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Mrs. Dunwoody: I apologise to my fellow Select Committee Chairman, but has he not answered his own point? It is precisely because senior Ministers do not answer debates in Westminster Hall that Select Committee reports have been downgraded. They should be debated on the Floor of the House so that all sorts of people may understand the implications of the detailed work that those Committees have already done.
Mr. Bennett: I fully accept my hon. Friend's point. Part of my whinge is that we should consider that point with more care. Rather than simply saying that there is more opportunity for debate of Select Committee reports, we should examine the quality and impact of those debates.
Finally, I ask the Modernisation Committee to take a careful look at the ways in which Parliament has changed in recent years, a process that may be pushed much further with the opening of the new building. Parliament must be a place in which people talk, not just across the Chamber, but informally around the building. During my time in the House, talking to other Members--particularly to those to whom one is not naturally drawn--has steadily decreased because people have more office space and because of
how our procedures have changed. We must be careful not to destroy what used to be one of the most effective parts of Parliament--people talking to each other informally as well as participating in debate in the Chamber.4.24 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I have much sympathy with the points made by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), who is a distinguished and experienced Select Committee Chairman; and I shall return to them later in my speech.
I want to go back to first principles. The point of setting up the Modernisation Committee was not just to make this place more family friendly and easier for Members to operate in, or even to make life easier for our staff--although that is an important objective. All those aims may have merit, but the purpose of the exercise was to try to make Parliament a more effective institution, so that we--collectively--were able to do a better job. It was not merely so that we did not have to stay up so late or so that our staff could go home earlier, or even so that the media could have an easier time. That is why it is important to take stock each time that we take another, small incremental step forward in changing our procedures.
The reports are useful. I certainly support the general principle of evolution in this place--experimenting to see if changes work, pulling back a little but moving on if we can and trying to do so, as much as possible, by agreement and consensus. However, the general view on both sides of the House is that there is much unfinished business.
Mr. Tyler: Many Members believe that, even within the criteria I set out, much more can be done to make this place more effective.
Mr. Tyler: I understand the views held by some of the relics from the previous Conservative Government--that nothing could be better than what they used to impose on us in yesteryear.
Mr. Tyler: I do not share that view--it is not a majority view. I agree with the views expressed by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning)--rather than those of the putative Leaders of the House who sit behind her--that the proposals offer a sensible way forward and that we are proceeding by consensus and experimentation.
Mrs. Browning: I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not take my comments on the reports as a blanket endorsement of the terms of reference of the Modernisation Committee as he has described them. I should like to debate that point further, but he should be aware that I have grave reservations about the Modernisation Committee per se.
Mr. Tyler: I know the hon. Lady well enough to realise that she would never give a blank cheque to anybody; I certainly accept the qualification she expresses.
Much important work remains to be done, although it may not be possible to complete it all during this Parliament. The ways in which we deal with private Members' legislation, and the way in which we have disposed of private Members' motions--referred to by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody)--need further attention. Those matters arose under the Jopling reforms--not in this Parliament.
We must do something about early-day motions--[Hon. Members: "Abolish them."] If we can find a means whereby a debate can be triggered when an early-day motion has gathered a certain amount of support in the House--perhaps through a ballot--that would be most helpful. We could thus ensure that matters that had considerable Back-Bench support were included in the parliamentary agenda relatively quickly.
I confess that I had misgivings about the detailed arrangements for Thursday sittings and indeed voted against the timetabling of questions at 11.30 am. I thought that it would have been better to hold a half-day debate, breaking at 2 pm with questions for an hour at 2.30, followed by a further half-day debate. However, we have all discovered that the present arrangements work reasonably well; nothing is perfect, but they are as good as we can expect.
I fully endorse the view of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton that those of us whose constituencies are some distance from London sometimes now find it possible to return to them on Thursday night--although it is not always convenient to do so because of Friday business. Some of my colleagues in the wilds of Scotland and the far west--it should not be forgotten that we have managed to make Scotland, Wales and Cornwall Tory-free zones--believe that it is important to try to arrive back in our constituencies in a reasonable state of health and mind in order to deal with constituency business.
The Westminster Hall sittings are extremely important. I have attended many of the debates there and participated in a few of them. The responses of Ministers to debates in Westminster Hall are often more helpful than those that we would receive in this place, because there is a less confrontational attitude and a willingness to give more information than might be thought appropriate in a full debate in the Chamber.
On occasions, I have heard remarkable confessions in Westminster Hall. I remember when one of my colleagues said that he would read out a letter that he had received from the Treasury even though he believed it to be the most boring and complacent waffle. The Minister present on that occasion admitted that he would not refer to that advice, because he shared the view of my hon. Friend. The Minister did not quite put it that way--if he had, he would no longer be a Minister--but a degree of frankness between Members is possible in Westminster Hall because that chamber is not so confrontational. That is a positive factor in holding Ministers and ministries to account.
However, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton is right to say that, when the subject deserves it, we must insist that a Cabinet Minister replies to a debate in Westminster Hall. I was interested to hear two distinguished Select Committee Chairmen endorse that view. I attended a debate in Westminster Hall last week in which the Minister for the Environment responded to a
very important debate on The Hague talks, the follow-up to Kyoto and global warming. Although the right hon. Gentleman was allowed only 10 minutes to respond because of the considerable interest in the debate of Members from all parties, he made an important response. My complaint is not about the quality of the response that we hear in Westminster Hall, but that the quality of the reporting of that response is not, I fear, as adequate as it might be if the same speech were made in this Chamber.
Mr. Bercow: I hope that the hon. Gentleman's phrasing a few moments ago was merely infelicitous and nothing worse. Is he seriously suggesting that it is right and proper for Ministers, when answering debates, to be fuller and franker in their disclosures in Westminster Hall than they are in this Chamber? Does he not accept that it is always incumbent on Ministers to answer fully and frankly to Members of the House?
Mr. Tyler: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has intervened, because it reminds me that he commented on the quality of junior Ministers in the present Administration. He did not have the advantage of being a Member in the previous Parliament, so I can tell him that, if some junior Ministers in the previous Government had been asked to respond in Westminster Hall, they would have been in considerable difficulty.
Mr. Bercow: I am sure that that is true.
Mr. Tyler: I notice that the hon. Gentleman now agrees with me. The point is not whether it is right or wrong for Ministers to respond more fully and frankly in Westminster Hall--the fact is that they do. That is to the benefit of Parliament, Members of Parliament and, most important, our constituents. However, as has already been suggested, my only complaint is that it would help if--I dare not use the organ grinder and monkey analogy--senior Ministers were present in Westminster Hall. It would be useful to have it on record that junior Ministers speak with the full approval of their superiors and of the Cabinet. Certainly, the information that they have provided there has sometimes been very helpful.
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