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Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne): I offer my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the
House, and particularly welcome her continuation of the rule that we shall be given two weeks' notice of business every Thursday. She will of course have read the Liaison Committee's final report of the previous Parliament, in which it called for the early establishment of Select Committees rather than the long, protracted arrangements that have been common in the past. I welcome her assurance that she will set up the Committees quickly. Will she give some idea of the progress of the timetable?
Mrs. Taylor: I welcome my right hon. Friend's comments. I hope that we shall make early progress on establishing Select Committees. We intend to enter very quickly into discussions about that. Some decisions have to be made about the number of Select Committees, especially where Departments have been merged, or indeed separated. I regard Select Committee work as very important to the House and hope that we can make progress in the very near future.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I congratulate, from the Liberal Democrat Benches, the new Leader of the House and welcome her translation from one side of the House to the other. Will she address herself particularly to the difference in arithmetic in the House and use her good offices to ensure that the access gained by those of us in the third party--a major third party--to the business and progress of legislation is commensurate with the size of our party? I welcome her firm statement that she will repeat the practice of her predecessor to give as much advance notice of business as possible. I also welcome the assurance that she has just given the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) about progress on Select Committees.
The question of the Select Committee on the modernisation of the procedures of the House is obviously extremely urgent if we are to approach all the business that the Government have put before us in the Gracious Speech with the greatest speed. If that Select Committee is not made operational speedily, we shall clearly have great difficultly in dealing with all the other business. I also ask whether the right hon. Lady feels that the short debate next week--it might be only two and a half hours--will be adequate to give the new Select Committee guidance on the views of the whole House. Modernisation is one subject on which all Members, new and old, may have a view so that business may be expedited.
Mrs. Taylor:
I am grateful for the hon. Member's comments. I appreciate his point about the arithmetic of the House, which will be especially significant in certain areas, such as the Scottish Grand Committee and the Welsh Grand Committee. We accept that the balance has changed and we shall have to consider the implications. I said that I will give two weeks' notice whenever possible, but I hope that the House will accept, as I accepted when in opposition, that on occasions it will not be possible. Two weeks' notice should be our target and endeavour.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Select Committees and I hope that we can move on all of them quickly, especially the Select Committee on modernisation, which should be set up as soon as possible. The debate next Thursday is not intended to be the last opportunity for hon. Members to make an input with their ideas for modernisation.
I hope that many hon. Members will participate in suggesting changes to improve the workings of Parliament.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish):
I congratulate the new Leader of the House. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, while we were electioneering, civil servants were busily turning out statutory instruments? How many are now waiting to be scrutinised by the House? How quickly does she expect the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments to be set up to start the process of scrutiny?
Mrs. Taylor:
My hon. Friend is well known for his interest in that matter. He has done sterling work on the Joint Committee in the past and perhaps may do so in the future. We inherited 60 statutory instruments and 11 have been tabled in the past two days. The Joint Committee needs to be established as soon as possible to make progress and to ensure that we do not have too great a backlog of statutory instruments piling up.
Sir Peter Emery (East Devon):
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on taking up the office that she shadowed. I have two questions. The first concerns the debate on Thursday. She will recall that the Procedure Committee pressed her for some time to reveal her thoughts on reform so that it could consider them. Nothing came to the Procedure Committee. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. Goodlad) that some statement from the Government should be put before the House before the debate tomorrow, because we do not know anything about their thinking on the issue of reform. It is most important that a statement should be available before the debate starts.
Secondly, I return to the backdoor introduction of the single day for Prime Minister's questions. May I remind the right hon. Lady of the statement made to the Select Committee about Prime Minister's questions at
Mrs. Taylor:
The right hon. Gentleman knows that the debate on modernisation is not tomorrow, but a week today. I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to produce a paper for that debate, because its purpose is to give me a chance to listen to the ideas that hon. Members might have. It is not the Government's intention to impose change on the House: we want to listen to what is said.
On that issue, the right hon. Gentleman, as Chairman of the Procedure Committee, will know two things. He will know that we stated clearly in the manifesto not that we would reform the entire House of Commons in a particular way, but that we would change Prime Minister's questions. That was made clear in the manifesto. The right hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave evidence to the Procedure Committee suggesting that changes along the lines that we are now introducing should be made.
Other hon. Members may not have read my right hon. Friend's evidence to the Procedure Committee, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman did.
The changes that we are proposing to Prime Minister's Question Time will not reduce, but will slightly increase, the number of questions that my right hon. Friend can deal with, and will improve accountability by making Prime Minister's Question Time a more serious affair.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
As the former Government Chief Whip rather disagreeably raised the Government's welcome decision on GCHQ, and considering that he did so in terms of national security, could my right hon. Friend find out what access Ministers have to the original papers, which led to Mrs. Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe's extraordinary decision--
Mr. John M. Taylor (Solihull):
What about the Belgrano?
Mr. Dalyell:
Well, it was about that--the extraordinary decision out of the blue to cast aspersions on loyal people working for the Government? Had that not much more to do with political embarrassment, and not much to do with national security?
Mrs. Taylor:
Not for the first time, my hon. Friend is entirely right. All Labour Members deplore any accusation that those who work at GCHQ are less than patriotic.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
I welcome the right hon. Lady to her post as Leader of the House--a uniquely different position from that held by any of her colleagues, in that she has a responsibility to all Members of the House, which I am sure that she will seek to discharge. I much prefer her recent remark that the Government would not impose any changes on the House, to her earlier remark when she suggested that nothing could be done in the House if it involved consultation.
May I suggest to the right hon. Lady what will already be apparent to her: that the decisions about a Select Committee and a debate are welcome, and that the best thing that she could do to start her period of office with the good will of the entire House would be to agree to withdraw the proposal for the change in Prime Minister's questions, not to challenge the possible merits, but to ensure that the proper process of consultation is observed? When she sat on the Opposition Benches, she would have insisted on that with all her customary vigour.
Mrs. Taylor:
On the last point, there were many occasions when the previous Government did not consult on matters on which we thought that there should be consultation. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Leader of the House has responsibilities to all Members. The Government have accepted certain approaches that will be for the benefit of all Members. For example, we made it clear in the Queen's Speech that we wanted wider consultation on some extremely important policy areas. We have also made it clear that we want to publish some Bills in draft form to permit wide consultation. We have even suggested pre-legislative
"3.15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These sessions are however a fundamental part of our parliamentary democracy and part of that is now familiar to the public"?
That statement did not come from a Conservative politician; it was given to the Procedure Committee by the present Prime Minister. We are moving away from that and, in my judgment, we should have a proper debate on an amendable motion and not an Adjournment debate.
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