| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Ann Taylor): I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. On Tuesday night, I offered him the chance to discuss the matter
further. I have received no representations about the issue--although one of his hon. Friends spoke to me about it. As I explained to him, those who serve as trustees are volunteers: we cannot conscript people to do such work. We have selected to serve as trustees people with some relevant experience. My hon. Friends the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) have made significant points in that regard.
When the trustees are appointed, I do not think that there will be any barrier to an expansion in numbers if it is felt that extra experience is needed. The House could ask other hon. Members whether they wished to serve. However, the Government do not conscript people to serve as trustees if they are not willing to do so. I do not think that that would be a useful way of doing things. I believe that the hon. Members chosen to serve have a great deal of experience between them and I have confidence in them. However, if other experience is needed, I do not have a closed mind to suggesting that the membership should be altered in the future.
Mr. Forth:
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that response, but I am a little disconcerted--I think that that is the right word. I shall not make any further inquiries about the matter and I accept the right hon. Lady's explanation at face value. However, I am surprised that apparently it was not possible to find, from more than 400 Labour Members of Parliament, hon. Members with more experience to serve as trustees.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
How does the right hon. Member know? He does not know what their experience is.
Mr. Forth:
The hon. Gentleman raises the same issue from a sedentary position. I am talking about length of experience in the House, not pension experience. I am very surprised that, from more than 400 Labour Members--I concede that a number are occupied with Government responsibilities--it was apparently difficult to find hon. Members who entered the House in 1992, 1987 or whenever to serve as trustees.
Mrs. Ann Taylor:
I reinforce the point that the right hon. Gentleman has made. The vast majority of Labour Members with the experience of the kind to which he refers are either members of the Government--it would not be appropriate for Ministers to serve on the body--or fulfilling other very responsible roles on Committees of the House. I think that he would be somewhat disconcerted if we suggested that new Members should assume the chairmanship of Select Committees in order to free more experienced Members for this kind of work.
We cannot force people to do such work; we rely on volunteers. I have said that if other types of experience are considered necessary in the future, we will be happy to consider the proposal, but, at present, there are no hon. Members with the kind of experience that the right hon. Gentleman describes who are willing to serve as trustees.
Mr. Forth:
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. I am tempted, but I shall resist the temptation, to get into a side debate about whether new Members should be Chairmen of Select Committees. In that case, the freshness of view argument might indeed be relevant. It is an interesting
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield):
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) implied that there was a corollary: that new Members might have experience in pensions? Having just referred to the "Vacher Dod" guide, I see that one of the new Members is an economics lecturer, another is a general practitioner and a third was a translator before coming to the House. They offer nothing to the Committee, other than newness and freshness--no experience in the running of pensions or the organisation of the House. No doubt they will contribute later to the debate on modernisation of the House, and argue how sensible it would be to introduce clapping.
Mr. Forth:
I am confused. I hope that, as a result of my hon. Friend's intervention, the hon. Member for Workington will seek to catch your eye, Madam Speaker, and explain why, with his intimate knowledge of his colleagues, he thinks that they have pensions experience that would be useful to the trustees. He suggested strongly that they had such experience. My hon. Friend suggests, from the information available to him, that that may be in doubt. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will put our minds at rest--
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
The right hon. Gentleman does not know whether my hon. Friends were trustees. That would not be in the record to which the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) referred. As for the medical practitioner, there is a requirement that a medical practitioner should be a trustee. The fund may have to deal with people like me, who may at some stage want ill-health pensions.
Mr. Forth:
I have no difficulty with any of that. If, as I said at the outset, we had been told briefly but carefully the rationale behind the names proposed, none of this discussion would have been necessary. If, for example, it had been explained that one of the trustees must be a general practitioner, that would have been sufficient. If it had been demonstrated that an hon. Member had relevant pensions experience, that might have been appropriate. If we could have found someone who was a new Member and a GP with pensions experience, we could have had the whole lot rolled into one.
It would have been helpful if, as a matter of public record, the House had been given such an explanation, but that explanation has still not been forthcoming. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for the information that it has apparently proved difficult--nay, impossible--to find Labour Members with the range of experience that I suggested was necessary.
I shall reflect on that. It was, and still is, in my mind to seek to divide the House on the matter, such is my strength of feeling about it. I sense that some of my hon. Friends want to make their contribution, and I shall reflect on what the Leader of the House said before making up my mind.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
I have promised to help to secure the re-election of Gerry Malone as the hon. Member for Winchester and I am already late for that appointment. That being so, I shall not delay the House for long, but an important matter is before us.
I am glad that the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) intervened because he recognised, as a Labour Member, that the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) on Monday night and by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) tonight show that we, the Opposition, are not seeking to filibuster to delay Government business. After all, the next debate will focus on the modernisation of the House, which is a matter of concern to all hon. Members.
As my right hon. Friends have said, however, we are much concerned about the compositions of Committees. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, I felt on Monday, in my anger, that we were faced with another example of the contempt with which the Government regard the House.
I had reason to take that view because I have raised on the Floor of the House the membership of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, of which the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is a distinguished member. I felt it wrong that a Committee dealing with matters relating to past events and going much to the heart of Members' activities should be in the hands of those who had no experience of the House. It was not a particularly partisan point, but I would not claim to be completely green on that issue.
The issue arose to even greater extent when nominations as trustees for the pension fund appeared on the Order Paper to be rushed through on Monday night. Not one Government nominee had served in the House before May. [Interruption.] I am sorry, the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) had served for one Parliament. However, none of the Government Members nominated as trustees of the Members' fund has served in a previous Parliament. I realise, of course, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we are debating not the Members' fund but the contributory pension fund. I accept that one Labour nominee has served in a previous Parliament.
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for acknowledging that we had a brief conversation yesterday. I am grateful also to her for taking me into her confidence. I have breached that confidence because she raised the matter from the Dispatch Box. She said that those who appoint Members to act as trustees of the funds have had difficulty in persuading Labour Members, especially right hon. Members, to serve.
I find it extraordinary that a party that enjoys the largest representation in the House since the second world war cannot find within its ranks senior Members who have the time that is necessary to devote to such important work.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |