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5.4 pm
Helen Jackson (Sheffield, Hillsborough): We are embarking on a move forward today, which I welcome. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) and a couple of Opposition Members, I am one of the original members of the Modernisation Committee. We have already discussed the fact that the proposals, which involve a pilot scheme, are evolutionary and will help us to move on. Both proposals, but especially that involving Thursday sittings, were discussed from the Committee's first meeting onward. We discussed the hours that we spend in the House, whether we could arrange our week so that we had some certainty about when we could fulfil our constituency duties, and the importance of a definite finishing time for the end of the parliamentary week.
The job of Member of Parliament has many aspects which need to be balanced, and certainly involves more than working in the House. During those early days, I was rather depressed by the view, which was expressed mainly by Conservative Members but also by others,
that constituency business and our need to talk to constituents was subservient to our work in the House. The relationship between what we learn and hear about our constituents' hopes and fears and the way we make those hopes and fears our concern when we are in the House scrutinising, debating and voting on legislation is the substance of democracy. To argue that one of them is somehow subservient to the other misses the whole point of our role.I am pleased by the proposals, but I would go further by making Friday a day on which it would be assumed that hon. Members would work in their constituencies doing the crucial business of listening to schoolteachers and other professionals. I would make that arrangement fairly secure, whether one's constituency was in London or Yorkshire, as mine is. That way, everyone would know where they were.
I also support the present arrangement for Thursday sittings because it has broken the mould. It has made it clear that Parliament would not, for ever and a day, necessarily start at 2.30 pm and finish God knows when. The House sat at 11.30 am, and the world did not fall in and we did not fall into disrepute. We sit the same number of hours on Thursdays, but we have shifted them to earlier in the day.
On Westminster Hall, I thought, rather simply, that in some ways that step forward was our most significant reform, because we got the establishment to spend not a huge, but a medium amount of money on bringing up to date a room that was to all intents and purposes a wasted, dingy public space. Off one of the most beautiful architectural parts of the Palace was the old, dusty Grand Committee Room. It had chairs in serried rows and a raised platform at one end, and my heart sank whenever I went there. Whatever else our reforms have achieved--I agree with the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) that we still have some way to go with regard to facilities for the disabled--it is now a good-looking room and a friendly and inclusive place in which to debate. We must not forget that the room remains a useful location in which meetings can be held when Parliament is not sitting. Such meetings could involve outside organisations, which might even bring in money to offset the cost of such events. The room is suitable for high-profile meetings as it has a media feed, which means that good publicity can be obtained. I strongly support paragraph 26 of the Modernisation Committee report, which reminds people of that.
Some hon. Members have been desperately antagonistic to the Government's ideas for legislative programming, arguing that they were in favour of greater scrutiny, but that the Government were having their own way in programming. Interestingly, however, it is those very hon. Members who are most likely to be intensely antagonistic to the Westminster Hall proposal and to reject the notion that it gives every Member of the House more opportunity to scrutinise Ministers.
I am sympathetic to hon. Members who argued against the suggestion that Westminster Hall should not be a forum for the discussion of important matters. I do not share the concern and consternation expressed by the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), who said that important or controversial matters should not be dealt with in Westminster Hall. I do not want a big notice,
metaphorical or otherwise, to go up over Westminster Hall, saying "No important or controversial matter will be discussed here."I believe that the public and media are alive to any occasion when Ministers can be called to account.
Mr. Maclean: Is it not clear that the Government have already erected a huge signpost over Westminster Hall stating that nothing of importance occurs there, when we hear that not a single Cabinet Minister has attended or wound up a Westminster Hall debate and that hardly any Ministers of State have done so either?
Helen Jackson: I am not speaking on the Government's behalf, but I remind hon. Members that senior Ministers have participated in major debates such as that on the climate change levy--an example already cited. As the experiment evolves, Cabinet Ministers may want to participate in Westminster Hall debates or respond to them. Who knows? If we allow modernisation to move on, such things may happen.
It is important that any Minister should be on top of his brief, know what he is talking about and be examined carefully. If the public and media know what they are about, they will examine any occasion on which Ministers are called to account, whether in Wilmslow, Winchester or Westminster Hall.
Mrs. Dunwoody: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend that all Ministers should be accountable. However, the hazard with an Adjournment debate is that Ministers merely wind up, so it can be a little difficult to hold them to account when they are not being treated in the same way as in the main Chamber.
Helen Jackson: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend.
Mrs. Dunwoody: I am an hon. Member: I am old Labour.
Helen Jackson: You were called a right hon. Member earlier, and I was imitating that. I apologise if that has offended you.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady will offend the Chair if she continues to refer to other hon. Members in that way.
Helen Jackson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I shall reply to my hon. Friend's point. It is interesting that, when we debate the modernisation of Parliament on the Floor of the House, many hon. Members on both sides try to think of how the order, nature and procedure of debate can be used to call Ministers more closely to account. My hon. Friend's point may be considered in due course, and if such a structure of debate is more appropriate for this century, it may become practice.
These proposals, together with the important reforms to our legislative framework that we made recently, show that the Modernisation Committee has had an impact on the House. In the early stages, many people said that it had not and would not, but this debate shows that it is making an impact. These changes will allow Members of all parties to do their work as Members of Parliament and to scrutinise the Government more effectively. It is
important to recognise that this movement, this programme, this opening up of possibilities and ideas by which we can improve how this place works must not stop here, but must continue into the next Session and beyond.5.17 pm
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): The Leader of the House, not untypically, revealed what really lies behind the debate on the so-called modernisation of the House, Thursday sittings and Westminster Hall when she used two phrases in the context of the relationship between Members and the work of the House. One was "increasing certainty", which she thought was a good thing; and the other was that Members should not have to "rearrange their diaries", which she also thought was a good thing.
If one thinks about what lies behind those apparently innocent phrases, one suddenly sees with great clarity what the whole thing is all about. It is about the House of Commons being organised and run for the convenience of Members--not so that they can properly discharge their duties or make life difficult for the Government, and not to allow serious debate, but for the convenience of Members. It seems that Members must know with certainty what is to happen and when. They must be able to organise their diaries far ahead without any doubt or disturbance, and the business of the House must be structured on that basis.
Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush): I know that the right hon. Gentleman holds those views very strongly, but it is a paranoid approach. All of us on the Committee take the view that our task is to make the work of Members in their constituencies and in Parliament more effective. The right hon. Gentleman may feel that we are not achieving that, but that is what we seek to achieve.
Mr. Forth: I shall come to that point in a moment, but I can answer the hon. Gentleman directly. One problem is that there is now a growing assumption that the work of Members of Parliament in their constituencies is of greater importance than their work at Westminster. The hon. Gentleman has just hinted at that. He will not know this, because he was not present in the Chamber last Friday, but we had a debate on embryology, which is arguably one of the most important subjects that is likely to face Members of the House of Commons for some time to come. If I reveal that about 12 Members were present last Friday to participate in that debate, and that it finished ahead of the scheduled time, that will give Members some idea of the extent to which it is now assumed that what Members feel they must do in their constituency outweighs by far their responsibilities and duties in the House.
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