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Mr. Jenkin: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Soley: The hon. Gentleman has been very persistent, but he had better be brief, as I am trying to save time.
Mr. Jenkin: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is making interesting and worthwhile points, particularly about how the House might be better reported. My misgivings are that the previous Administration would never have dreamed of using their majority to impose their view on the Opposition on a matter of such magnitude as the timetabling of business in the House of Commons--with the exception of the guillotine. Our problem is that Britain does not have a written constitution. The one guarantee of the power of the House is that such reforms have always been on a strictly consensual basis. The Labour Government are using their majority to pursue a constitutional reform programme that could be described only as a form of elective Stalinism.
Mr. Soley: I have two brief points in response to that. First, if the hon. Gentleman really does believe that in 18 years the Conservative Government did not drive their business through, I must say that they had me fooled for a long time. Secondly, there was consensus on the Committee, but it was broken today; that is a pity. The Conservatives have damaged themselves by that, because many hon. Members on both sides of the House wanted an agreement to be reached.
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In the light of what the hon. Gentleman has just said, are we debating Government business or House of Commons business?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a point of order, but a point of debate.
Mr. Soley: I shall let it pass as largely irrelevant to the issues at stake, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) drew my attention to a fact sheet about the hours of sittings in the House of Commons over many centuries. Of course the hours have varied widely. This has probably been one of the longest periods in which we have not changed them. The House has sat on Saturdays and Sundays, in mornings, afternoons, evenings and at night. It was a flexible, changing institution. Sadly, the Opposition are now saying that we should not change anything, in remembrance of some golden age. However,
things are never quite what they were. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has changed, as has much of what we do. We have been left with a model of Parliament that is a less than adequate means of holding the Executive to account and of giving Back Benchers the rights that they need to do their work.
Back Benchers have many roles. They are expected to do much more in their constituencies than previously. They do much more work in Committees. I would like us to do more outside the United Kingdom. Only twice in my career have I been an observer at international elections. It is one of the best things one can do and the countries that are emerging out of authoritarian rule appreciate it, but we can fulfil such duties only if we consider the role of Back Benchers, set it in context and modernise our working times.
Sir Peter Emery:
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I think is misleading the House, and he is not known for that. He is suggesting--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would like to think about what he has said. I am sure that he did not intend to make quite that accusation.
Sir Peter Emery:
The hon. Gentleman's remarks could be construed as not giving a fair interpretation of the Opposition's intentions. He is suggesting that, by agreeing the amendment, we would be going back on what was agreed in the Committee. However, without the amendment, the two points that were made in the Committee would never be put to the House because, if the first motion is agreed to, everything falls. The amendment is necessary to put the alternative before the House.
Mr. Soley:
The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is not right. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman intervened, so perhaps he should listen.
More important, my general point related not just to the fact that the Opposition tabled the amendment, but to the tenor of their comments in the debate. I remember working hard in the Select Committee and sometimes being criticised by my hon. Friends, who will cheerfully refer to the stick that they gave me from time to time, for trying to get the Conservatives on board. Suddenly, I find what I suspected--that they would not stay with it. That did not surprise me, but I felt that I had a duty to try to take them with me. When they return to the Committee, they need to think more carefully about how they participate in order to give the Committee confidence that we can work on a consensual basis. If we cannot, as I said earlier, it will be better if we acknowledge that Tory Members will write a minority report and vote accordingly. There is nothing wrong with that and it would save a great deal of time. It is important to have said that, because the Tory party should not be allowed to get away with what it is doing today without comment.
Mr. Butterfill:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Soley:
No. I am about to conclude.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall):
I start by following the final remarks of the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Soley) in trying to put our discussion in context. I was struck by the description of some hon. Members as traditionalists. I do not know who is owning up to being a traditionalist. It is certainly not exclusive to the Conservatives; indeed, one hon. Member is raising his hand; the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who is not in her usual place today, is certainly a traditionalist. Some take pride in that, but what tradition are they seeking to advance?
As the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush pointed out, tradition is all over the place. In the 16th century the House sat in the mornings and had Committees in the afternoons. In the 17th century it regularly started at 7 am and sometimes even at 6 am and was fixed day by day. In the 18th century the House sat at 12 noon. That was changed to 3 pm and then 5 pm. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) for pointing out that on one occasion the House met at 10 pm because hon. Members wanted to go to the Spithead Review. So ad hocery has been the name of the game.
At the turn of the century the House sat at 3 pm. That changed to 2 pm and then to 2.45 pm. During the war, in order to adapt to the special circumstances and to save energy, the House sat from 11 am to 6 pm--quite a normal working day. After the war, it started sitting at 2.30 pm with 9.30 am as a speciality on Fridays, and recently there has been some moderation around the middle of the week. We have only become set into a particular pattern in comparatively recent times, so I challenge the traditionalists to tell us which tradition they are seeking to follow. Anyone outside watching the debate will feel that the issue of when and how to meet on Thursdays is a storm in a teacup.
As the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush rightly said, we should be discussing the wider issues. I shall refer only briefly to the proposals for Thursdays, as I believe the argument is a red herring.
Incidentally, to demonstrate that the power of Prime Ministers has a long history, I can tell hon. Members that the House sat on Saturdays in the 17th century and continued to do so until Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole abolished Saturday sittings because he wanted to secure at least one day's hunting a week.
The first paragraph of the report is the most important. It says:
We have also sought to make the Government more accountable. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said that the power of Parliament had been reduced in the past 18 months and that we had been less effective in holding the Government to account. Where was he in the previous 18 years? He was in the Cabinet, so perhaps he did not notice what Parliament was doing. He certainly cannot have noticed what happened under the then right hon. Member for Finchley, who had an extraordinary perception of the role of Parliament, which she largely regarded as a rubber stamp.
The Thursday proposals are modest. On balance, I prefer option 2 to option 1, but I really do not mind. Let us do something about Thursdays, for goodness' sake. It is ridiculous for those who sit on the two Front Benches to spend all their time arguing about how we decide which option is better. It is absurd that we cannot treat two propositions equally and then choose between them. I hope that the Modernisation Committee will, in due course, consider how we should put different options on a level playing field, as happened when the House considered Sunday trading, for example.
Our yes-no procedures make it extremely difficult to adopt a balanced attitude to the options on Thursday sittings. Both have advantages and both have disadvantages, but they are both considerably better than the status quo. I want us, after this debate, to move on.
I wholly accept the other principal recommendations in the report. A non-sitting or constituency week in February would be extremely welcome, as long as we are given another week in which to ensure that we are not letting the Government off the hook. The same applies to the designated Committee weeks in September. Those weeks may coincide with the Liberal Democrats' party conference, but it would give me great pleasure as Chief Whip to have an excuse not to attend it for one day.
The right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery), to whom I pay tribute, drew our attention to the experiences of other Parliaments. A consensus developed in the Committee--across party lines and involving both newer Members and old lags--that it would be sensible to examine the procedures of the House in a Main Committee or second Chamber. Such a Committee would not remove the supremacy of this Chamber--far from it. It would ensure that we had more time to consider those issues that can be debated and decided only on the Floor of the House.
"The purpose of reform is to make Parliament more effective. This means allowing Members to make the best use of their time, and to balance their various commitments in the House and its Committees with the increasing workload and demands of their constituencies."
The purpose of reform is not to reduce our work load, but to make it more productive. I hope that hon. Members from both sides of the House will agree that the Modernisation Committee has made some--albeit slow--progress. We have sought to find ways in which to achieve more effective scrutiny of legislation, as our previous reports--our principal work under the previous Leader of the House, to whom I, too, pay tribute--demonstrated.
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