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Sir Peter Emery: May I point out to my right hon. Friend that the recommendations for a Special Standing Committee procedure were made by the Procedure Committee in 1988-89 but seldom, if ever, carried out by the Government of which he was a member?
Mr. MacGregor: I said that sometimes I plead guilty. The Bill that I took through had an earlier form of Special Standing Committee procedure because it was in the early 1980s, before that recommendation. The principle and the benefits were the same.
I strongly agree with the report's sensible suggestions in paragraph 44 on greater flexibility on Special Standing Committee procedures. In the past, it has always been thought that Special Standing Committees are of greater relevance to non-political or highly technical Bills. They are relevant in those cases, but there will be politically contentious Bills that are not of the type to which we have
previously applied the procedure but in respect of which there is much expert outside interest. The ability to probe witnesses in front of the Committee greatly adds to the strength of the process. I hope that it will be regarded as a measure not only for technical Bills but for others: some pensions Bills are an obvious example.
I concur with the widely expressed criticisms of the methods that we have used in Standing Committees. I do not need to rehearse the arguments because we are all familiar with them. We know how we got into situations where large parts of Bills were not considered and why they had to be guillotined and so forth. I believe--I said this when I was Leader of the House, although I know that it is not accepted by all right hon. and hon. Members--that timetabling has to be the right way to ensure that all parts of Bills are properly considered. That was the target that the Modernisation Committee set itself.
The result of the Jopling report was a voluntary agreement on timetabling in the previous Parliament, which I think worked well. It was greatly to the benefit of the House and, above all, to proper scrutiny of Bills. I am not sure that the more detailed and formal format now proposed is necessary, but I am again prepared to see how it works. I recognise that there may be contentious Bills where such a format is necessary to get agreement. In most cases, I hope that it can be done through the usual channels as in the previous Parliament. The matter lies at the heart of proper scrutiny of Bills and it is therefore important, whether done formally or informally, that it is carried through.
On the carry-over of Bills and paragraph 102 of the report, I think that it is right to have the flexibility that applies to private and hybrid Bills, not least because it is one way of handling the too frequent problem where many amendments come back from the House of Lords and we rush them through in the last three or four days. No one could argue that that is satisfactory. The problem arises because, inevitably, some Bills will be introduced later in the Session; they cannot all be done earlier. A genuine pressure on time causes that. Used sensibly, this proposal is a way of ensuring better scrutiny at that stage. That is why I have one point of doubt about another part of the report.
The report suggests that the new approach should apply if there is
There may be occasions when a major Bill that is introduced early in the Session, but is not identified as one to which the procedure should apply undergoes many changes--especially in the other place. It may be better to allow a limited amount of carry-over than do what we have done in the past--give no attention to what the other place has done and have no opportunity to discuss the changes that it has made. I am in favour of the principle, but I hope that there will be flexibility.
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley):
I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the Modernisation Committee's report. The Prime Minister has rightly said, both before and since the general election, that if we are to improve democracy we must address the problems of democracy in the way the House functions. That is what the Modernisation Committee is addressing. There is much that we will have to do.
The right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) made several points. I welcome his comments on rollover; if anything, the report is too restrictive. I recognise, however, which it is an important change of principle. It may be something that we must test before gradually moving further in that direction.
I have said several times that people elect a Parliament for five years, not one. The Government could have a much more balanced programme than having all Second Readings at one time of year, then having Committees before sending Bills to the other place, bringing them back here and causing an unnecessary crush.
When we debated the railway privatisation legislation, the other place would carry amendments and send them to us. We did not know what they had carried, and we were asked to vote on amendments that had not even been printed. That was nonsense. I have questioned--some might consider this heretical--whether we need a Queen's Speech every year. Why not just have one at the start of Parliament? If we must have annual speeches, why not announce that the Government will introduce legislation, but continue with other legislation? I see no reason for not moving in that direction.
Hon. Members have commented on Select Committees. I served for a number of years on the Environment Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Hugh Rossi. Some 15 years ago, we produced a tremendous number of reports on environmental issues such as acid rain, nuclear waste and river pollution. People condemned them as outrageous, but most of them were subsequently accepted and they are now considered the norm.
Select Committees do a tremendous amount of good work, but the resources available to them for expert advice are a little too tight. I do not say that we should go mad, but I hope that we shall ensure that Select Committees are adequately resourced to do their job. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) rightly said, we must ensure that all Select Committee reports have an opportunity to be debated and are monitored at a future date to see what effect they have had.
We sometimes allow people outside this place to judge Parliament by what is done in the Chamber, whereas much important work is done in Committee. The other day, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that some 467 hon. Members were serving on various Committees at that point, yet most people, even if they read the newspapers, do not know what those Committees do. We must therefore ensure that people are better informed.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House referred to voting. The third voting desk has certainly helped. She said that it had alleviated the problem; it has not solved the problem, however, and we should not pretend that it has. I dread the day when the Conservatives vote with Labour and opposition comes only from the Liberal Democrats--the crush would be unbearable.
We should try to maintain the principle that votes are taken in person in the Chamber or close to it. We should not introduce desktop voting in various parts of the House. While it would be wrong to jump to conclusions, the Committee should look further into all these issues.
My right hon. Friend also referred to European legislation. The last Procedure Committee produced a unanimous report on European legislation which I hope will be used as a base for the Modernisation Committee's work. The Committee did a lot of the spade work, so some repetition could be avoided if its report is taken as a starting point.
There are differing views on the parliamentary day and year. Some want to start work on a Monday morning, but others who live a long distance away would then have to travel to London on a Sunday, which would be detrimental. The 2.30 pm start on Mondays, whatever happens on other days, should remain. Some people believe that finishing at 7 o'clock on Thursdays would enable everybody to get away to do constituency work on Fridays. That is nonsense for those who depend on public transport. They would have to use their own cars if they wanted to return to their constituencies on a Thursday night and use constituency Fridays fully. When I have a constituency Friday, I try to put four or five appointments in my diary to use the day fully, but I cannot rely on public transport and have to use my own car in both directions.
Another difficulty, which arose just after the general election, is where hon. Members can speak from in this Chamber. It is ridiculous that so few seats are available when there are other seats in the Chamber where additional microphones could be installed to enable more hon. Members to exercise their right to speak.
Some might say that the Chamber is rarely full, but it is wrong that a percentage of hon. Members should be excluded from their democratic right to speak in Parliament. A couple of weeks ago, I came into the Chamber for Prime Minister's Question Time half an hour beforehand and found the Labour Benches already full. That barred me from the opportunity to speak, had I wanted to do so. We should extend the available speaking places to other parts of the Chamber.
We should also consider 10-minute time limits for most speeches and review the rules on interventions. It must be recognised that interventions should be relevant and brief. The character and debating style of the House are spoilt by people delivering 10-minute, sterile speeches, with no to and fro in the debate. We must maintain some flexibility.
The report is not one which the Government can accept, because it is not just for the Government. Some aspects are, because they initiate the legislation, but the Opposition have responsibilities too, if we are to proceed positively. Indeed, every Member of Parliament has a responsibility to make our procedures work if we are to proceed as the report suggests. If we want better
government, better legislation, better debate, and an Opposition able to look at different parts of Bills properly, we need to proceed as the report suggests.
"identification by the Government as early as possible of any Bill it wished to be subject to a carry-over procedure",
and
"that the procedure should only be used for Bills which are either to be subject to select committee type scrutiny or are introduced after a certain period in the session".
That is unnecessarily restrictive.
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