| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
7.25 pm
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove): I am the 10th Member of the House to speak in the debate and the first of the new intake from 1 May, and it is from that one third of Members who are new to the House that much of the pressure for modernisation has come. However, it is encouraging to those new hon. Members on the Committee that hon. Members with much more experience than us share many of our concerns.
Earlier, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) criticised the choice of trustees for the parliamentary contributory pension fund. New Members were seriously under-represented on the Modernisation Committee, but those of us who were there hope that we punched our weight on behalf of other new colleagues; if we failed, I am sure that they will let us know.
New Members bring to the House a perception of what it looks like from the outside, because, until recently, we were on the outside. If something is not broken, there is no need to mend it. But the outside world has a clear perception that Parliament does have defects which need to be remedied.
The quality of the law making is criticised by professional bodies and the general public. There is example after example. It is not just partisan legislation that has gone wrong--the poll tax is an example of partisan discussion failing to deal adequately with
technical defects--but legislation on which there has been consensus, of which the Child Support Act 1995 is an example. The quality of legislation is not determined by consensus or partisanship but by effectiveness. The Modernisation Committee was given figures showing the sheer number of Government amendments to their own legislation. When it comes to law making, there is a constant catching-up process.
The effectiveness of the monitoring of Departments and Ministers has also been criticised. That relates to the way in which Select Committees and the Chamber operate. The feeling that the accountability of Governments, Ministers and Departments, has declined in recent years was a driving force.
Before we consider too much the practical convenience of Members, we should remember that the House of Commons has a purpose, which is not necessarily the convenience of Members. I hope that those new Members on the Modernisation Committee were able to bring to it a sharper perception of what the outside world thinks as well as what hon. Members think.
That does not mean that the practical convenience of the House cannot be improved. I look forward to the discussions on the hours, the days and the calendar which lie ahead. I hope, too, that we can tackle some of the strange customs of the House which range from the trivial to the serious. One of my favourites is that when I tried to ask whether a Minister would or would not do something I was told that that parliamentary question was out of order because one cannot ask a Minister "whether", only "if". Such trivial restrictions require some thought.
Much more serious than that are some of the issues mentioned by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike). It is inconceivable to outsiders that our national legislature does not have a seat for each Member of Parliament. Surely no other trade or profession fails to provide people with a seat in which to do the job.
Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West):
The London underground.
Mr. Stunell:
The hon. Gentleman makes a sound point. The hours, if not the rates of pay, are comparable.
The right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) has left the Chamber, but I wanted to deal with his practical point. To the best of my knowledge, he did not ask to be a member of the Modernisation Committee, and neither he nor any member of his party wrote or submitted briefings to it, so I was sorry to hear what he had to say about the level of representation that he had been able to secure.
The report is good as far as it goes. I welcome what it says about pre-legislative inquiries and draft Bills being put before Select Committees. The idea that Committees can participate in post-legislative monitoring to discover what has happened and to comment on it has not been mentioned much in the debate, but it will be important.
The timetabling provisions are sensible. No doubt some practical difficulties will have to be overcome, but they cannot be greater than the practical difficulties of spending several hours talking about clauses 1 and 2, and a few minutes on clauses 3 to 99.
I support the points that have been made about Select Committees, but I want to use my time wisely, so I shall move on to talk about the reform of our voting procedure. It is clear that there is scope for better procedures to be used. Not even my best friends would regard me as a friend of the silicon chip, but the House ought to make certain changes.
The hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) referred to the criticisms of the Chairmen's Panel. As he was unable to participate in some of the Committee's discussions, he may have missed some of the important points that have been made. Any speaking limit should allow for injury time to take account of interventions. We should not reduce the capacity of hon. Members to participate in a flowing debate.
The hon. Member for Stockton, North was critical of the proposal for a preliminary debate on whether a clause should stand part of a Bill followed by a discussion of the amendments. We dealt extensively with that matter in the Committee, but it is worth having a debate on a wider platform. If I were not keen to limit my remarks, I would expand on that, but perhaps the Committee could prepare a more structured and complete note for hon. Members, so that they are more fully aware of the arguments in support of that proposal.
I add my thanks to the Leader of the House for the way in which she has conducted the Committee. Today, she has skilfully worn two different hats: as Chairman of the Committee and as the person responding to the debate on behalf of the Government. I was particularly pleased that she mentioned two Bills that the Government intend will go through the draft Bill procedure.
Before the recess, I asked the Library to supply me with a list of previous recommendations and reports on reform and to identify those that have not been implemented. The Library said, "Are you sure that you know what you are asking for? How far back do you want to go"? I decided that I would go back 10 years. The reports that have not been implemented in the past 10 years make a substantial pile on my desk. I say to the Leader of the House, in her role as a representative of the Government, that sweet words in this debate and a couple of draft Bills are fine, but we need evidence of serious and sustained implementation by the Government of the proposals over which they have control.
That brings me to the future work of the Committee. I would be failing in my duty as a Liberal Democrat Member if I did not mention again the seating and shape of the Chamber, and the way in which it operates. Most people do not find the Houses of Parliament visitor friendly or family friendly; nor do they think that it delivers legislation efficiently, effectively and well. The work of the Modernisation Committee and of other Committees should be directed at correcting those perceptions and ensuring that the House has secure procedures that operate well, protect minority and opposition interests and deliver good government. If we put our minds to it, surely 659 of us could achieve that.
Combined action is required. No one has yet dared mention the other place, but we know that within the next five years fundamental reforms will take place at the other end of this building. That will perhaps give us an opportunity to consider how procedures in both Houses could interact more effectively in the future. If the Government are prepared to deal with fundamental
reforms at the other end of the building, I hope that they will not shy away from discussion and implementation of fundamental reforms at this end.
Action is required from a large number of hon. Members who serve on Committees. That effort should be made not only by the 15 members of the Modernisation Committee, who I hope will produce more reports in the future; there should also be a strong commitment from hon. Members who are not on the Committee.
Dr. Tony Wright (Cannock Chase):
I can reassure the House that I shall make only a few general remarks as quickly as I can. They flow nicely from the remarks that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) has just made.
As a student too many years ago, I was made to read "The Reform of Parliament" by Bernard Crick, which was published in 1964. Those who do not have time to read the book should read the preface, which says:
It so happens that Bernard Crick--who I am glad to say is now my friend--is now devising the new procedures for the Scottish Parliament. It will be an interesting, innovative and modern place. This House will look extremely old-fashioned when the Scottish Parliament is established. It will be a challenge to this House to put its own procedures in order.
This may be the moment when we stop talking about reform and start doing something about it. That may be the importance of this debate. The House is full of new Members and is far more representative than ever before. It looks different, feels different and has a radical energy about it. If this House cannot do this job, no House ever will. That is the nature of the moment and the opportunity that we are discussing--at a time when we have a radical general programme of political and constitutional reform of which these proposals are a part. We said that we would reform the British political system, and we are doing so. We said that the reform of the House of Commons was an essential part of that, and it is. These proposals sit not as a separate item, but as part of a general reform programme.
Perhaps most remarkable of all--it helps to explain why nothing much has happened on this front before, and it is, perhaps, the greatest tribute to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House--is the fact that here are a Government who are helping along and engineering a series of measures that, if implemented, will make life more difficult for Ministers and for Governments. Here are a Government with the biggest majority in modern times, proposing a set of measures designed to make life--in some respects--more difficult for themselves. Why? I am afraid that the answer is that they believe in those measures. They believe that the time has come to
modernise British political institutions, and to modernise this institution critically. They believe that the quality of legislation and the public interest demand that reform must be made. Surprising as it may seem that this is the moment, it turns out to be the moment when reforms seem finally and seriously to be happening.
We know about the problem. We know that the way in which the House considers legislation is a scandal and a disgrace. It is the bit of the system that we dare not expose to public view. It is a good job that people do not know in detail what happens. We tell stories among ourselves about the horrors of Standing Committees, but we are glad that that is not the general verdict that is delivered on our performance.
Example after example has been given. A definitive account of the poll tax has been written. The poll tax was the greatest policy disaster of modern times. It cost £1.5 billion: that is the cost of error, equivalent to about 2p on the standard rate of income tax. Hon. Members should read a book by David Butler and his colleagues called "Failure in British Government", which takes apart the way in which the House looked at--or did not look at--the poll tax. If there were more time, I would go into the details; I will give hon. Members the headlines.
Yes, we all come here not because we carry wonderful individual virtues, but because we carry party labels; but, if we know only that, we shall never become Members of Parliament performing the functions that the textbooks say Members of Parliament should perform--functions that the House is supposed to perform. Enoch Powell once memorably said that there was no such thing as Parliament, only Government and Opposition. There is a terrible truth in that. What we have are Government and Opposition, locked into a permanent election campaign on the Floor of the House, in Committee and in every part of the system. The price that is paid for it just to be that is, I am afraid, the quality--or lack of quality--of the product that comes out.
We must reflect on the nature of the institution. We must ask why scrutiny is not rewarded--why there is no career structure in the House of Commons that rewards those who take scrutiny seriously; why the system is driven only by Whips and greasy poles; why there are not other avenues in which people of great talent and ability representing constituents can find a way of serving. I wish that the Modernisation Committee, to which I pay enormous tribute, had taken just a little time to say something rather more general about the importance of
Parliament as Parliament, and what its central functions were. It could then have gone on to say things about legislative reform.
We know what the reform agenda is; we have always known. For me, the most telling sentence in the report is this, in paragraph 15:
We heard from the Opposition that they were against incorporating the European convention on human rights in our law. There was nothing to stop the House, over the years, from setting up a human rights committee. It could have scrutinised every piece of legislation to ensure that it was consistent with the convention, and with all our other human rights obligations. If it had done that, it would have more credibility in saying that we did not need to incorporate the convention because we had our own methods. But it did nothing of the kind: it showed no interest in such matters. That could have been done, but it was not done.
I have just two more things to say. First, I must express disappointment. I think that, on the question of constitutional Bills, the Committee sold the pass. I understand why: its members clearly could not agree. Those outside who have considered the matter seriously understand the need to ensure that constitutional Bills are not all caught by a doctrine casually invented in 1945--the doctrine involving Bills of first-class constitutional importance. No one can define them--no one knows what is a first-class, a second-class or a third-class Bill--but, simply for political reasons, it has been asserted that all such Bills must be taken on the Floor of the House.
I do not think that at all sensible. We have made great progress on the Finance Bill by taking some of its clauses in Standing Committee and some on the Floor of the House. Doing that improves the quality of scrutiny. Was not the Local Government Act 1985, which abolished the Greater London council and swept away metropolitan counties, a Bill of first-class constitutional importance? But it was not taken on the Floor of the House.
When I first came to the House, I sat on the Committee considering the Right to Know Bill of 1993, a private Member's Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher). It was an excellent Committee stage, in which hon. Members on both sides participated fully. We knew that the Government would kill the Bill at the end of the day, but, my goodness, it was a good Committee. No one could pretend that the process would have been improved if the Bill had been taken on the Floor of the House, but I suspect that we shall be told that such Bills are of first-class constitutional importance, and therefore cannot be treated in that way. We should look at the end that we want, which is improved scrutiny, and not play political games with the process.
Let me now come to the heart of what I wanted to say. The Committee has come up with a menu. It has said that there are a variety of devices whereby the legislative
process could be improved: ad hoc Select Committees, Special Standing Committees, Second Reading Committees and First Reading Committees. That is the menu from which we can choose. The question is: will it happen?
"Parliamentary reform is one of those things, as Mark Twain remarked about the weather, which everybody talks about, but nobody does anything about. Seldom has there been so much public agreement that something should be done, but seldom so much private agreement that nothing is likely to be done."
I am afraid that that is the truth of the matter, and it explains the pile on the hon. Gentleman's desk.
"The Standing Committee was a futile marathon . . . the committee stage was mostly a matter of posturing . . . it was scrutiny by slogan and soundbite."
That can be replayed, Bill by Bill by Bill, Committee by Committee by Committee. That is why it is a scandal. That is why we are not discussing esoteric or internal issues. We are talking about the quality of legislation that affects the lives of all the people whom we represent. If we legislate badly, those people must live with the consequences--consequences that they will subsequently tell us about in our surgeries. That is why what we are talking about tonight matters; but it also forces us to ask why the change is not made. In essence, it is not made because of the way in which this place operates. Someone once described it as a permanent election campaign, and that is essentially what it is. There are good reasons why it should be that, but, if it is just that, it will not do what it has to do.
"With one or two notable exceptions, such as the creation of "First Reading" Committees, the House could, if it so wished, do a great deal without a single amendment to Standing Orders."
The House has, over the years, invented ways of improving the process, but it has done nothing about them. The Special Standing Committee procedure is the best example of that.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |