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Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): The task that my hon. Friend describes is indeed exacting. I wonder whether, in view of the need for consideration to be truncated, we can expect that the Select Committee--in order for its business to be completed in time--would have to start no later than 6 am? That, I think, would assuredly be so--and there could be no question, on any day, of a break for lunch.
Mr. Pickles: I am a great admirer of my hon. Friend, but I sincerely hope, for all our sakes, that he never reaches the exalted office of Leader of the House because he would be a very hard taskmaster. I do not think that it is reasonable to expect people to come to the House to give evidence at 6 o'clock in the morning. My hon. Friend, by the use of an extreme example, clearly demonstrates how inappropriate the process will be.
A Standing Committee would meet at least twice a week. It would probably meet at 10 o'clock in the morning and would have the opportunity to sit through the evening. Is it, however, wholly reasonable to tell witnesses to turn up, but that the Committee might sit through the night because we want to hear various people? We do not just want people to turn up and give evidence; we want to have the opportunity to receive and consider written evidence, and we want to be able to cross-examine witnesses. Several key points need to be addressed.Can that really be done between 19 October and 12 November? I suggest to the House that the timetable is wholly unrealistic.
I told my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex that there is a possibility of holding one or two evidence sessions. It is unreasonable to expect evidence sessions to last as long as a Standing Committee sitting.
Mrs. Gorman:
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding the House--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Perhaps I could invite the hon. Lady to face the Chair.
Mrs. Gorman:
My hon. Friend was kind enough to inform the House that I am a humble member of the Select Committee under the admirable chairmanship of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). We have already spent months and months taking evidence
Mr. Pickles:
I am confident that my hon. Friend intended that to be a helpful intervention. Before I became a member of the Transport Sub-Committee, I served for a while on the, then separate, Environment Committee. You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, also served on the former Committee. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) was a very distinguished member of the latter Committee. When we were on that Committee, we held two sessions of evidence-taking--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman has gone far enough down memory lane. He should return to the committal motion.
Mr. Pickles:
I maintain that--
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Bill consists not only of 20 pages of clauses but of some 50 pages of schedules. Does he believe that the Committee would be failing in its duty if it did not consider, in appropriate detail, the content of the schedules, given that there is such a density of them? Does not my hon. Friend consider that those schedules alone will require a considerable amount of time if the Committee is to give due consideration to their content?
Mr. Pickles:
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The degree of scrutiny that must take place will operate on two levels. First, it will be important to take evidence on specific issues that the Committee will have to consider. Secondly, the Committee will have to apply the evidence to the various clauses and schedules. I cannot believe that that will be a quick process. If scrutiny is to take place, I am firmly of the opinion that it must be thorough. There is no point in doing something as important as this, and not doing a proper job.
My only experience of pre-legislative Select Committees concerns the Social Security Committee, which has just finished discussing pension splitting on divorce. The scrutiny process was invaluable. In the tetchiness of tonight, we forget that this proposal could be of enormous use to the House's deliberations. Something as important as this should not be brushed off in a couple of evidence sessions--or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) suggested, in an afternoon. It grieves me greatly to disagree with my hon. Friend.
On pension splitting--a complicated matter--the Standing Committee looked at a weighty pre-legislative document on the subject, which was examined in enormous detail. The Committee recognised that that scrutiny carried enormous weight. A Standing Committee member considering the procedure that we are discussing would not say that it is an important matter--clearly, on the basis of one or perhaps two evidence sessions, it is not.
If we are to have pre-legislative scrutiny--or even the halfway house that we are discussing now--we should ensure that the process is not a matter of dispute from day one. The Government have made this a matter of controversy. If they had used the usual channels, if proper
notice had been received, or if the newspaper stories about the Bill being published on 25 June were correct, the Government might have achieved consensus.
The way in which a Select Committee works is quite different from a Standing Committee.
Mr. Swayne:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the House could have been assisted in its deliberations this evening if we had been told precisely how the Select Committee was planning to work in this respect--but of course, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) would not tell us, and would not take any interventions either?
Mr. Pickles:
Earlier, I expressed my extreme grief that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich did not give way, as that would have been helpful. She seemed to think that there had been some kind of personal insult to her integrity, which I did not hear.
Mr. Bercow:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich should not be expected to shoulder the burden of blame, which manifestly rests with the Minister for Transport? Does he recall that, in the course of a risible apology for a speech half an hour ago, the Minister failed to disclose whether there would be a second Second Reading debate on the Bill, but gave the impression that whether there would be depended upon the efforts of the Select Committee--so we still wait, agog and with beads of sweat upon our brows, in eager anticipation of the discovery of what criteria will determine whether there is to be such a second Second Reading debate?
Mr. Pickles:
The controversy has been caused precisely by the way in which the Government tabled the motion. Frankly, we should know whether there is to be another Second Reading. A simple yes or no would suffice. My hon. Friend is a reasonable man and might have accepted a "maybe" or a "don't know", but the crushing silence is not acceptable. New procedures should not be made on the hoof but should be clearly laid down so that all hon. Members know exactly where they stand, or these debates will become more and more fractious.
My hon. Friend referred to the pass-the-parcel process going on between Ministers and the Select Committee Chairman. Select Committees have a different ethos. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich is right to say that there is no whipping on Select Committees. If there were, the Select Committee process would come to a juddering halt.
Mr. Maclean:
There is no whipping, but plenty of leaking.
The crucial point was given away by my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman). I cast no doubt on the great integrity of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), but members of the Select Committee will feel that they have done it all before and do not need to bother to go through all 30 clauses and 12 schedules, whereas a Standing Committee is charged with the duty of going through a Bill line by line and would do it with fresh faces. That is why this procedure is obscene.
Mr. Pickles:
There is some substance in that. There has been a change in the membership of the Select
Mr. Robert Syms (Poole):
Are not there also implications for the Lords? Even if the Committee reports on 12 November and the House deals with the final stages of the Bill quickly, that leaves only five days for the upper House to complete its consideration.
Mr. Pickles:
That is absolutely right. It would risk patience if we suggested that this is all about saving the Secretary of State's face. To be less personal, this is about the Government saying that they are doing something. Remember that this was a flagship piece of legislation. It was the first subject that the Select Committee considered after the general election. The Secretary of State told us that he was committed to the legislation.
I was surprised when the Bill was not in the Queen's Speech, as I had expected it to be among the first measures that we would consider. Yet here we are at the fag-end of this Session, only a few days before the long recess, considering novel procedures following Second Reading. The Minister for Transport said that it was important to get a proper framework for the Bill.
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