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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. The right hon. Lady has run out of time.
3.52 pm
Mr. Malcolm Chisholm (Edinburgh, North and Leith): This is a very serious topic, but I am afraid that its consideration was not helped by the tone or content of the opening speech. I listened with disbelief to the Leader of the Opposition as he forgot everything that the Conservative Government had done during 18 years in power. As we all know, they were the most centralising Government in British history, who denied a Parliament to the Scottish people and concentrated power in the Executive in an unprecedented way.
When the right hon. Gentleman was a member of that Government, he was not interested in any of the reforms that he put forward today. We know that the prospect of a long period in opposition concentrates people's minds, but, as we learned in an intervention by my hon. Friend
the Member for Watford (Ms Ward), it appears that the right hon. Gentleman has changed his mind on these matters even since last year. The Conservatives' opportunism was transparent for all to see today.As the Prime Minister said, holding the Government to account is central to democracy, but that task requires a serious Opposition. The killer question came from my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Hope), who asked why Conservative Members do not attend Select Committees. If they were seriously interested in holding the Government to account, that is the main forum that they would use to perform that task. The Leader of the Opposition was unable to answer that question.
The Liaison Committee report demands serious consideration, and I was pleased by the Prime Minister's commitment to give a free vote on that. I am certainly minded to support the Committee's approach, and I think that its analysis of many of the problems is correct, although I am not sure that it has hit on the correct solution for selecting members of Select Committees. There are problems with the Whips doing that, but equally there are problems with the suggested alternative of giving the task to three of the great and the good in the House.
Mr. John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West): The hon. Gentleman asked why some of us do not attend Select Committees as frequently as we should. One reason is that we have other duties in the House, owing to the disproportionate representation on that side of the House compared with this side. For example, I had to choose whether, next week, I would attend a Select Committee or chair the meeting of another Committee of the House. Many of us have responsibilities on the Chairmen's Panel, and I am a trustee of the pension fund. I have to choose which meetings to attend.
Mr. Chisholm: Clearly, each individual may have a good reason for not attending on a particular occasion, but that does not explain the horrific attendance figures read out by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby.
Mr. Andrew Tyrie (Chichester): The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) probably does explain the attendance figures. My record of attendance at the Select Committee of which I am a member has been raised by several hon. Members. The vast majority of the occasions on which I could not attend occurred because I was simultaneously expected to attend the Standing Committee considering the Financial Services and Markets Bill.
Mr. Chisholm: I am told that the hon. Gentleman attended seven of the 36 sittings of the Select Committee. Perhaps the Standing Committee explains part of that, but I find it difficult to believe that one Standing Committee explains the figures entirely.
Select Committees show the House working at its best. I am also a Member of the Scottish Parliament, and the Committee system that we have there shows that Parliament working at its best, too. One recommendation in the Liaison Committee report--namely, the emphasis on the early scrutiny of legislation by a Committee that can call witnesses--is extremely important. That has just
begun for certain Bills in the Westminster Parliament; it is done routinely with all Bills in the Scottish Parliament. That is one feature of the Liaison Committee report that will lead to more effective legislation.At the heart of the speech by the Leader of the Opposition was an attack on the report of the Modernisation Committee. That is a serious matter, which will require a vote in the near future. Once again, it showed the Conservative Opposition missing the important aspects of genuine scrutiny and opposition, and instead defending an unacceptable and outdated practice in the House--the holding of debates at a ridiculous hour in the middle of the night.
The Leader of the Opposition omitted to mention that one of the recommendations in the Modernisation Committee report is that there should be a reduction in the number of late Government amendments.
We were told that the right hon. Gentleman supported the programming of Bills a year ago. The recommendations of the Modernisation Committee for programming will enable Back Benchers to determine which parts of Bills they want to spend the most time on. Sensible programming is far better than trying to scrutinise a Bill in the middle of the night.
I am now more used to the practice of the Scottish Parliament. When I come down to Westminster, hear hon. Members making speeches of an hour or more at 2 o'clock in the morning, and try to listen to the content of such speeches, I cannot justify that to my constituents as a feature of modern parliamentary democracy.
In general, I support the limitation of speeches to 10 minutes in most cases. If an hon. Member cannot make the main points of his argument in 10 minutes, it is likely that he has very little to say. I certainly support programming and time-limited speeches. The proposals from the Modernisation Committee are a modest attempt to introduce this Parliament to a more modern way of conducting parliamentary procedure.
I would go further. I would prefer the parliamentary day to start earlier and end earlier, but that is not what is proposed. I do not see how any Opposition Member can seriously object to a proposal that would allow debate after 10 pm, but that would ensure that hon. Members are not kept at the House unnecessarily in order to vote at that time.
The Scottish Parliament's hours, which try to follow more normal working hours, have been a great success. I am committed to driving forward the agenda of family friendly employment, and I do not see why that should not apply to politicians as well. We have managed to attract to the Scottish Parliament a much wider spectrum of the public, and a particular achievement is the fact that women constitute 50 per cent. of the Labour party's representation. That may not have happened if we had not had those hours.
Given the necessary reform of this place, we heard a very conservative speech from the Leader of the Opposition. Let us do more to strengthen Select Committees, but let us not defend the indefensible, in the form of debates in the middle of the night.
4 pm
Mr. David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden): It is a privilege to speak in this debate. Several good speeches have been made already, particularly those of the
hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) and my right hon. Friends. However, I regret the Prime Minister's comment--I think that he used the word "piddling"--on this subject, not because economics, crime, education, health are unimportant, but because what we do here and the relationship between the Executive and the House of Commons dictates the effectiveness with which the Government deliver their policies to our citizens. That is one of the reasons why, under all parties, this country has had some of the best Governments in the world for the past century. His comment showed a misunderstanding of the issue.The marginalisation of Parliament is not new, and no one should pretend that it is confined to this Government. I suspect that it goes back five decades, but it has accelerated recently. Again, some of that is not directly related to the matters for which the Government are being attacked. For example, devolution is bound to have an effect and, to some extent, to take powers away from this Parliament. It was not necessary to remove all those powers.
Each year, we approve £14 billion, or thereabouts, of expenditure for the Scottish Parliament, but we do not know, and are unable to ask, what it is spent on or how effectively it is spent. The Treasury was given the right to ask, under a specific section of the Scotland Act 1998, at the same time as the right was taken away from the House of Commons. Some of those measures were necessary, some were not, and they were the direct result of centralising effect of the Executive.
Similarly, the European Union inevitably takes powers away from Parliament. Membership of the EU effectively implies that, but there is also a cascade of legislation with which Parliament, as it is now constituted, is simply not capable of dealing. We must deal with that matter.
There are real political differences between the two sides of the House, especially about the centralisation of the Executive in No. 10. The balance has changed on matters of party discipline and because of the sheer size of the Government's majority. All of that is convenient to the Government of the day; it is convenient to any Government of any day. I suspect that similar trends occurred when Margaret Thatcher had a majority of more than 140.
The guillotines and timetable motions are a symptom and should not be discounted. I speak as a Back Bencher, not a Front Bencher, and I do not agree with such things. There have been as many guillotines and timetable motions in the past three years as in the previous 10 years when I was a Member of Parliament. They are serious symptoms of a serious malaise.
Such problems are reinforced by the managerialism of modern politics and, in many ways, by the attempt to escape ideology and the clashes that occur across the Floor of the House. Those interested in modernisation, some of whose proposals are very sensible, have a tendency to view the clashes in the Chamber as undignified and perhaps not grown up. [Interruption.] Indeed, to an extent, that reflects what television and radio lead the public to believe. As a result, many debates are deflected to the more consensual forums of Westminster Hall and the Select Committees. Of course they fulfil a useful function, but we should not forget the vital function of the Chamber.
Speaker--now Lord--Weatherill was fond of saying that debates in the Chamber were the passionate but peaceful British alternative to civil war. He understood the importance of such confrontations. He meant that the Chamber is where we express passionate views on vital issues. After all, the Prime Minister rightly referred to health. There are 10,000 more deaths in this country than there should be, so we should be passionate about people's health. It is vital that we argue about it and test each other. Such confrontation is the most effective test of ideas invented by man. The Chamber is more effective as a test of those ideas than all the consensual, semi-circular Chambers towards which we are often encouraged to veer. If hon. Members want an example, they should look back to legislation passed by bipartisan consensus. The most obvious is the Child Support Act 1991, which was not properly scrutinised as it was treated as a bipartisan measure in its first stages. We all know the result.
The Chamber is also important to the high level of honesty in British politics to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), the previous Prime Minister, referred. The Public Accounts Committee and other bodies in the House contribute to that and have done so for the past 130 years, but the challenge of the Chamber is the best test of character for those who represent the people.
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