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Points of Order
2.24 pm
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As our new Speaker, you have made it clear that you propose to make your own decisions and that you will not necessarily be bound by the decisions of Madam Speaker Boothroyd, your predecessor. However, she felt especially strongly about the requirement that hon. Members, and especially Ministers, notify other hon. Members when they are about to visit their constituencies. I hope that you will be equally firm on the matter.
I raise this point of order on behalf of myself, and of my hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth). Yesterday, a junior civil servant working for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food informed us by means of a mobile telephone call that the Minister proposed to visit our constituencies. That telephone call was made at a very late stage--only about half an hour before the visit was due to take place.
This morning, the excuse was given--again by telephone--that the Minister had planned only to visit the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead. However, he had changed his mind at the last minute and decided to visit instead an Environment Agency building that straddles the boundary between my constituency and my hon. Friend's.
That would have been all very well, but no one had bothered to notify even my hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, whose constituency the Minister originally intended to visit--
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should worry about himself, not the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May). I am sure that she is capable of raising a point of order on the matter if she so wishes. I have got the hon. Gentleman's drift. When I was a Back Bencher and a Minister came to my constituency without telling me, I always gave that Minister a telling off. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman does the same, and not ask the Speaker to do it for him.
Secondly, I made a ruling on this matter on 6 November, and I refer the hon. Gentleman to column 32 in Hansard for that date. However, if the hon. Gentleman feels it necessary to tell a Minister off, he should do so and not let the Minister get away with discourtesy.
Select Committees and the Executive
[Relevant documents: The Government's response to the First Report from the Liaison Committee, Session 1999-2000, Cm 4737; and Second Report from the Liaison Committee, Session 1999-2000, Independence or Control? The Government's Reply to the Committee's First Report, HC 748.]
Motion made, and Question put, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Sutcliffe.]
2.26 pm
Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne): Over the past 20 years, the role of Select Committees has grown in importance. Of course, we always had the Public Accounts Committee, which I joined in 1965, and other Select Committees. In those days, hon. Members were frequently pressed to serve, as Chairmen virtually ran their Committees. Things have changed, and I understand that recently there has been a scramble to take part in the valuable work that the Public Accounts Committee has always performed on behalf of Parliament.
However, the major change, introduced as a result of the work of John Mackintosh and David Marquand, was the introduction of departmentally related Committees. Those Committees were subsequently refined, and now we have Select Committees that independently scrutinise Government Departments.
That has been an undoubted success. Select Committee members become expert on the activities of the Department with which they are concerned. Questions about the Departments can be pursued and repeated until an answer is obtained--a method that is not readily available across the Floor of the House. I recall that the present Secretary of State for Scotland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, North and Bellshill (Dr. Reid), when he was a member of the Committee, pursuing a civil servant again and again until he got the yes-or-no answer that he wanted--in that case the answer was yes.
It is not easy to do that on the Floor of the House. It is therefore possible for Select Committees to supplement the work of the Chamber.
There is a great deal of expertise available to Select Committees. Lord Howe was Chancellor of the Exchequer when the then Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee was looking at monetarism. It had examined a particular matter with great care and it was interesting, when the Chancellor appeared before them, that the Committee's members knew more about that matter than he. With a certain amount of dedication, it is possible for Select Committee members to acquire that level of expertise--albeit in a restricted area--and get suitable answers. That is not always possible on the Floor of the House.
In each Select Committee, there has been a search for bipartisan agreement. Point scoring has a part to play on the Floor of the House, but it has no role in Select Committees. Members of Committees understand that and know full well that indulging in point scoring would be to the disadvantage of the Committee and of their investigations. As a result, Select Committee members form relationships based on trust and co-operation. They judge issues on the facts, rather than according to preconceived lines of argument.
Some people considered that such a state of affairs would be difficult to achieve because Parliament does not have the separation of powers evident in the United States Congress. We understand that the first priority of hon. Members is to support or oppose the Government, but it is possible, in a Select Committee, to move away from that confrontation and look at the facts of a matter. It is interesting that the trust and confidence that grows between Select Committee members means that it is more difficult for them to play the party game at the expense of the investigative role that is their proper task. Some saw the stronger party system as a barrier to achieving meaningful agreement.
In practice, such agreement generally has been achieved to the benefit of the inquiry process and the holding of Ministers to account. The Select Committee system has shown that determined Members can be surprisingly effective. Our Select Committees have to operate without the strength given by the separation of powers. Within the context of the Government and the Opposition, with their own agendas, it is possible to achieve informed and more objective conclusions.
That has shown itself in a number of valuable initiatives, notably the confirmation hearings by the Select Committee on the Treasury, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice). While not dictating the appointments, the Committee offers the opportunity to test publicly--through the confirmation hearings--the suitability of candidates for public office. That has some effect upon people who are put into positions of responsibility without a general agreement that they have the requisite qualifications. There has been some systematic monitoring of recommendations, a practice which is to be more widely used in future. I will deal later with how we can monitor effectively the work of Select Committees and the consequences of their publications.
There have been some outstanding examples of changes to general public perception, as well as the perception of the Government and the Opposition, as a result of certain Select Committee reports. For example, the eighth report of the Public Accounts Committee in the early 1990s showed that the standards of probity and of dealing properly with public money had been abused. The eighth report initially was rubbished, but it came to be accepted by the then Prime Minister, who publicly praised the report.
The Committee examined the many things that went wrong in the Wessex regional health authority, the Welsh Development Agency and the West Midlands regional health authority. In a number of other matters, Select Committee reports have played a prominent part. The Select Committee on International Development has played an important role in alerting us to what could be going wrong on Montserrat. The Trade and Industry Committee reported on BMW, Rover and Longbridge; the Select Committee on Health on the tobacco industry; the Transport Sub-Committee--chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who is always active in these matters--on air traffic control and aircraft safety. There are many other reports which have changed public perceptions and, via public perceptions, have changed Government actions.
The report "Shifting the Balance" is one of the most important reports from the Liaison Committee since it was set up 20 years ago. It arose from a number of anxieties
expressed by Chairmen in the spring of last year concerning certain Government responses. In following that up, other matters were raised and the Committee decided that it would seek to examine the working of Committees. The Committee also thought it advisable to open up the discussion to other interested bodies.As a result, the Hansard Society became involved and the London school of economics kindly offered to host a one-day session. This took place on 19 November last year, and much of the report reflects that most important session. I would like to thank both the Hansard Society and the LSE for their help and contribution to the debate.
Among the matters dealt with in the report are the way in which the composition of each Committee should be arranged, the manner of presenting the work that Committees undertake to Parliament and staffing and secondments. I shall deal first with the composition of the Committees. Twenty years ago, the Committee of Selection acquired the responsibility of choosing members of each Committee. It copied the method of choosing members of Standing Committees; that is, mainly from a list supplied by the Whips.
Members have been kept off Select Committees--or even, in some cases, removed--because of their perceived lack of party loyalty. The case we must cite is that of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton)--now, fortunately, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Procedure and a Deputy Speaker in Westminster Hall. He was the Chairman of the Health Committee and a novel arrangement was suggested; that, having served for two Parliaments, he was no longer equipped to deal with a third. That was so blatant an affront, but the hon. Member for Macclesfield dealt with it well and regained his reputation as a result.
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