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Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Davis: Briefly, as I have only 10 minutes.
Mr. Rendel: The right hon. Gentleman refers to the PAC. I hope that he will come to the point that the powers of the PAC and of the National Audit Office have been reduced over the past few years. I also hope that he agrees that the speeches of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were disappointing because neither guaranteed that all public expenditure will come under the remit of the NAO and the PAC.
Mr. Davis: I shall do more, and tell the hon. Gentleman that we have just scored a victory in the other place that will give the NAO access to all money spent by the Government wherever the Government have oversight. That victory marks the route.
Quintessentially, the Chamber represents defence of liberty, which is why it should not submit to measures that dissolve its powers. We can go back to the American war of independence to find Members of the Houses of Parliament who defended the rights of people rebelling against the Crown. As we shall see this evening when we hold a Second Reading debate in which the defence of liberty will be an important consideration, the Chamber is in every sense a valuable institution.
Norton and the Hansard Society have their views on these matters, and Norton suggests that we improve Question Time to reinforce the Chamber. Reinforcing the Chamber is a good idea--a priority--and we could stop some of the problems of yah-boo politics by allowing the Member who asks a question the last supplementary or by making questions more closed, but longer. That would assist the Chamber, as would giving more time to Prime Minister's questions. The Government started well on the
reform represented by draft legislation, and I hope that there will be more of it, but I also hope that they will take more notice of the pre-legislative phase. The Freedom of Information Bill is not a wonderful outcome because not enough notice was taken of pre-legislative discussions.An aspect on which we should focus to improve the effectiveness of the Chamber is the right to control our own business. We often fail to recognise that the Executive dominates business and decides how much time a debate will receive, which is unusual in the western world. Norton makes proposals, but there are others. We should have an arrangement that allows the House to decide on a partisan basis how to deliver its business.
Perhaps we should have rules that protect the House from Government meddling. In the past decade, I have changed my mind about the importance of this country depending on convention, as it is apparent that the House and our democratic system become vulnerable when a Government are willing to break conventions. An overmighty Executive is dangerous when faced only by the barrier of convention. As a result, I would veer towards much more structured defences of the House.
A second priority is the reinforcement of Back Benchers. Norton recommends that money should go to the parliamentary Labour party, the 1922 Committee and the Liberal equivalent, whatever it is, to provide more resources for Back Benchers. I disagree. No organisation--be it the 1922 Committee, the PLP or whatever--can reflect the views of Back Benchers. I am sure that battles will be going on in the PLP over this issue right now. That proposal is not the right way forward. We should give more resources to our Back Benchers. Look elsewhere in the world: Congress and other legislatures dedicate serious resources to supporting Back Benchers.
I shall not have time to discuss issues relating to the Public Accounts Committee and estimates procedures, but I will say this: given that the first function of the House is control of supply for the Government, our estimates procedure is a disgrace. We should reform it radically and soon. We should also have a parliamentary investigating officer, so that next time the Foreign Affairs Committee--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must now call the next speaker.
4.10 pm
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West): Like my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson), I was very disappointed by the tone of what the Leader of the Opposition said. The Conservatives current line on parliamentary reform strikes me as unnecessarily partisan and deeply hypocritical, and I think that it misses the point.
The Conservative approach seems to confuse the quantity of debate with the quality. Moreover, a significant number of Conservative Members consistently rubbish proposals that would actually make Members of Parliament, and thus Parliament, more effective. They tend to support a pretence of scrutiny that approximates to the behaviour that occurs in the Oxford and Cambridge
Unions, rather than what is appropriate to a grown-up Parliament. I think I can say that, as a life member of the Oxford Union.
Mr. St. Aubyn: If the hon. Lady is to take the power of delay away from Opposition Members, what power will she give them in its place?
Dr. Starkey: I am afraid that it is not in my power to give the Opposition the weapon that they require. What they require are effective arguments, well prosecuted, which genuinely challenge the Government's view. Delay does not do that.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham) rose--
Dr. Starkey: I shall come to the hon. Gentleman in a moment. He must restrain his impatience.
We have heard an attack on Prime Minister's Question Time. As one of my colleagues pointed out, twice 15 minutes is 30 minutes. I think that if the Opposition were any good at all, they would hold the Prime Minister to account much more effectively in a 30-minute session than in two 15-minute sessions, in which it would be much easier for a Prime Minister to avoid scrutiny.
Mr. Peter Bradley: My hon. Friend may not have read an article in yesterday's Daily Express in which the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said that depriving the Opposition of two weekly sessions meant that they could not dictate the newspaper headlines on two days a week. That is the quality of the Opposition's argument in favour of two slots.
Like other Members, I believe that time limits on speeches and effective programming of debates lead to hugely better discussion. Such measures force speakers for both the Opposition and the Government to concentrate on the essence of their arguments, and to present those arguments clearly and succinctly.
I can illustrate what happens when we engage in debate for the sake of debate by referring to Hansard reports of debates that we had a week or two ago about a number of Bills, including the Royal Parks (Trading) Bill. During our debate on that Bill, astonishing reams of irrelevant rubbish were produced about, for example, the basics of e-mail. There were extensive quotations from earlier debates that had not made much sense on the first occasion, and were certainly not improved by repetition.
There was, however, an interesting intervention about the sexuality of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow). I will save his blushes by adding that it was said that he was heterosexual, but a parliamentary virgin. There was another interesting debate, too, about intimate body searches. Several Opposition Members made speeches that digressed into the history of Parliament, and there was an absorbing discussion of the knights of Shropshire. Apparently, in the 1240s they scrutinised legislation line by line. I must say that, given the level of illiteracy among the aristocracy in the 1240s, I very much doubt that they scrutinised legislation line by line, although they may have been able to subject it to a broad scrutiny.
Such debates bring Parliament into disrepute. Fortunately, most members of the public have better things to do than to scrutinise Hansard and realise what points Members of Parliament make. That was not scrutiny: it was a ludicrous parliamentary game.
Mr. Bercow: The hon. Lady is making a risible fist of her speech. What does she have to say about the constitution unit's recent bulletin, which complains of legislative logjam and highlights the fact that in this Session we have so far had 2,537 pages of legislation? Instead of talking always about circumscribing debate, why does not the hon. Lady advise her right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench to curb their insatiable appetite for more badly drafted, ill-considered legislation?
Dr. Starkey: The hon. Gentleman will know that the place to debate legislation in detail is in Committee. He will also know that most of the Members who spoke in the wasteful debates on those four Bills on the Floor of the House had made no attempt to use the proper mechanism of Committee to table amendments. Instead, they introduced amendments at the end of the process, not, I suspect, because they had any real wish to amend the legislation, but because they were playing parliamentary games.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Dr. Starkey: No, I have already given way to an inordinate number of Conservative Members, and I note that the Leader of the Opposition gave way to hardly anyone, even though he had much longer than I have to speak.
The Leader of the Opposition mentioned the Norton report, which contains plenty of interesting suggestions. Many of them have been wholly or partially implemented through the Modernisation Committee. They include timetabling, the publication of draft Bills, the use of Select Committees to consider draft legislation and the use of Joint Committees. Many other ideas in the Norton report are well worth considering, such as the greater use of electronic technology--I recommend that notion to Opposition Members who voted against it--and better resources for Back-Bench MPs though an increase in the office costs allowance. It is extremely difficult for Back-Bench MPs to do their multiple jobs properly when the administrative arrangements of this place get in the way. I mention the fact that it is only possible for two Members at once to get into the Parliamentary Data and Video Network in the House of Commons Library even though there are some 650 of us. It is important that practical measures are taken so that we can do our job more effectively.
It is important that Select Committees have more resources. I emphasise the fact that other proposals of the Modernisation Committee have been put into effect, so Select Committee reports are now debated in the House properly and in more detail. There has been a fourfold increase in debate on Select Committee reports. That is a valuable addition to the House's scrutiny of legislation.
The sudden conversion of Members on the Conservative Front Bench to the modernisation of Parliament, now that they have the Norton report,
is extremely surprising. The Leader of the Opposition's contention that the latest Modernisation Committee report was Government inspired is extraordinary. That report was in response to determined pressure from Labour Back Benchers, and perhaps from some Conservative and Liberal Democrat Back Benchers. Although I welcome the report, as a Back Bencher I do not think that it has gone far enough, and I for one will continue to keep up the pressure on the Modernisation Committee to modernise with rather more will and effectiveness than it has shown already.Even that report is opposed by the Conservatives. They are opposed to the recommendation that there should be no votes after 10 o'clock at night. I do not know whether Conservatives Members have read what those postponed votes would be on, but the Leader of the Opposition gives the impression that they would be on huge, substantive matters. In fact, they would be on statutory instruments, debatable motions on the membership of Select Committees, which I agree are important--some of us would welcome the opportunity to oppose, with much greater ease, the membership of a Select Committee of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) if he were to try for it again--prayers against statutory instruments, and money and ways and means resolutions.
The other night, again as a parliamentary device, MPs were kept walking round the Lobby for more than an hour voting on a number of statutory instruments, some of which I suspect the Conservatives had no particular reason for opposing, but they did so because they decided to express their displeasure about the Football (Disorder) Bill by keeping us all here for an extra hour. Again, that sort of thing brings Parliament into disrepute.
The Opposition are out of touch when it comes to the reform of Parliament. In particular, I think of their attacks on so-called family friendly measures. I make no apology for saying that if the House of Commons is to attract high calibre people of both sexes--in particular, those who are still young enough to have young children--it needs to introduce family friendly practices. That would bring this Parliament up to date with all but the most reactionary employers out in the real world. We should not apologise for that.
- An effective Opposition is essential to a healthy political process.
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