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Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North): May I draw to my right hon. Friend's attention how pleased I am with the progress in respect of legislation? That is absolutely crucial, but a further aspect concerns me as well, which I hope the Committee will have an opportunity to move on to because it is important, too. It is how Parliament has proper scrutiny through Select Committees of what the Government are doing. May I bring to her attention the work and recommendations of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, of which I am a current member and on which I have sat previously? Recommendations in its report relate to the Crown jewels procedure and to whether we should have a procedure for parliamentary investigations instigated by the House or by Select Committees. In certain circumstances, such a parliamentary investigation could perhaps have more resources than Select Committees currently have for particular inquiries. I urge her to consider that issue, too, when we have got through this legislative programme for improving our procedures.
Mrs. Taylor: I know that my hon. Friend has done much work on Select Committees and I value her expertise. I cannot promise that we will recommend the changes that she suggests, but we will certainly come on to the work of Select Committees. All Members at that stage will have an opportunity to feed in their ideas and she will be able to expand on hers at that time.
On the future work of the Select Committee, let me remind Members of the work that we are doing immediately and in the near future. We are doing further work on the feasibility and desirability of electronic voting, and we are considering the way in which the parliamentary year, parliamentary week and parliamentary day are scheduled. We have had a couple of interesting and open discussions, although no conclusions have been drawn. We are going to consider the conduct of debate in the House and the scrutiny of European legislation. All are areas of concern to many Members. We received many representations on them when the Committee was first established.
I should be happy to hear more from Members this evening about what their priorities are, but I know that there are conflicts in the views of different Members from different parts of the country or in different groups. All Members should appreciate that there are no easy solutions to these problems.
Following the Jopling changes, surveys were done and the information that we have already from Members shows us that, in some respects, there is an agreed pattern
of what a parliamentary week should be. Most Members believe that Parliament should sit from Monday lunch time to Thursday tea time. Many think that there should be no very late nights, although London Members would define late nights differently from Select Committee members, as would northern Members.
There is concern about the fact that Parliament sits so much when schools are on holiday and it is half term. There are demands for constituency weeks, for early notices of the recess, for no diminution in the power of Back Benchers and for the Government not to use guillotines, yet there is also a requirement for Government to get their legislation through. It is clear that all those objectives are not compatible. Different Members legitimately have different priorities. For some Members, the priority is to be in this Chamber. For others, it is to serve on a Select Committee. Some will specialise in European legislation or regional advocacy and others will want to spend a lot of time representing the interests of their constituents, perhaps at constituency level.
It is impossible to please everyone, but we are trying to devise a system that will allow all 659 Members to undertake their jobs in their individual way--in the way that they think is most appropriate to their constituents. That is the difficulty with which we wrestle. Every hon. Member carries out their job in a different way, according to what they think is appropriate for their constituency. We have to provide a framework to enable them to do that.
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow):
The right hon. Lady was describing the different ways in which Members of Parliament approach their job. Will she accept that, in the circumstances that she has described, it would be impossible to lay out a job description for Members of Parliament? Will she resist the calls that I understand are being made to produce such a document?
Mrs. Taylor:
I think that our constituents would be surprised to learn that there is no job description for Members of Parliament. The problem is that one runs into significant difficulties as soon as one attempts to write such a document. That is why I acknowledge that all Members of Parliament do their considerable job in very different ways. The priorities I have expressed, such as the Chamber, Select Committees and constituency work, are all legitimate priorities. I suspect that all hon. Members would, or at least should, acknowledge that they have to cover all those points at some stage during their parliamentary life.
We need a framework to allow Members of Parliament to do their job in the way that they each think fit. At the same time, we have to deliver good government, and that is a tall order. We have to ensure that we satisfy everybody and that everybody can undertake their work as they wish.
From the responses we have had it is easy to see how different the priorities are. Some people ask for more time for Adjournment debates, some are demanding more morning sittings and some object to any morning sittings at all because they want to get on with their constituency work. We have had demands for early evening finishes or for Committees to sit in the evening. We have had objections to such proposals from Members with constituencies in different parts of the country; they take a different view. The Committee will have to take on board all those different views.
The Committee is aware that there is consensus for change, but we also know that there is not yet consensus about what that change should be. It is important that the Committee should formulate ideas in the context of keeping in touch with hon. Members. That is why we will continue to encourage hon. Members to feed in information and to keep in touch with members of the Committee.
We have had many suggestions about the Chamber that I know will interest you, Madam Speaker, and your Deputy Speakers and Chairmen. There have been suggestions that Question Time should be in the morning rather than the afternoon and that the House should rise at 7 o'clock--[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] There have been suggestions that the House should never sit on Fridays and that we should use Tuesday and Thursday mornings for Committees of the whole House.
All those suggestions have some logic and my hon. Friends are saying "Hear, hear." to some of them. If we did all of them, we would get no business through at all, especially if we had constituency weeks as well. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) approves of the idea of us getting no business through. He has already proved today that he is not a moderniser so I would expect nothing less from him.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst)
indicated assent.
Mrs. Taylor:
I am glad to have that confirmed.
During the next few weeks, we will be discussing the conduct of debates in the House. That is necessary because there have been so many changes in attitude to debate over the years and because some of the normal courtesies of the House seem to have gone out of the window. We saw that yesterday during the introduction of the new Member with some of the most appalling scenes I have seen in the House for some time.
When the new Members first arrived in the House they looked for quick solutions such as suggesting that every speech should be limited to 10 minutes. There have been suggestions that Privy Counsellors should not be given precedence in debate. There have been discussions about wigs, top hats and about referring to Members by name rather than by constituency. We have reached no decisions on those matters and our main concern will be to ensure that the House functions properly and that good use is made of the time of hon. Members.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard (South-West Norfolk):
As the Leader of the House has pointed out, the report has been agreed unanimously by the Committee and we all welcome that. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) and for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) have been in touch with her to explain that they had engagements which predated their membership of the Committee and that that was why they could not be here today.
The Opposition welcome the Committee's recognition, in examining proposals for change, of the principles laid down by a distinguished predecessor of the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor). In his evidence to the Jopling Committee, he said:
What will be particularly helpful is the insistence that the various options for change should be tried out on an experimental basis and the view that comments from hon. Members and others will be an important part of any change. It has been interesting to receive comments from new Members and to set those alongside the views of more seasoned members of the Committee and others. I believe that the report is a little optimistic in the way that it thinks we can deal with the red-in-tooth-and-claw nature of political activity in the House. However, the experimental approach adopted will at least demonstrate those areas where easier progress can be made.
"the position of Government must not be undermined and the Government of the day must still be able to get its business;
The Leader of the House has illustrated the difficulty of balancing competing claims. She has given examples of the type of demands that are made of the process of modernisation. The Committee's report reflects the principles laid down by my right hon. Friend.
the Opposition must have adequate opportunity to oppose and its legitimate rights must be sustained;
back benchers must have adequate scope to raise matters of concern to them or their constituents, but a balance has to be struck between unlimited freedom for back benchers and the efficient operating of Parliament as a law-making body."
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