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5.58 pm
Mrs. Gillian Shephard (South-West Norfolk): I welcome the chance to comment on the third and fourth reports of the Modernisation Committee. In view of some of the comments made by my right hon. and hon. Friends, I hardly dare admit the fact that tomorrow I shall be initiating a debate in Westminster Hall on the extremely important subject of reform of the European Union sugar regime. The debate has already attracted enormous attention; I expect it to be extremely well attended.
I intend to support the stance taken by my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House: to support the reforms as experiments. The principle that should guide the Modernisation Committee is that of making the House carry out its work more effectively. It is not a question of whether the House's procedures are viewer friendly, focus group friendly or even Member friendly; the real question is whether they are democracy friendly. Do they help the House more effectively to scrutinise legislation, hold the Government to account and, more important, to act as the voice of the electorate between elections?
The third component--the Bagehot-friendly component--is supported by the Hansard Society's commission on parliamentary scrutiny, but it has been neglected in the debate. We have talked about holding the Executive and Ministers to account and of scrutinising legislation, but another purpose of Parliament is to act as the voice of the electorate between elections. To that extent, Westminster Hall is a useful addition to the weapons that the House holds.
Some changes achieved by the Modernisation Committee are to be welcomed. The clearer Order Paper, the new arrangements for the Division Lobbies, the greater flexibility for the Speaker in calling colleagues to speak and the naming of hon. Members and their constituencies on the annunciators have all helped to clarify what we do. However, those changes cannot disguise the fact that, sadly, the Chamber is in decline. Some functions have moved elsewhere--for example, to Europe, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly--and others have become the preserve of judges and the media.
Some changes spring from the attitude of Ministers in this Government who have taken their cue from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who was reported two and half years ago as saying that
- the era of pure representative democracy is coming to an end.
The Minister and hon. Members will be familiar with the document produced by the scrutiny commission of the Hansard Society. "Creating a Working Parliament" points out:
- The Chamber's primacy as a forum for political debate . . . is now being challenged by the media, the judges, a devolved parliament and Europe.
- The failure to recall Parliament during the fuel crisis of September 2000 was interpreted by many commentators as evidence of its irrelevance and the extent to which direct action has now superseded parliamentary representation.
- The crisis illustrated the problem for Parliament. The chamber's work can often appear irrelevant to most voters. It rarely sets the day's news agenda and is often slow to respond to issues of public concern.
- has serious implications for democracy.
We should use those principles to appraise the motions and all the other proposals made by the Modernisation Committee. On that score, I support the proposal that, as an experiment, some work should continue to be done in Westminster Hall. Debates on the Adjournment of the House enable Members to raise issues--not to hold Ministers to account--and act as the voice of the electorate between elections. Such an opportunity is useful.
The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell- Savours) made strong and apposite remarks about Select Committees and their discussions. He was right. Ministers wait, perhaps with anxiety, for the publication of a Select Committee report on the work of their Department. However, if those reports are buried in the sand, Ministers may be aware of the issues, but they will not be examined on their record. Any opportunity that we have to put further pressure on Ministers regarding the findings of a report must be welcomed, even if that pressure is exerted in Westminster Hall. I say that knowing that my right hon. Friends the Members for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) have misgivings about Westminster Hall. Any opportunity is better than none.
Mr. Bercow: I am sorry to take my right hon. Friend back to her earlier remarks, but I note what she said about the failure to recall Parliament during the fuel crisis. Does she have any objection in principle, or does she think that there is a cogent objection in principle, to the proposition that the House should ordinarily sit in September?
Mrs. Shephard: I was about to come to that point. However, I shall be brief, because many Members want
to speak. The Modernisation Committee identified the problem of pressure of time, but I am more concerned with the pressure of time on the House and its procedures than I am with the pressure of time on Members. One chooses one's calling and, if one comes here, one accepts the realities of the job.The Modernisation Committee should now--perhaps it should have done so from the outset--examine more fundamentally what appears to be the problem of time. If that is the problem, its proposals--some useful and some peripheral--have not tackled it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, there is no problem of time. The House could sit in the morning and it would then have 12 or 13 hours at its disposal on each sitting day. That would remove at a stroke the problem of pressure of time. The House does not have to have a recess of three and a half months in the summer, as we had this year. To argue for longer recesses and shorter hours does not bring the House into good repute with the electorate, who see Members of Parliament designing ever easier job descriptions for themselves.
If the problem is the pressure of time, I suggest to the Modernisation Committee, as the Leader of the House did in her opening remarks, that it considers shifting the parliamentary day. That might be a positive way forward. I recommend it to the Committee in its future deliberations.
6.7 pm
Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush): I am pleased that we are having another debate on modernisation and--
Mr. Maclean: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Soley), but I have just heard that the prime item on the 6 o'clock news was a Government announcement that they are going to sell the dome. Have you, Madam Deputy Speaker, received any suggestion from a Minister that he or she wishes to make an emergency statement to the House? If not, what can you do to prevent yet another gross discourtesy to the House, whereby media outlets are informed of Government plans long before Members of Parliament, this Chamber or even Westminster Hall?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Sylvia Heal): The right hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member of the House. He knows that that was not a matter for the Chair.
Mr. Soley: I cannot be the only person who was aware that the Government were going to sell the dome at some stage. That was the previous Conservative's plan, but perhaps they did not tell the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean).
It is a great encouragement to me that the House is debating modernisation much more frequently. The right hon. Members for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) were both Ministers in the previous Government and they did not argue for change to the House's procedures when they were in government. However, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst is complaining because he is no longer able to do all the things that he was able to but did not want to do then. He should remember that the major
parties go in and out of opposition and in and out of government, so our aim must be to make Parliament and Members of Parliament more effective.
Mrs. Shephard: I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman's remarks; he is usually extremely well informed. He must know that the previous Government made a number of changes to the practices of the House. I recall them being debated in his presence when we both served on the Modernisation Committee.
Mr. Soley: The right hon. Lady certainly supported changes in a number of ways. Back in the early 1980s, the previous Government took the important step of allowing Committees to take evidence, but people will have noticed, as I have, that they only took evidence on Bills on a few occasions. When it became embarrassing, they stopped doing it. Such activities brought the previous Government's record on change into disrepute.
The argument on which we are predicating the debate is that Members of Parliament and Parliament itself must be more effective. We may disagree--I suspect that I will with my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and, certainly, with the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst--about whether we are succeeding, but we should start from the assumption that that is what we are trying to achieve.
The Modernisation Committee did not decide to see how Members of Parliament could work less, which is what the right hon. Gentleman said. I believe that Members of all parties work hard in the House. Few are looking for less work. The majority of hon. Members, be they Tory, Labour, Liberal or anything else, want to do a good job. We do ourselves no credit by trying to rubbish our colleagues by saying that they are in Parliament for the money or to have an easy time, because they are not. The right hon. Gentleman should not have said that.
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