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Sir Brian Mawhinney: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I understand--and, indeed, I know from my own experience--that sometimes Government Bills are produced to the House when they are not in their final form. I cannot immediately think, however, of any example of that being the case when a Bill was to be put through all its stages the following day. I have to say through you that, as a Back Bencher, I want the protection of the Chair against those arrangements, which the Leader of the House tells us are being made in corners and behind Benches, even if they are being made with the most distinguished Members of the House. Your protection is for the vast majority of Members--the Back Benchers, who have as much right, duty and responsibility as the Front Benchers to consider the legislation.
Madam Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman might put those points about his dissatisfaction with matters in the Second Reading debate.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. My point of order arises from your
statement, which will be very much welcomed in Wales, and I hope that we can avoid the confusion of last Wednesday. It has been suggested that Members representing constituencies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should no longer vote on matters affecting England only and that the House would act as an English Parliament on certain occasions. You will recall that we were all elected as representatives of the United Kingdom. Could you give some guidance, now or possibly in the future, on what the conduct of Members of Parliament should be when matters affecting England only come before the House?
Madam Speaker: I expect all Members who have been elected to the House to participate in all the procedures of the House. Whether that means going into the Lobby or not is up to them. It is not for me to determine whether Members should vote, but as far as I am concerned, they certainly have the right, the privilege and the responsibility so to do.
Sir Peter Emery (East Devon): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am sorry to return to this matter for a moment, but it is of considerable importance. The Northern Ireland Bill has been presented, but its Second Reading is not until tomorrow, when all stages will be taken. May we have the assurance that you, or whoever is in the Chair, will ensure that manuscript amendments will be accepted by the Clerks at the Table? That is imperative. Members may wish to amend the Bill, even if there has been agreement on it between those on the two Front Benches.
Madam Speaker: I am very tolerant of such things, but that is a matter for the Chair. When the amendments come in, I shall certainly look at them and be as helpful as I can.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. Whatever the precedent may have been, is it not unsatisfactory in terms of the proceedings of this House--quite apart from the time scale involved--for the Government to have presented a Bill that is not yet in its final form? Surely the time has come for Bills to be presented to the House in a form that the House can debate.
Madam Speaker: I have already indicated to the House that that is not a disorderly practice. Other Governments have presented Bills in a similar way. If there is a strong feeling among Members about Bills being ready when they are presented for First Reading, that is a matter for the Procedure Committee.
Standards and Privileges
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House--
(i) approves the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges (HC 607); and
(ii) accordingly suspends Mr. Ernie Ross, Member for Dundee West, from the service of the House for ten sitting days.--[Mrs. Beckett.]
3.43 pm
Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire): The House is grateful to the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) and his Committee for the report and for the work that went into it. Its conclusions, which we are invited to approve, are divided into two: those that relate to the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross), and those that relate to the Foreign Secretary and his Department. I do not propose to dwell on the former; the hon. Gentleman has recognised the offence and has apologised. If the House approves the motion, which I support, he will be punished by suspension and the incident will inevitably cast a small shadow over his future career, but the House is, by tradition, forgiving, generous and non-vindictive in such circumstances. I propose to respect that tradition and to say no more about him.
The bulk of the conclusions, however, are not about the hon. Member for Dundee, West; they are about the Government. With respect to the Leader of the House, the Select Committee and the House are entitled to a fuller explanation of what is said about them than the formal moving of a motion.
The second part of the report is symptomatic of how the Government have treated the House of Commons and its institutions. The hon. Member for Dundee, West has at least apologised for what he did to the Select Committee; the Government have not, despite having been asked to do so on several occasions--and they should. They used information, to which they knew they were not entitled, to denigrate a Select Committee report before it was published. As Andrew Parker wrote in the Financial Times on 24 February,
The Foreign Secretary, when invited to apologise on 24 February, refused to do so; nor has he done so in his correspondence with the Select Committee, published in the report. It is typical of his high-handed approach, as is his refusal to attend this debate. He should have apologised, not least in view of the history of problems between him and the Select Committee, which goes back a year to his refusal to respond to its requests for information, and his assertion that the Select Committee had not unearthed a single piece of information not already highlighted in the Foreign Office's own inquiry. If the Foreign Secretary cannot express regret about how the Committee was treated, the Leader of the House, who has a broader responsibility, which I believe she takes seriously, should do so on the Government's behalf.
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett):
Before the right hon. Gentleman gets too carried away, I remind him that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary gave unprecedented access to Foreign Office papers and telegrams, which no Minister in the previous Government ever gave or would have dreamed of giving.
Sir George Young:
The Foreign Secretary should apologise to the Select Committee and to the House for how he treated one of its institutions, and I regret that he has not done so.
May I deal briefly with page xv of the report and the role of the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee? He is not criticised in the report and I do not criticise him myself. He was good enough to ring me this morning and to explain the background to the final paragraph on that page, which is an extract from a letter from the Foreign Secretary dated 17 March. It says:
"Tony Blair, Prime Minister, and Mr. Cook went on the offensive to rubbish the report on the morning of publication, describing its criticisms as disproportionate and unfair".
As my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) pointed out at the time, that was before the report was published.
"On the day before publication the Chair of the FAC gave a full briefing to Andy Henderson, the Head of the FCO Parliamentary Relations Department, making clear that the bulk of the Report's criticism would be aimed at senior officials. Mr. Henderson minuted that exchange to officials within the FCO."
The questions that arise from that are: first, whether the briefing did take place and, if so, whether it was done with the knowledge and authority of other members of the Select Committee; and, secondly, whether it is common practice for Chairmen of Select Committees to do that in advance of publication. I also pose the question whether the hon. Member for Dundee, West might have referred to the briefing when he spoke after the Foreign Secretary's statement about the leak on 25 February.
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