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Mr. Syms: One of the benefits of the Standing Committee is that a Minister is present at all times from whom one can seek assurances. Although a Select Committee will deal with this matter, will a Minister be on hand to give assurances about the legislation?
Mr. St. Aubyn: My hon. Friend raises the very important role of Ministers on Standing Committees, which I am about to address. Before doing so, I shall mention several points that would be impractical for the Select Committee to consider on the ground that it has been given a remit to report by 12 November 1999.
I can foresee time and again that members of the Select Committee will want to raise important points that come within the ambit of the Bill and to reflect their constituents' genuine concern, yet the majority, quite legitimately, without exercising any partisan approach, will say, "We have been given only until 12 November to consider the Bill. We must move on; time is not with us." The matter will be allowed to fall by the wayside.
Mr. Pickles:
If a Minister is to be present in a Select Committee, surely the Opposition spokesman should be present, too. Once that happens, Select Committees will become highly politicised, which is not desirable.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
I entirely agree that the genuine bipartisan nature of Select Committees is at risk. Consideration of this Bill, which is clearly controversial, will create tension. Anyone who has attended this debate will have sensed deep divisions in the House on how the matter should be dealt with. The bipartisan approach, which informs all proceedings of our Select Committee system, will be undermined by the new process that the Government are foisting on the House for purely party political purposes. Such a procedure, dictated by such a motive, cannot be good for the Select Committee system, which the House has come to revere.
There is more to the issue than the mere presence in Committee of Ministers--what about the presence of their civil servants? I have often noticed that, when Ministers are challenged in Standing Committee, they sometimes take their time in producing a substantive reply--thereby allowing their civil servants and other advisers a moment in which to pass a note to the Front Bench, consequently enabling Opposition Members to obtain the information that we are seeking. Although the information may come not from the mind, but merely the mouth, of the Minister, it is still highly valuable.
Even more important--this point goes to the heart of the matter, and was debated earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar and me--is the legal validity of a Bill considered in such a manner. In Standing Committee, Ministers make pronouncements on Bills to
clarify points of law. In future, after this Bill is passed, becomes an Act and is challenged in the courts, on the precedent of Pepper v. Hart, a judge may refer to the Minister's statements on it in Standing Committee. Will the Minister say what will be the status of statements by Ministers to the Select Committee? Has she any authority to tell us what that status will be--or is the matter now, under our new regime and modernised constitution, one that will have to be decided by the courts?
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
Will my hon. Friend try to help me? Speaking as a member of the Modernisation of the House of Commons Committee, which produced the report that has already been mentioned several times in the debate, I am increasingly confused. My understanding was not that any pre-legislative scrutiny would replace a Bill's Standing Committee stage, but that the Standing Committee stage would remain. Is my hon. Friend telling the House that the Railways Bill will have no Standing Committee stage? If that is true, I have been severely misled in the Modernisation Committee's deliberations; and I should suggest to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the matter should be referred urgently to the House's Procedure Committee.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
If you would care to rule on that point, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should more than welcome that. Like my hon. Friend, I find the whole process into which we are being invited to enter not only deeply troubling, but certainly contrary to the basic tenets on which we were elected to this place.
Mr. Forth:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not now becoming apparent that we are in such confusion in these proceedings that it might be better for the House to suspend, so that we might obtain proper advice in answer to some of the questions that have been asked in the debate, but not yet answered? Now, even a question asked by an hon. Member as distinguished as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton)--who wears so many hats with such distinction--cannot be answered. Is it not worth seriously considering suspending the sitting, so that we might more definitely discover the way ahead and be properly informed when voting on the issue?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I have heard nothing out of order in the debate, with which we should proceed.
Mr. Winterton:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I ask you directly whether it is appropriate for the House to proceed with a motion that would replace the House's current procedures--which entail that, when a Bill is introduced, it will have a First Reading, Second Reading and then a Standing Committee stage? I had understood that that is how the House operates. I had also understood that the Modernisation Committee's report--which I supported, and to which I was party--favoured various pre-legislative scrutiny, with which I also agree.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
The motion before the House is quite clear. It is the motion that we are debating, and the one on which we shall have to decide.
Mr. Gray:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to trouble you again.
As a member of the Select Committee in question, I am entirely unclear whether we shall be scrutinising the Bill as if we were members of a Standing Committee or whether we shall be examining the principles in general, as we would do with any other matter that came before the Select Committee. If the Select Committee is to act like a quasi Standing Committee, I shall be subject to the Whip. I shall have to take advice from my party on what its line is on certain matters, and obviously it will be necessary to divide the Committee. If, however, it is to be a genuinely informative procedure, as is usual in Select Committee, my activities will be quite different.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I have given my ruling and we should move on.
Mr. Wilshire:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I heard your previous ruling, but I am concerned about Standing Order No. 65, which refers to:
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I have already said that the motion before the House is clear. It is the motion that we have to debate and decide upon.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
I sympathise with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the position in which you find yourself as a result of the motion. We have seen the entirely hopeless position of the Minister for Transport, who was inadequate in explaining the true import of the new procedure that is before us. We have heard--
Mr. Jenkin:
I wish to clarify the point raised bymy hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), which is whether the proposal is an orthodox method of dealing with a Bill. A letter sent to my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), the shadow Leader of the House, by the Leader of the House, states:
"All committees to which bills may be committed".
The previous occupant of the Chair ruled that the House has before it a committal motion. The Standing Order provides that those Committees to which Bills "may be committed"--
"or referred for consideration on report shall have power to make such amendments therein as they shall think fit".
Does that mean that, notwithstanding what has been said earlier, the Select Committee has the absolute power to take amendments, consider them, vote upon them, alter the Bill and send it back as if it were a Standing Committee?
"The proposed method of referring a bill after second reading to an existing select committee for consideration and report is another option, though not one specifically contemplated by the Modernisation Committee."
19 Jul 1999 : Column 923
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield can take comfort from the fact that he has not been misled by any proceedings in the Modernisation Committee. It is the Government who are choosing this moment to innovate by introducing a new procedure without consulting the Modernisation Committee.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying the situation in a way that I hope causes great embarrassment to those on the Treasury Bench. This way of proceeding is yet another example of the Government trying to usurp the historic authority of this place. As I understand it, a Standing Committee is delegated by the House to undertake a role which historically was performed by the House as a whole. In the past, Bills were considered by the entire House. Now, far from that power being delegated to a Committee comprised of those who are particularly interested in a Bill, having expressed an interested in it on Second Reading, for example, it is to be delegated to a Select Committee which was appointed with an entirely different purpose in mind.
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