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Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann): I agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman says about the importance of give and take in debate through interventions, but does he agree that introducing a time limit instantly kills debate? With a time limit of 10 minutes, which we sometimes have in the House, the Member who is speaking knows that he cannot afford to take interventions, because they would occupy too much of his time and might prevent him from making an important point. If we have time limits, we shall not have interventions and we shall not have the type of debate that the hon. Gentleman rightly wants. That is a serious problem.
Mr. Cook: Indeed it is. I have been a victim of that situation many times. If I were to express a personal view, which I will now, I would say that I do not believe in limitation of time. If one is to express a considered view, one must be given the time to express it clearly and understandably. Sadly, I am trying to represent the views of the Chairmen's Panel as they have been discussed in and out of session, so I am trying to do that authentically and with integrity, but on a personal note, I agree entirely.
Now you have made me lose my place--I do beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Now the right hon. Gentleman has caused me to search again for my links.
Paragraph 4 of the Chairmen's report says:
The report pleads for an element of good will towards the Chairman. I say Chairman because it is called the Chairmen's Panel. It may be politically incorrect, but I think that it is the biblical sense of Chairman. We need good will anyway, do we not, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as Chairmen, sitting in that position of clinical impartiality? It is not always displayed, but it is always sought.
An important plea that we made, but which does not have total agreement in the panel, is for Standing Committees to be empowered to receive and publish written evidence. That is an important proposal, which could expedite the more careful and more comprehensive consideration of an issue under discussion and legislative consideration.
We are worried about what appears to be an attempt to limit probing amendments. Such an attempt would be understandable, because those who are experienced in
Committee procedure know that sometimes amendments are tabled and discussed that appear to make no sense. However, such amendments facilitate discussion around facts that might not be elicited in any other way and often clarify the issue. We are concerned that that might become a concrete proposal and we believe that it would be difficult to adapt to that.
The Leader of the House referred to our suggestions that the proposals should be extended across the board and described us as wanting to be more adventurous. Perhaps we do, but there is a much more practical point. If we were to confine the exercise of the measures to any particular range of Committees, there is a chance that some hon. Members--whether experienced or inexperienced--would operate in ignorance of some of the practical consequences of applying those rules.
The report also suggests that the Opposition should have access to advisers. I am afraid that we strongly oppose that idea. There are other ways of dealing with the issue, and we do not believe that that suggestion should be accepted at this stage. I believe also that Select Committees, which are reactive at present, should be empowered to be proactive.
Paragraph 5 is the most important paragraph in the Chairmen's Panel report. The Leader of the House said that the report was useful and would be considered, but she did not refer to any specifics. I hope that my right hon. Friend will provide an assurance on paragraph 5, which states:
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann):
I apologise to the Leader of the House for the fact that I was not present at the beginning of the debate, and consequently did not hear most of her speech. I had to deal with the consequences of a factory closure in my constituency and the loss of 500 jobs. That situation obviously merited my grave attention.
I wish to make several general points before dealing with some matters in detail. I welcome the fact that we have a Modernisation Committee and I welcome the reports. It is most encouraging that, at the beginning of the Parliament, the Government are prepared to look seriously at these issues and the way in which we do things. No matter what the procedures are, there is always scope for improvement.
Several hon. Members have said that the proposals build upon Jopling. I am sorry that they do not involve a more serious reconsideration of Jopling, as some hon. Members have serious reservations about how Jopling has operated in practice. Some aspects have worked well, but we believe that it has taken far too many important matters from the Floor of the House to be dealt with elsewhere. Several hon. Members complained that matters handled elsewhere--in Select Committees, Standing Committees, and so on--do not receive the attention that they deserve from hon. Members or from the wider community, and are not considered properly.
I cannot remember which hon. Member said, "If you want to keep something secret, say it in a Committee." I have never had the pleasure of serving on a Select
Committee, but I have enjoyed my service on several Standing Committees. My pleasure was increased considerably when I discovered that only one Standing Committee Hansard goes to Northern Ireland--and it is not available to the general public. Therefore, I can say whatever I like in Standing Committee and no one will ever know. That gives me a great deal of freedom--particularly in the many Committees where I am the only floating voter.
The right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon)--I am sorry that he is not in the Chamberat present--referred to Standing Committees, and I thoroughly enjoyed his contribution. He made some extremely telling points and demonstrated that some of the problems about which hon. Members complain derive not from long-standing tradition but from changes made in the past 20 to 25 years.
Far too many changes made in the past few decades have diminished the role of the House and of individual Members, both Government and Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman concluded that legislative programming would be necessary to remedy that problem. He suggested that the trade-off would be that the Government get their legislation and the Opposition get their time.
I must qualify that point: the official Opposition may get their time, but what about the minority parties? Their number has increased, and is likely to increase still more if the electoral changes favoured by Labour Members are introduced. Unless I am mistaken, the composition of the Modernisation Committee follows the usual pattern: Government and Conservative Members and two token Liberal Democrats--Liberal Democrats are usually tokens in such circumstances.
What about the other minority parties? They are regularly ignored when the House conducts business and when Committees are formed. The record shows that minority parties usually get a raw deal in the membership of Select and Standing Committees. It is about time that someone gave greater consideration to minority parties, particularly when some parties--such as ours--are the Opposition in the regions of the United Kingdom that they represent. Paragraph 14(b) of the report states:
I wish to raise several matters regarding the report on the legislative process, some of which will strike hon. Members as predictable--but they deserve to be made none the less. Paragraph 19 and the following paragraphs refer to pre-legislative scrutiny and attach that to the policy of publishing Bills in draft form. The Leader of the House referred to the publication of draft Bills, and the Government seem to think that the use of draft Bills will change legislative scrutiny significantly.
I wonder whether, in forming that view, any attention was paid to the experience in Northern Ireland, where we have had that practice for 20 years. Virtually all
legislation has been published in draft for consultation, with periods that vary between a couple of months and more than a year between publication of the draft and enactment of the legislation.
The draft Bills published in Northern Ireland are not linked to any parliamentary procedure to provide scrutiny, so some of my comments must be qualified in that respect. If the Northern Ireland Office were honest and frank--it is difficult for it to admit this, and it runs against the culture of the Northern Ireland Office to do so--it would admit that the consultation procedures attached to draft legislation in Northern Ireland are a total failure. There is no significant response from society to draft Bills.
I speak not merely from my experience in the House, but from my experience before I came to the House, when I was concerned in my university and professional capacity with legislation in certain fields. Even with regard to legislation that was particularly relevant to the profession that I practised--legislation that might have directly affected the way in which members of the profession conducted their business and their livelihoods--it was enormously difficult to get people to look at draft legislation. It is only a draft. It might never happen and, if it does, who knows when--this week, next month or next year?
People would not look at draft legislation. Even if the legislation dealt with technical, legal matters that directly related to conveyancing--the source of income of most solicitors--one could not get them to look at drafts. The experience in Northern Ireland shows that society outside--I am not referring to what happens in the House--may not pay much attention to the publication of a draft.
It may be argued that the intention behind the proposal is to link the draft to some procedure in the House providing for scrutiny. That may make the process operate differently. I hope that it does. What is needed is a change in the way in which proposals for legislation evolve, not just before the publication of the legislation in draft or otherwise, but even beyond that point.
There is no reference in the report to what I consider to be the greatest problem: the passion that exists in the public service for secrecy--for not divulging to interested persons, whether in the House or outside, the way in which the thinking is evolving as legislative proposals are being drawn up.
In many respects, the enactment of a freedom of information Bill would be more significant in achieving the objectives of the report than any of the proposals contained in the report itself. An obligation on the Government to divulge more information and to let people see more clearly the Government's thinking and the reasons why they are developing particular proposals is more important than the parliamentary procedures.
I am not decrying the proposal for draft Bills. There must be a procedure linked to the legislation that gives adequate time for the examination not only of individual clauses, but of the thinking behind it. I regard as extremely important the suggestion that a Select Committee or a Special Standing Committee should examine legislation before the traditional Committee stage. That might be done in a First Reading Committee, or after Second Reading if a Special Standing Committee were used.
It is important that such a procedure should provide an opportunity for the Committee to take evidence and to examine the thinking underlying the Bill, and that sufficient time should be allowed for that. Time is needed for members of the Committee to get to grips with the Bill, and for the Department to think.
If one tables amendments in a normal Standing Committee, the initial response from the Minister and the Department is to put up the shutters, not because they object to changes in the Bill, but because they need time to think. The Minister will never accept an amendment at first sight. He will need to take it back to his Department, and the Department may have to consult other Departments. There must be sufficient time for the Department to absorb the material and bring it back to the Committee. That is why we so often find that amendments tabled in this House are accepted in the other place. Between the two stages, the Government have had time to consider their response.
I strongly support the suggestions made in the report for procedures such as those that would follow from a Special Standing Committee or a Select Committee. They should be linked not to draft legislation, but to actual Bills, as that would concentrate the mind. There should be sufficient time between the hearings and the beginning of the usual Committee stage for hon. Members to study and absorb that material.
Paragraph 83 of the report, which relates to European legislation and UK delegated legislation, states:
Acres of Northern Ireland legislation have passed through the House without being debated or examined. I refer to primary legislation--Northern Ireland Orders in Council. On the current Order Paper, among the remaining orders to be considered are five Northern Ireland Orders in Council.
I remind hon. Members that, despite the use of the term Orders in Council, that is not delegated legislation. Northern Ireland Orders in Council are primary legislation, yet they will be enacted without being considered. There might be a brief debate in Committee, along the lines of a Second Reading debate, but, with few exceptions, Northern Ireland legislation is never subjected to Committee examination. That is a crying disgrace.
I shall not labour the point, except to say that we know that this Government will not have any better answer to the problem than the previous Government had. They were never able to justify the practice or put up any argument worth listening to. Ministers in the previous Government came to the Dispatch Box and brazened it out, year after year. Sadly, I think that the Labour Government will prove to be no better.
There is no excuse for substandard legislation. The existence of a separate statute book for Northern Ireland makes no more difference with regard to Northern Ireland
legislation than does the parallel situation with regard to Scottish legislation. A separate statute book in Scotland is maintained through normal legislation in the House. There is no excuse for what has happened for the past 20 years in respect of Northern Ireland legislation.
The problem must be dealt with. The report of the Hansard Society commission on the legislative process states in paragraph 363, which refers to the representations received from my colleagues and other parties:
"We . . . do not think it appropriate for us to express any collective view on the merits or demerits of the main procedural changes proposed; those are matters for the House as a whole to resolve".
However, the Chairmen then list a number of areas with which they take great issue.
"A general acceptance that the changes now proposed will be subject to review, refinement or even rescission before being written into the permanent standing orders of the House will be welcome."
I hope to receive that acceptance tonight.
6.52 pm
"The Opposition in particular and Members in general must have a full opportunity to discuss and seek to change provisions to which they attach importance."
In Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionists are the largest Opposition party, and then there are the other Northern Ireland parties. The "Opposition" in the context of this place are not relevant to a lot of Northern Ireland business--although we do not exclude other parties. Unlike hon. Members from other regions, we do not object to the presence of other hon. Members in the Chamber for Northern Ireland debates or their involvement in Northern Ireland business. However, a proper approach in that area would be welcome.
"Of crucial and growing importance is the need to ensure proper scrutiny of the other forms of legislation with which the House has to deal, namely European legislation and United Kingdom secondary legislation."
I was disappointed to find that it omitted all reference to primary legislation relating to Northern Ireland. That is a scandal. The right hon. Member for East Devon(Sir P. Emery) said that it was a crying disgrace when major parts of legislation go through the House without the clauses being examined and debated. That crying disgrace has applied to all primary legislation dealing with Northern Ireland for two decades.
"We hope that their special problems will be considered sympathetically--especially the case for returning to legislating for Northern Ireland by Acts rather than by Orders."
That report was published in 1992. Unfortunately, the previous Government failed to give sympathetic consideration to that crying disgrace, as the Hansard Society recommended. The Modernisation Committee refers to that report, so I hope that it will follow the recommendations of the Hansard Society report.
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