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Mr. Forth: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mrs. Browning: I will in a second.
After I was first elected in 1992, I used to find myself driving down the M4 or M5 at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. I do not think that that was in my interest or in the interests of my constituents. I therefore support the 7 o'clock finish. I shall now give way to my right hon. Friend, who I am sure would like to give me the benefit of his advice.
Mr. Forth: Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that Friday is still a parliamentary sitting day and that the House sits--as it did last Friday--to deliberate on important matters, or even to debate private Members' Bills? Presumably, she would not rush off to her constituency on a Thursday evening if the House were sitting on a Friday.
Mrs. Browning: Indeed. The record will show that, when I have felt that it was in my constituents' interests to be here on a Friday, I have been here. In the previous Parliament, I defied my party Whips when we debated a private Member's Bill on disability issues. I was here for a debate on hunting and for another debate on the ordination of women to the Church of England. There have been occasions when it was clearly appropriate for me to put the business of the House before my constituency engagements. Had last Friday's debate involved a vote on embryology, I would have cancelled my constituency engagements to be here.
Mrs. Dunwoody: I know the hon. Lady to be an assiduous and hard-working hon. Member. Indeed, I take a little credit for that as I was the first to teach her how to fight an election--by defeating her. Nevertheless, she makes an important point. On Fridays, more often than not the House has lost the right to vote on matters of
considerable importance. Therefore, there is a difference between the quality of the debates since the changes and the debates that were held before.
Mrs. Browning: I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who has been a good tutor over the years.
Although I distinguish the House's regular business from that taken on sitting Fridays, I would be concerned if an early finish on Thursdays caused hon. Members to think that the business taken on Thursdays was less important or less relevant. I flag that as a note of caution.
As I said, I regard the proposals as a curate's egg. Although in principle I support a 7 o'clock finish on Thursdays, it should not diminish the quality or the importance of the business that the House considers. Equally, although as a result of Jopling we may now finish at 7 o'clock on Thursdays, if there is unfinished business in the House, especially unfinished business requiring a vote, it should be continued, even after 10 pm, and a vote should be held on the appropriate day.
Accordingly, last week I opposed the Modernisation Committee's proposals. I felt that we had got the balance right between allowing hon. Members to discharge their constituency duties at weekends and giving them the opportunity--which has been and is still being diminished--to scrutinise the Executive and to cast their vote when necessary.
I am happy for the Thursday sittings experiment to continue. We should, however, carefully monitor the nature of the business that the House considers on Thursdays.
I am a convert to allowing hon. Members to initiate Adjournment debates in Westminster Hall. It is very important to allow hon. Members to initiate debates on constituency matters and on matters of personal or general interest, and Westminster Hall is the ideal forum for such debates.
Mr. Bercow: I am sorry to invite my hon. Friend to press the rewind button, but given that the Leader of the House said that the changed nature of Thursday sittings had in no way diminished attendance at them, does my hon. Friend agree that if, as seems likely, votes that would otherwise have been taken on a Thursday are taken the following Wednesday, a dramatic and disastrous reduction in Thursday attendance is obvious?
Mrs. Browning: I think that that would happen. As my hon. Friend knows, I am totally opposed to any type of deferred vote.
Mrs. Beckett: I take the hon. Lady's point, and I am perfectly well aware of her views and of those of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow). However, the hon. Gentleman's suggestion is not likely to be borne out because deferred business will be stand-alone business that will usually be taken after 10 o'clock. We do not take such business on a Thursday because the House rises at 7 o'clock.
Mrs. Browning: I am grateful to the Leader of the House for clarifying that point. I hope that we can take some comfort from it.
I should like now to deal with the Government's beguiling argument on debating Select Committee reports in Westminster Hall. I have some concerns about such debates. It is all very well to say that Westminster Hall allows us to debate more Select Committee reports, but advocates of the establishment of Westminster Hall listed as one of its virtues the fact that
- non-controversial business agreed through the usual channels which at present finds no place whatsoever in the time of the House
Although it is good that Westminster Hall enables more Select Committee reports to be debated, by no means could any hon. Member say that Select Committee reports are not controversial. Indeed, many Select Committee reports, especially in this Parliament, have been extremely controversial simply because they have criticised the Government. Such reports deserve full debate and scrutiny on the Floor of the House, with the relevant Secretary of State answering for himself or herself from the Dispatch Box. The practice, under the guise of more is better, of shuffling some of the more controversial Select Committee reports into Westminster Hall--where, by general acknowledgement, the nature of the debate is non-controversial--does not allow the House to call a Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box to answer Select Committees, which are well respected beyond these walls. If that practice were to develop further, it would represent a worrying trend.
Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Lady has identified an important point, and suggests that the wording that the Modernisation Committee previously used might require some amendment. It was intended from the beginning--I appreciate that the hon. Lady was not present at those discussions because she was not in her present post at that time--that votes should not be held on business taken in Westminster Hall. For that reason, it was described as non-controversial.
The scheduling of Select Committee debates on the Floor of the House is a matter for the Liaison Committee. The Liaison Committee, not the Government, chooses which Select Committee reports will be debated in Westminster Hall or in the House. There is no bar on what the Liaison Committee can select. If the wording used by the Modernisation Committee to make it clear that votes would not be taken in Westminster Hall inadvertently does not do so, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting that fact.
Mrs. Browning: I hope that the Leader of the House will accept that on many occasions Opposition Front Benchers have felt it necessary to require a Secretary of State--either by raising points of order or by requests for private notice questions--to answer questions on particular issues. All too often, it has been suggested that the failure of a Secretary of State to account for himself or herself at the Dispatch Box could be accommodated by an application for an Adjournment debate.
I urge you, Mr. Speaker, to consider the plight of an Opposition who increasingly find that accountability exists not in the Chamber, as it should do, but outside the House. There is also a worrying trend of controversial matters--which may not require a vote but for which a Secretary of State is required to account for himself or herself--being deferred to Westminster Hall. I said that I
supported the experiment for Westminster Hall. However, the Opposition will monitor the content as well as the quantity of the debates that are held.Before I became shadow Leader of the House, I shadowed the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Trade and industry debates that were forced into Westminster Hall included the debate on the scandal of the Government's decision on the Ilisu dam--an issue of great importance to Members on both sides of the House, involving an important plank of Government policy, their so-called ethical foreign policy. However, instead of the Secretary of State--who had made commitments to the Select Committee--answering the debate in Westminster Hall, the task was left to a junior Minister.
Despite what the Leader of the House said about Ministers having to be sure of their ground when responding to such debates, it was clear that the Minister was unable to answer for what the Secretary of State, his boss, had said in interviews and to the Select Committee. Such matters get sidetracked into Westminster Hall, when they should clearly be dealt with on the Floor of the House by a Secretary of State who will answer on the record for his or her own decision making.
One could list many other examples within the Department of Trade and Industry brief alone, such as the Diamond synchrotron at Daresbury, a matter that annoyed many Labour Members of Parliament. However, they, too, were forced into Westminster Hall to ask questions of a junior Minister when the issue was clearly a matter for the House, in which the Secretary of State should have answered personally for a decision that he had made.
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