Mr. Faulds rose--

Madam Speaker: It cannot be a point of order with which I have already dealt.

Mr. Faulds: I am quickly devising a response, Madam Speaker--but, while I do so, may I say that I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) to lurk in dark corners more often, and not to assert his ugly profile so publicly and frequently?

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You may not be aware--but I know that you study Hansard assiduously--that there was a gross misrepresentation a couple of weeks ago of a question of mine in business

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questions. I took it up with the Editor of the Official Report, who was extremely responsive, and issued a corrigendum the next day--or a couple of days later--but did regret that there were so many frequent occurrences of this misrepresentation of what the House actually said.

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must be careful to recognise the difference between Hansard reporting and printing. The original point of order to me, and others earlier, were about the printing. This is not about our Hansard reporters in the Press Gallery; it is about the printing that hon. Members are concerned, and I take that on board.

Mr. Faulds: But it was a different point of order, in that case.

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman might have made it clearer.

Statute Law Balancing (Limit on Maximum Quantity)

3.39 pm

Mr. Anthony Steen (South Hams): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to oblige Ministers of the Crown, when proposing either to implement any proposal under the European Community Treaties for legislation by the Council of Ministers or to introduce any bill or statutory instrument, simultaneously to propose the repeal of at least a similar quantity of existing legislation to that which they propose to implement or to introduce.

The Bill seeks to halt the growth in the number of pages of statute law. The idea is nothing new. It comes from ancient Greece. In his play "The Frogs", Aristophanes tells how Dionysius, overcome by the plight of Athens, ventured to Hades to find a poet best suited to save the city. He was asked to judge a contest between Euripides and Aeschylus using a giant set of scales to weigh up the qualitative pros and cons of each line of poetry. Two and half thousand years later, we use an equivalent test every day. Cost-benefit analysis has become a common tool of government, and the extension of compliance cost assessments has made the weighing-up process easier and more precise.

Today, we consider only the qualitative aspect of legislation--what we do in the Chamber. No one gives a thought to the total quantity of law that has been passed. Since 1979, we have produced 220,000 pages of additional legislation. In the 235 years between 1715 and 1950, we passed 298 volumes of Acts of Parliament. In just 45 years since 1950, we have added a further 112 volumes of legislation.

I wonder whether we would have fared just a little better if less legislation had been passed, as it often damages competitiveness, affects our enterprise culture and restricts individual freedoms. It is therefore not a moment too soon to find a way in which to halt the never-ending expansion of the statute book.

Some people will argue that we live in an increasingly complex society, and that it is inevitable that there will be more and more legislation. Others say that the harmonisation of Europe has resulted in more European directives, but many of those new laws are unnecessary, and dozens already on the statute book have lost their importance and relevance.

The Government have valiantly tried to do something about the problem by attempting to push back the insidious growth of statute law, but even their deregulation initiative has run into problems, what with the laborious process of passing deregulation orders via a Select Committee and of trying to push Brussels to repeal outmoded directives originating there. Some success can be claimed in limiting the cost of the implementation of new directives in Britain, but gold plating still lurks in some Ministries. Unlike King Canute, Ministers with responsibility for deregulation have temporarily stemmed the tide, but they have been unable to reverse it.

I seek leave to introduce the Bill because we can reverse the tide. One way is to cut the time that the House sits. There is clearly a correlation between the amount of time we spend in Parliament and the amount of law we churn out. If we sat less, inevitably we would pass fewer laws. In 1950, we sat for just over four months; by 1995, we were sitting for more than

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five months. Perhaps the Jopling reforms will prove a blessing in disguise by reducing the number of hours that the House sits, and thereby providing fewer opportunities to pass laws.

There is a second way: to use sunset clauses, which automatically lapse unless reinstated. However, the simplest approach, which I favour, is to place a limit on the total weight of the law. I take 1 January 1997 as my baseline. If a new Bill is passed by Parliament, an Act of equivalent weight or a mixture of Acts and statutory instruments must be repealed. Unless that is done, the new Bill would automatically come to a halt, and would not receive its First Reading. That is the most effective way to curb the growth of unnecessary and unwanted legislation.

The approach is well illustrated by Sir Edward Marsh, Sir Winston Churchill's private secretary, who had many paintings. When the walls of his flat were full, he hit upon a simple solution--that he would buy another painting only if he could sell or give away a painting from his existing collection. That is what we must do with our stock of legislation, and my test is not wall space but weight.

Any hon. Member proposing to introduce a Bill must first identify statutes of equal weight to be repealed, and I suggest that the judge could be the Deputy Prime Minister. He would sit at his desk with a set of scales that had been issued by the Clerk of Works. A Minister who wanted new legislation would have to appear before the Deputy Prime Minister with his new Bill and those that he wished to repeal. Only if the scales balanced would the new Bill be eligible for qualitative merit tests in the House.

Clearly, the quantitative test would call for a radical change in the culture of Westminster and Whitehall, since the whole raison d'etre of the civil service is to create new laws, introduce new regulations and enforce new rules rather than wade through existing legislation to see what can be thrown out. Balancing old legislation against new is simple, and that simplicity should commend itself to the House.