Examination of witnesses (Questions 80 - 99)
TUESDAY 28 JULY 1998
MR WILLIAM
MCKAY,
CB, MR GEORGE
CUBIE and MR
PAUL SILK
Chairman
80. Just give us, for interest, the particular
Committee?
(Mr McKay) It was the Treasury Committee and it was
a report entitled "Defence of VAT Zero Rating". So you
could do it on a point of principle and your lever to pull is
still the reduction in the Estimates and you can do it without
a great panoply of research assistants, but that is not really,
it seems to me, a likely or typical solution. Especially in these
days of resource accounting and budgeting, you are probably going
to want to consider giving Committees maybe some more assistance
of the type they have at the moment, either in-house or bought
in.
Ms McCafferty
81. We have indeed discussed that with other
witnesses. I just wonder, if we were to go the whole hog, as it
were, in terms of the lines that we ourselves have been thinking
of, that would clearly require a greater level of expertise and
support?
(Mr McKay) I think it might.
82. Do you think it would be possible for the
House to set broad figures and trust the Government to do the
detailed work?
(Mr McKay) Yes, the solution I was suggesting had
that in fact built in, but if you try to arrive at the same solution
by another means I think it could be done. After all, votes of
the House of Commons, even prefaced by the words "in the
opinion of this House" do move if not mountains at least
governments and I would say that that might be a more attainable
end than to try to wrench from governments a power which they
have had since the earliest Standing Order that the House ever
made, that is to say the power of initiating and controlling expenditure.
Mr Efford
83. I think you touched on this when you were
sharing your deep thoughts with us, Mr McKay, but at present the
Estimate debates take place on a motion to grant Supply which
can be amended by a motion to reduce. It would be possible to
have a range of different substantive motions and that expenditure
be varied from one sub-heading to another or that, in the opinion
of the House expenditure on whatever should be decreased or even
increased. Are there any procedural or constitutional disadvantages
to such motions?
(Mr McKay) I think I can see some practical disadvantages
because a Committee surely would have difficulty, would they not,
in turning down the volume of one particular microphone or sub-head
and turn up the volume of another. They might not balance.
Chairman
84. In monetary or effect terms?
(Mr McKay) In monetary terms. So if you were going
to leave the top limit undisturbed I think the Committee would
be in a difficulty in being certain that its pluses and its minuses
cancelled out. But to say "in the opinion of this House"
there ought to be more of this and a good deal less of that, and
to get the House's agreement and then leave it to the government,
I think could be the better way.
(Mr Cubie) Chairman, on that, I have just had a thought
that my experience of working for some years with departmental
Select Committees is that the longer they work the more they are
engaged in a continuous dialogue with the department that they
are monitoring, and that if a Committee is persuasive in its proposal
that there should be some variation it would be for the government
to come back to the Committee; there might be another hearing
with the Committee, at which the principal finance officer of
the department could explain: "Well, actually the details
as suggested by the Committee would not work out in practice".
But we would have moved on a bit from where we are now.
Mr Stunell
85. Yes, I take the point about the dialogue,
but if one goes back a step to what Mr McKay was saying is there
actually any practical difficulty in a Committee saying it wants
to take £1 million off whatever topic A might be and put
a £1 million back onto topic B? In the global scale of things
that is sending a signal, and making the arithmetic balance is
surely the least of the difficulties that a Committee faces?
(Mr McKay) I just wonder, Chairman, if the figure
is not likely to be more than £1 million. A Committee might
find itself in difficulty—depending on the ambit of the
sub-head or the Vote that you wanted to change. It just seems
to me that this would be an exercise where the Committee needs
to know an awful lot of nitty gritty whereas its aim actually
is a touch on the tiller.
Chairman
86. But you see I asked this question a moment
or two ago. I said was it in monetary terms or effect terms and
you said in monetary terms. You are now changing your view and
saying that the virement from one heading within an overall budget
figure to another could well have adverse effect terms and it
is not the monetary transfer that is the problem, it is the effect
on the heading from which it is being taken and perhaps the effect
on the heading to which it has been transferred?
(Mr McKay) I think my main worry, Chairman, would
be the monetary effect, that you would perhaps have effects on
the two Votes that you had altered and that the effects on the
two Votes you had altered would be a crude one.
Chairman: Yes, I think I understand.
Do you want to follow that up?
Mr Stunell
87. Yes. In some ways what a Committee does
in this area is going to be crude in the sense that it sends a
signal rather than designs a complete policy, I would have thought,
normally speaking. But if I just take two examples which occurred
to me one might well have an A and a B policy topic which were
in some way interlinked. One might say expenditure on police or
prisons, or expenditure on hospitals against primary care in the
Health Service and saying that it was £1 million off one
or £10 million or £100 million off one and on to the
other would be making a signal and the precise calculation of
whether it should be £99.6 million or £101.2 million
is not really relevant to the signal that is being sent?
(Mr McKay) Indeed, I think that would be consistent
with the view that I was expressing that "in the opinion
of this House" what we want is £100 million more here
and £100 million less there and then it might be understood
that the government came back to the Committee and said: "We
will achieve that aim, except it will be £99.6 million off
and not £100 million off" and it would come out in the
dialogue which the Clerk Assistant spoke about between the Committee
and the government department.
(Mr Cubie) We are, if I may say so Chairman, talking
about what may be a fairly remote contingency, that is the Committee
winning a Vote on the floor of the House. It might have happened
in the last Parliament; it does not look terribly likely that
it would happen now, but the Committee is trying to devise a procedure
that will work for some period of time.
Chairman
88. And we are trying to give the Select Committees
a more meaningful responsibility so that if people are going to
become experts in, say, Social Security or Defence or whatever
it might be, that if they do study the Estimates, while they would
inevitably perhaps agree the first one unaltered, it could well
be that they might decide in the second and third year—particularly
in the light of the Chancellor's announcement about a three year
expenditure plan—that they would like to see an adjustment
from one heading, one Vote to another within the overall total?
(Mr McKay) I think that is a much more realistic context
in which the things we have been talking about could and would
happen.
Chairman: Thank you. I think that is
a good point. Mr Davey?
Mr Davey
89. This follows on from that. What I think
the Committee is wanting to see, even in a Parliament that has
a huge majority in one party, is a set of procedures that can
give the House more ability to debate motions with a whole range
of options. At the moment it seems the procedures actually restrict
that and that you are limited to one or two types of motions.
My question really is, is there any reason why Committees which
have got an Estimates debate on the floor of the House should
be limited to one type of motion? Could they not choose a motion
which they consider much more appropriate, perhaps with a proviso
that it does not entail extra expenditure but even one could consider
even waiving that provision?
(Mr McKay) I think the kind of solution I was propounding
would go a long way to meet your aims, because after all whether
the Committee brought to the House, via the Liaison Committee,
a motion to reduce, some tinkering with the future expenditure
patterns or a simple report on policy, whichever it brought, it
would not just be bringing that simple proposition. There would
be a whole report discussing doubtless the arguments which led
the Committee to that solution and not to the other solutions
which it might have adopted. So the debate could very well have
the kind of depth which you would look for, though it would not
require a very elaborate procedural solution to deliver it.
90. But you could have a range of motions?
(Mr McKay) Yes, you could have a range of motions
within a limit, that is to say, in our suggestion you could say:
"We think the balance of future expenditure should change".
There are a lot of ways in which you can say that.
91. Because the point is that if you can offer
the House a menu and offer Committees a choice and we get a much
higher level debate over what the expense is for and the different
priorities that we are actually choosing that you may want to
separate the debate on those motions from the actual Votes on
the Estimates?
(Mr McKay) I think you should.
92. So you would actually give the government
a chance to take note of what the House had said and reduce the
confrontational element, go away and come back with another set
of Estimates?
(Mr McKay) I think that the separation of the two
things which are presently brought together - that so many million
be voted for such a service, and then tag underneath it that the
relevant report of the Committee on the particular subject is
the fifth report of such Committee - would be the best vehicle
for doing the kind of thing which I mentioned. I think you should
simply go for one of the three options which I mentioned; the
motion to reduce, the tinkering with future policy or straightforward
adjournment motion to discuss policy and that would be it. A Vote
would not be put down on that occasion. The government would then,
as you say, have to take account of what the Committee and the
House said in the totals which it brought before the House on
the Supply roll up date.
93. There could still be a Vote on the motion
though?
(Mr McKay) Yes, probably not on the adjournment but
on the motion to reduce and the motion that "in the opinion
of this House" a certain thing should happen.
94. I think this Committee, in the way it has
been debating and putting the case, wants to go a bit further
than that, where we are able to have motions in which we are looking
for switching expenditure and ask the government to go away and
revise the Estimates and put a new set of Estimates to us?
(Mr McKay) I just wonder, Chairman, whether the Estimates
are the appropriate target for that kind of expression of view?
Chairman
95. Not even the three year Estimates?
(Mr McKay) Oh yes, the three year forward look, certainly
Chairman, but the next year's Estimates? I wonder.
Mr Davey
96. Why do you wonder? I am not quite sure what
your doubt is?
(Mr McKay) Because they are probably part of a programme
that you are locked into. It is just the difference, I think,
between strategy and tactics. Committees will be, certainly in
our experience, happier looking at the strategy than the tactics.
Chairman
97. Before I pass on to Mr Gardiner for his
questioning, does not what we have been debating for the last
few minutes indicate the importance of meaningful discussions
on Estimates and expenditure?
(Mr McKay) Certainly.
98. Do you not perceive that this is what this
Committee is trying to do, to get a procedure in which the House
has a greater say in and understanding of, an ability to influence
the Estimates and expenditure that the Executive of the day is
putting forward? And now even easier to do if the Chancellor's
proposals for a three year expenditure programme actually are
implemented and materialise?
(Mr McKay) I think we would all agree with that, Chairman.
This is classical constitutional theory, but it is just difficult
to persuade governments to take a step back and let it work and
sometimes it has been difficult to persuade Committees not to
look at the horizon, but to look at the next step.
99. Their navel?
(Mr McKay) Well, I was going to say two or three steps
in front of them.
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