| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
6.44 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): This debate has been not only interesting, but--more than that--unexpectedly revealing. Conservative Members have claimed that Parliament's ability to scrutinise the Executive has in some unprecedented way been diminished since the election of this Government, and that, consequently, not just Parliament but democracy itself is endangered. That is what they claim justifies the truly unprecedented proposals that they are now putting to set tests for us--to put pressure on us as a Government--which have never been set for any Government in this party's history, and which they certainly could never have passed.
Conservative Members pray in aid the Norton commission report as justification for their case. However, there are at least two fundamental flaws in that argument. The first is that it comes from a party which--as my
hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Chisholm) and for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) and the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) said--after 18 years in government left us a Parliament in which hon. Members still wore a top hat to raise a point of order in this place, and in which the other place was in the permanent control of the Conservative party--not least because 750 people were entitled to sit in it on the basis of heredity. The Conservative party's credentials as a reforming party are therefore not just shallow but non-existent.The second fundamental flaw in Conservative Members' argument is that it begs the question whether they leapt into this debate before they had read the Norton report. A little surprisingly, Professor Lord Norton and his colleagues themselves seem to have overlooked the fact that many of the worthwhile changes that they recommend have already been made--made by this Government, and not infrequently opposed by Conservative Members.
Conservative Members call for an improvement in scrutiny of European legislation. Although I acknowledge that Conservative Members acknowledge that the Government have substantially extended the House's opportunity to scrutinise that important part of our work, they do not point out that, under the rules and Standing Orders that we inherited from them, large parts of European Union business were outwith the scrutiny of this House.
Professor Norton suggests that at least some debates should terminate earlier in the day--perhaps at 8 or 9 o'clock. I hope that it will not have escaped the House's attention that, when we made just such proposals a week ago, Conservative Members attacked them as a denial of democracy--as they have repeatedly done today.
Professor Norton recommends more effective provision of resources for hon. Members. We have been trying for months to get Conservative Members to agree to consider those issues. Norton calls, too, for greater support for research, both for the Opposition and for Select Committees. As I have already said to the House, support for Select Committees is a matter for the House of Commons Commission. However, on the whole, although I am only one member of that body, I am not unsympathetic to that proposal.
As for the notion that the Opposition should receive still further funding, it is an interesting proposal. It comes oddly, though, from hon. Members who--while complaining that the Government have increased the number of special advisers whom we employ--never acknowledge, not even for a second, that we have almost trebled the money that the Opposition receive for staff to work alongside and back up their Front Benchers.
The proposal comes particularly oddly from Conservative Members when we look at their record in government. In the previous Parliament, the Short money settlement had not been updated for five years--a period in which inflation had continually been in double figures. Nevertheless, that devotee of democracy, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the current shadow Chancellor--I do not see him in the Chamber--resisted our claim that funding for the Opposition should at the very least be inflation-proofed, and tried to impose a below inflation settlement.
Mr. MacShane: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Leader of the Opposition receives a higher salary than
the Prime Minister? Does she know of any other country in the world where the Government give more money to the Leader of the Opposition than to the Head of Government? With all the money that they have from Lord Sleaze of Belize and, now, from Mr. Paul Sykes, why are we so generous with them?
Mrs. Beckett: I am not certain whether the Leader of the Opposition receives more money than the Prime Minister, but I am certainly well aware that he receives more than I do. It is also certainly true that the Leader of the Opposition draws the full salary awarded, whereas members of the Cabinet do not.
Before I leave the point about the inflation proofing of Short money, let me pay tribute, quite sincerely, to my predecessor, Lord Newton, for accepting and fighting for our case that inflation proofing at least was a democratic due. There was certainly no three times increase for us under the Tories.
Lord Norton further recommends that we debate more Select Committee reports. That is precisely what the opportunities for scrutiny in Westminster Hall have offered--200 extra opportunities for debate in all, and four times as many opportunities to debate Select Committee reports. Although I hear noises off from the Opposition Front Bench, let me tell the House that as soon as those opportunities became available, twice as many right hon. and hon. Members applied for Adjournment debates, because they knew that they stood a much better chance of getting them. Indeed, under this Government, 64 Select Committee reports have already been debated, whereas in the whole of the last five-year Parliament we debated only 50.
Dr. Starkey: Will my right hon. Friend also confirm that when the reports of the Select Committee on Science and Technology and the Select Committee on Environmental Audit were discussed in Westminster Hall, the only Members present representing the official Opposition were the Chairmen of those Select Committees? All the Back Benchers who participated in those debates were Labour or Liberal Democrat Members. That scarcely demonstrates a real concern about scrutiny through Select Committees.
Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, to which there is clearly no answer from the Opposition.
Lord Norton's committee recommends the creation of an independent statistical office--the Government have done that. It suggests better access for the media in this place. That is precisely what the Modernisation Committee which we set up recommended to the House authorities and it has been done--sweeping away petty and grave restrictions that have lasted for many years.
Lord Norton recommends that the House should be prepared to carry over Bills from one Session to another. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that he believes that
- this should be the norm, not the exception.
Who are the Members who fail to take part in this important work of scrutiny? The House owes a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Bradley), who commissioned a study of attendance at Select Committees. Of the 17 departmental Select Committees generally recognised as monitoring the principal Departments of State in the 1998-99 Session, on average Tory Members attended only some 61 per cent. of those sessions, compared with 67 per cent. attendance by the Liberal Democrats and 71 per cent. by Labour Members. Although I recognise the point made in the debate by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), membership of Select Committees is proportionate, so the same burden falls on Members on both sides of the House.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield): Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett: I do not have much time. I shall give way later if there is time.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Lady is not giving way.
Mrs. Beckett: Lord Norton draws on the proposals of the Liaison Committee, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) and the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke)--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I cannot tolerate the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) shouting during the right hon. Lady's speech.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud): He has only just come in.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have not just come in and I know how long the hon. Gentleman has been sitting there.
Mrs. Beckett: The proposals made by the Liaison Committee are indeed far-reaching and profound--so far-reaching and profound that they raise questions as to whether they would create a two-tier membership in the House.
Although I understood the debate to be about the Norton committee report and not the Liaison Committee report, which will be the subject of a separate debate, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), the shadow Leader of the House, asked for the Government's view. He asked whether there would be a free vote on the Liaison Committee report. Indeed, there will. He and other Opposition spokesmen have said that the Opposition will have a free vote too. That is an interesting proposal as I am well aware that many Opposition Members have even stronger reservations about that report than I do. However, we do not know whether that is a promise, a pledge or a guarantee.
Much has been said by Opposition Members about their wish to abjure the influence of the Whips. That comes from the party which in 1996, under the premiership of
the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), who spoke with such feeling about the need to strengthen the power of Parliament against the Executive--he is surely a sinner come to repentance--made a Government Whip a member of the Select Committee on Members' Interests. That was unprecedented.The right hon. Member for Huntingdon spoke about our proposals for what he described as removing the weapon of delay. However, he will remember as clearly as I do that he was a Minister at the Department of Social Security when the then Tory Government first guillotined all discussion on their legislation and then put in an entire new section on widows benefits, the consequences of which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security has been trying to deal with in recent days.
Lord Norton stresses the importance of delegated legislation. The Government share his view, but again Labour Members are the highest attenders at those debates. When we argue--as we do in the most recent Modernisation Committee report--for more effective use of parliamentary time and fewer sittings that are unnecessarily prolonged into the small hours, we get the jibe that Labour Members do not want to be here late; yet more Labour Members take part in votes after 7 o'clock.
The hon Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) and the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) showed a more measured understanding and even acceptance of some of the proposals, which were more strongly supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson) and for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey).
The debate was also marked by serious contributions from the Leader of the Liberal Democrats--the right hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis), the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron).
Sadly, that cannot be said of the contribution of the Leader of the Opposition, in which the right hon. Gentleman showed, as he often does, that neither facts nor figures are his strong point. He complained about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's attendance in the House, yet the record shows that my right hon. Friend has attended all but five of 101 sessions of Prime Minister's Question Time, whereas his predecessor--perfectly properly, on Government business--missed some 47 out of 173. That was a consequence of having Prime Minister's Question Time twice a week instead of once a week.
The right hon. Gentleman repeated--as did other Opposition Members--that the Government's programme was unprecedentedly large. It contains some 39 Bills, but sadly for the right hon. Gentleman, in 11 out of the 18 years of Tory rule there were more Bills than that. The maximum number was 71 Bills, closely followed by 60, which compares very unfavourably with our record.
The right hon. Gentleman claimed that there had been an unprecedented number of guillotines, and that is not true either. He claimed numbers that can only include programme motions, although as recently as last week the Conservative party claimed to support the use of programme motions--as did the right hon. Gentleman himself in a speech two years ago, as was pointed out by hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Ms Ward).
We have had a strange debate this afternoon. The Leader of the Opposition made a phoney speech based on the totally phoney premise that under this Government we
have seen unprecedentedly bad treatment of the House. The only thing that is unprecedented about this Parliament is the length of time since his party was in opposition--clearly much too long. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin pointed out, they resent it, and that is what today's debate is all about. It has been a mixture of the pent-up resentment of Conservative Members at seeing a Labour Government in office and their desperate desire to obscure the Government's record. Theirs was a case without honesty and substance. They argued that we could not change Britain for the better, and now they are desperate to pretend that we are not doing so--but we are. Hospitals, jobs, the health service and education have all seen changes for the better.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |