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7.50 pm
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): During this interesting debate, several references have been made to the record number of new Members in this Parliament. I compliment many of them on having the fortitude to sit through this debate and I am sure that the House looks forward to hearing their comments on these important issues.
I am reminded of my feelings on being elected to the House 10 years ago. I felt that the whole procedure was archaic and that working methods, the conditions that we endured and the hours were unacceptable. Many a time, I would remonstrate with the then Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor). I now realise, however, that I was somewhat impetuous. As time progressed, I realised that evolution, rather than revolution, was important in the House of Commons and that we should, as far as possible, try to make existing systems work better.
In reaching an understanding of what we are about, it is important that we should remind ourselves of the exact role of the Back Bencher. It is not necessarily to support the Executive; indeed, it is the opposite. Our role is to control the Executive--to hold it to account. There is a distinction between the role of the Government in getting their business through and the role of Back Benchers in ensuring that the Government do not run roughshod over the rights of Back Benchers and of the people whom they represent.
Hon. Members are a vital component of our democracy. We are the people who are charged with the responsibility of balancing the aspirations of people whom we represent and the ambitions of the Executive, who may, from time to time, have an entirely different agenda.
We would all be wise to note the words of the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), who drew attention to the fact that the power of the Opposition was the time that they have historically enjoyed in the House. He said that that time had been severely curtailed
and made the valid point that we all had a right to put our view and to be heard. It is a long-standing feature of our parliamentary democracy that opposition should be heard.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) rightly chided the Government for having ridden somewhat roughshod over Parliament in introducing various measures. The Labour party must realise, as any democrat would, that all hon. Members are elected and deserve to, and must, be heard. It would perhaps not be amiss for the new Government to realise that fewer people voted for them than for all the other parties represented in the House, so a majority of the electorate did not vote for the Government.
Indeed, it is unusual for a Government to command more than 50 per cent. of the votes cast at a general election, but that is not my point. Notwithstanding the fact that they have a huge majority, they have to allow time for hon. Members who represent the millions of people who voted differently to put their case, to argue with the Government in debate and to challenge features of their policies that we feel should be challenged.
Mr. Salter:
I always find it bewildering when Conservative Members talk about the proportion of votes. Do I take it that the hon. Gentleman supports electoral reform and will back proportional representation?
Mr. Gill:
The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the point that I am trying to make, which is simple. The fact that the Labour Government have a majority of 179 in this Parliament does not mean that they can push through their legislation without regard to the legitimate views of other Members, who have been elected by a substantial number of votes. On 1 May, more people in the UK voted for parties other than the Labour party. The point at issue is that, if our system is to be in any way democratic, the representatives of the people have to have an opportunity to put their view and to be heard. The right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was right.
I welcome the report's conclusions in paragraph 91, although I note the comments by the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) on the experiences in Northern Ireland. I have been a long-term advocate of channelling legislation through Select Committees, because they could enormously improve legislation. I remind the House that the departmental Select Committees are relatively new. They were instituted in 1979, when the Conservative party had just formed a new Government, in much the same way as the Labour party has just taken the reins of office.
The advantage in referring draft legislation to Select Committees is that the legislation would be considered at an early stage by a group of people who would have built up expertise in the appropriate sector. More to the point--this may apply more to Labour than to Opposition Back Benchers--if draft legislation were channelled through departmental Select Committees, Committee members would have greater job satisfaction. They would feel that they were doing something worth while and contributing to something that had a future--legislation that would progress through the House and eventually be enacted. The benefits would be not just to Members of Parliament, but to the general public and the people whom we represent. I believe that that process would mean that we had a more transparent system of consultation.
Government Departments currently assure us that consultation is carried out with appropriate bodies before legislation is brought to the House. However, we have no way of knowing how thorough that consultation has been and, without many searching questions, we cannot find out who has been consulted. One is wary of the fact that Departments and Ministers are busy and that consultation may not have taken place with all those who might wish to have some input into the legislation. Through the Select Committee procedure there is scope for following up any matters arising from the evidence taken. All that would give rise to better legislation and, more to the point, would save time, not just on the Floor of the House but in Standing Committees.
There has already been reference to the number of amendments being presented to much of the legislation that has come before the House. Sometimes, the number has been unacceptably high. That is a great indictment of the way in which the legislation reached that stage.
I am tempted to say that we have too much legislation. When it comes to ordering the business of the House, the Executive might consider bringing less legislation before us so that the legislation that they do present can be given more time and be considered in more detail. In that way, the legislation reaching the statute book would be better.
In advocating the role of departmental Select Committees in considering draft legislation, I do not want to detract in any way from their important work of scrutinising Government Departments. I commend the suggestion in the report that they should have a role in monitoring recent legislation; in other words, that there should be a follow-up procedure for legislation once it has been enacted. Nor do we want to lose sight of the vital role of Select Committees in investigating matters of public interest on an ad hoc basis.
The important matter of debating Select Committee reports on the Floor of the House has been mentioned. Too few of their reports come to the House and hon. Members, certainly those who serve on those Committees, would like to think that there will be a greater opportunity for the result of their labours to be discussed on the Floor of the House at some stage.
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West):
As another newly elected Member who was a member of the Select Committee, I must say that that membership has been a fascinating experience and has given me a crash course at least in the theory of current parliamentary procedures. I am grateful to the more experienced members of the Committee who have been forbearing in
Members of the public watching Parliament on television must be forgiven for thinking that the most important parts of the work of the House of Commons are questions to the Prime Minister and other Ministers. Holding Ministers to account is crucial, but the major output of Parliament is legislation. If that legislation is faulty, it can have a highly significant effect on people's lives, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright).
I am not against referring to hon. Members by their constituency, but I would find it easier if the annunciator gave our constituency in brackets under our name. That would allow us to listen to the debate instead of having to scrabble around in text books trying to find out the constituencies of various hon. Members. That is an example of the way in which the traditions of the House interfere with debate rather than facilitate it.
I believe that the key aims of the recommendations made in the report are to improve the effectiveness of Parliament and Members of Parliament and to improve the quality of legislation. Those two things are interlinked. The shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), talked about the red heat of political debate and about this being a continuous election campaign. We have all been elected as party political people and we all have deeply held and passionate party political views. It would be naive to try to deny that.
We should accept that two different things take place within the legislative process. The first is the argument in principle about the aims of a Bill. That will always be party political and will sometimes involve debates between factions within individual parties. The second part of the legislative process is discussion of the detail of the legislation--the detail which is vital to make it work. The recognition of that split is crucial.
It is not helpful if any alteration to a Bill, however minor, is seen as a defeat for the Government. A defeat on the principle of a Bill would be a defeat for the Government, but improvements to the detail can be made by Opposition Members and by Government Back Benchers and following suggestions from outside organisations. We should not engender an atmosphere in which the Government try to defend everything. I believe that acceptance of constructive amendments is a sign of strength in a Government, not a sign of weakness.
The Opposition should be able to oppose a Bill in principle and then, having lost the vote on that--that will inevitably happen in this Parliament--they should make constructive suggestions about how to make the Bill work, even if they do not agree with it in the first place. That is why I believe that in Committee it should be possible first to take a vote on the principle of a clause, allowing the Opposition to make their point, and then to go on to discuss the detailed implementation of the Bill. The Opposition could then make positive and constructive comments without that being taken as support for the
principle of the Bill. Those somewhat detailed proposals are incredibly important if we are to make this place work more effectively.
Another important aspect of making this place work more effectively is to ensure that we fully use the wide range of expertise of Members of Parliament and the external organisations that try to give advice to the House. That would all help to achieve better quality legislation. That is why I support the proposals on draft legislation and for a much more imaginative use of Committees, including pre-legislative Committees, and for a more deliberative and less confrontational style of debate in those Committees.
As I have said, Parliament now has a large number of Members with a huge range of expertise, and we must use that effectively. Like the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), my personal preference is for having ad hoc pre-legislative and Special Standing Committees rather than departmental Select Committees for pre-legislative work. That would diffuse work among Members, rather than concentrating it. Members with specialist knowledge, such as on pensions, sometimes do not serve on the relevant Select Committee.
My second point--it is very late and I have not eaten for hours, so perhaps I have lost track and it is my third point--is about programming. Programming of legislation is extremely important. It is important that it is tailored to each Bill. Some Bills do not require much detailed discussion and should be whipped through Committee. Others may need a lot of detailed discussion and should have many Committee sittings. Programming will allow time for the parts of each Bill that need full discussion to be fully discussed. It will stop the time wasting on relatively uncontentious parts of a Bill, which I am led to believe occurs under the present procedure.
Programming is also important because it helps individual Members to use their time most effectively. It brings a certain predictability to the legislative process, which not only is advantageous to individual Members but helps to achieve effective scrutiny. If Members can plan their time more effectively, they are likely to be better prepared when issues that they believe are important are debated and when they take part in such debates.
I refute the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook), who seemed to think that programming was all about accelerating the progress of Bills. That is not necessarily so. Programming is about accelerating through parts that do not need much discussion and giving time to parts that do need it.
I accept that, to begin with, discussions on programming will have to take place through the usual channels, but I hope that, in future, that process becomes less opaque. I do not think that the usual channels are entirely consistent with the transparency that most of us espouse.
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