House of Commons - Modernisation of the House of Commons

Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons Fourth Report

FOURTH REPORT

The Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons has agreed to the following Report:—

SITTINGS IN WESTMINSTER HALL

1. In our Second Report of last Session,[3] which was published in April 1999, we recommended that for Session 1999-2000 there should be an experiment with a parallel Chamber, known as "Westminster Hall", and situated in the Grand Committee Room, Westminster Hall,

which all Members of the House would be able to attend;

which could debate matters agreed by all to be important but which did not readily find time on the floor of the House;

to which business would be referred by agreement; and

which would take decisions only with unanimity.

2. Our report was approved by the House on 24 May 1999.[4] The necessary work on the Grand Committee Room, Westminster Hall, which included the installation of flexible seating initially arranged to form a hemicycle, was undertaken during the summer. For the most part this involved bringing forward improvements which had been included in the rolling programme for Parliamentary works for the period 2000-06 and which would have needed to be carried out in any case. Sittings in Westminster Hall began on Tuesday 30 November 1999.

3. We undertook in our earlier Report to evaluate the experiment as a whole before the end of the current Session and to make recommendations to the House. We have monitored the experiment while it has been proceeding and have assembled statistical and other information from a range of sources. We have also sought the advice of the Chairman of Ways and Means, whose letter is printed as an Appendix to this Report.

Business taken in Westminster Hall

4. On sitting days there have normally been sittings in Westminster Hall on Tuesday mornings, Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. The Thursday sitting has sometimes been cancelled when the House was on the point of rising for a periodic adjournment.

5. The Tuesday sitting, from 10 am to 1 pm, and the Wednesday sitting, from 9.30 am to 2 pm, have been devoted to private Members' business, taken on a motion for the adjournment of the sitting. On Tuesdays there has been a general debate lasting 1½ hours on a topic selected by the Speaker, followed by three half-hour debates chosen by ballot. The Wednesday sitting has followed the same format as the Wednesday morning sitting in the Chamber which was introduced as part of the Jopling reform of sitting hours, namely two general debates followed by three half-hour debates, all chosen by ballot.

6. On three Wednesdays during the Session, in place of the general debates, there have been debates on select committee reports selected by the Liaison Committee. The debates on "matters

to be discussed before a forthcoming adjournment", which were held in the Chamber on Wednesday mornings under the Jopling reforms, have not been transferred to Westminster Hall, and have taken place in Government time.

7. The Thursday sittings, beginning at 2.30 pm and lasting three hours (with extra time available in the event of time being lost as a result of a division in the House), have been divided in equal shares between debates on select committee reports chosen by the Liaison Committee and other business settled through the usual channels.

8. In the period up to the summer adjournment, the select committees listed below have had one or more of their reports debated in Westminster Hall:

9. In the same period, debates have been held in Westminster Hall on Thursdays on the topics listed below:

10. The table below shows, for each of the categories of business taken in Westminster Hall—

(1) the number of opportunities for debates this Session (up to the summer adjournment);

(2) the number of such opportunities there would have been without Westminster Hall (ie if the House had continued with private Members' business in the Chamber on Wednesday mornings); and

(3) the additional number of opportunities attributable to Westminster Hall.

	(1)	(2)	(3)
Private Members' general debates (1½ hours)	83¹	42^3,4	41
Private Members' ½ hour debates	180²	87³	93
Select Committee Wednesday debates (1½ hours)	6	6	—
Select Committee Thursday debates (3 hours)	13	—	13
Government Thursday debates (3 hours)	14	—	14
Total debates	296	135	161

¹The actual figure was 82—1 debate was lost when the Member concerned arrived late.
² The actual figure was 177—l debate was lost when a sitting started late owing to divisions in the House in the course of an all-night sitting, and 2 debates were cancelled by the Member concerned.
³This figure assumes that, had it not been for the Westminster Hall experiment, there would have been a morning sitting on Wednesday 24 November 1999; but that there would not have been a morning sitting on Wednesday 26 January 2000 owing to the prolongation of the previous sitting.
⁴This figure assumes that five pre-recess adjournment debates would have been held on Wednesday mornings.

11. The following table sets out the same information in terms of hours rather than numbers of debates (assuming that every debate lasted the full time available):

	(1)	(2)	(3)
Private Members' general debates (1½ hours)	124.5	63	61.5
Private Members' ½ hour debates	90	43.5	46.5
Select Committee Wednesday debates (1½ hours)	9	9	—
Select Committee Thursday debates (3 hours)	39	—	39
Government Thursday debates (3 hours)	42	—	42
Total hours	304.5	115.5	189

12. These figures indicate that the Westminster Hall experiment has provided private Members with an extra 134 opportunities to raise issues of concern with Ministers, or 108 hours of extra Parliamentary time. For select committees, the net gain attributable to Westminster Hall has been 13 debates on reports, or 39 hours of Parliamentary time.

13. The Sessional Order made provision for a motion in the House to refer an order of the day to Westminster Hall; for any item of business other than an adjournment motion not to be proceeded with if six Members rose to object; and for decisions in Westminster Hall to be taken by unanimity. These provisions have not been used during the experiment as all the business taken in Westminster Hall has been debated on a motion for the adjournment of the sitting.

Demand from Members for sittings in Westminster Hall

14. There is room in the Grand Committee Room for just over 50 Members. About 40 Members attended the first sitting in Westminster Hall; since then attendance has varied between 5 and 30. The average attendance at general debates has been between 10 and 12, with debates on select committee reports the best attended category of business.

15. Attendance is not a relevant criterion for the short debates in Westminster Hall, since participation is restricted to the Member initiating the debate and the Minister replying, but on a number of occasions attendance has reached double figures.

16. The Speaker's Office has provided us with the numbers of applications made by Members for adjournment debates in the Chamber and in Westminster Hall. The table below shows the number of applications for each private Member's adjournment debate—

(1) in the last Session, when the opportunities amounted to two 1½ hour debates and three half-hour debates each Wednesday morning, and five—occasionally four—end of day adjournment debates each week;[5]

(2) in the opening weeks of the experiment, when the number of general debates available had risen from two to three, and the number of short debates from three to six; and

(3) in the period from May to early July this year.

	(1)	(2)	(3)
General debates (Wednesday mornings/Westminster Hall)	10+	11	9+
Short debates (Wednesday mornings/Westminster Hall)	7	4	3+
End of day adjournment debates	5	6	3

17. We conclude from these figures that the provision of additional opportunities for half-hour debates has met a substantial proportion of the demand from Members for such debates. Westminster Hall is currently a more popular venue for short debates than the Chamber, where the adjournment debate is often at an unpredictable time and sometimes very late at night. General debates are almost as oversubscribed now as they were when the experiment began, despite a 50 per cent increase in the supply.

Reporting and media coverage of sittings in Westminster Hall

18. At present sittings in Westminster Hall are televised "on broadcasting demand" at a cost of £350-£530 per sitting. All sittings have in fact been covered by BBC Parliament and are available within the Palace on the PDVN. As part of a new funding arrangement the broadcasting shareholders of PARBUL (the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit, a company controlled jointly by the broadcasters and the two Houses) have agreed to underwrite the cost of coverage from October 2000, which will ensure that the broadcasters covered by the PARBUL arrangements will get complete coverage of each sitting in Westminster Hall without any extra charge. This is expected to lead to greater coverage of Westminster Hall by the regional ITV companies, particularly the smaller companies. The BBC has indicated that it already finds the Tuesday and Wednesday sittings in Westminster Hall extremely productive of material for use in regional programming.

19. At some point the mobile televising equipment which is currently used will need to be replaced by permanent equipment. It is hoped to do this in the summer of 2001, which will require a decision to be taken by the end of 2000. The cost is estimated at £600,000. Since this equipment could be used elsewhere in the House as well as in Westminster Hall, the House may think this is a worthwhile investment.

20. The national broadsheet newspapers have reported debates in Westminster Hall as part of their Parliamentary coverage along with proceedings in the Chamber and in select and standing committees. We have identified 23 debates in Westminster Hall up to the end of July which received national press coverage. The regional and specialist press have also covered debates which have been of particular interest to them.

21. The Hansard report of each sitting in Westminster Hall has been incorporated into the appropriate daily Hansard. We believe it is essential that this level of service is maintained.

The Chair

22. The Sessional Order provides for the Chairman of Ways and Means or a Deputy Chairman to take the Chair in Westminster Hall as Deputy Speaker, and for four members of the Chairmen's Panel to be appointed to sit in Westminster Hall as Deputy Speakers. Mr Frank Cook, Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody, Mr John McWilliam and Mr Nicholas Winterton have been appointed as the additional Deputy Speakers.

23. Shortly after the start of the experiment the Sessional Order was amended to enable other members of the Chairmen's Panel to take the Chair in Westminster Hall when requested to do so by the Chairman of Ways and Means. Although the four additional Deputy Speakers have continued to bear most of the burden of chairing sittings in Westminster Hall, for which the House owes them a debt of gratitude, considerable use has been made of the additional flexibility provided by the amendment to the Sessional Order to enable the rota to be filled on occasions when the additional Deputy Speakers' other commitments have prevented them from presiding.

Conclusions and recommendations

24. We envisaged Westminster Hall as a forum for—

private Members;

select committees; and

non-controversial business agreed through the usual channels which at present finds no place whatsoever in the time of the House.

Westminster Hall has provided valuable additional opportunities for both private Members and select committees, as the figures given in paragraph 12 above indicate. As a forum for novel kinds of business it has perhaps enjoyed more qualified success: some of the debates on Government Thursdays have not attracted great interest but others have proved worthwhile. The debate on United Kingdom involvement in Africa was an example of a constructive and well-attended debate; and we note in passing that in our earlier Report we identified foreign affairs debates focussing on particular regions of the world as one type of debate for which Westminster Hall could usefully provide an opportunity.

25. It is important to note what Westminster Hall has not done. It has not enabled the Government to expand its legislative programme: the business taken in Westminster Hall has been additional business which would otherwise not have taken place at all. Overwhelmingly it is accepted that Westminster Hall has not detracted from the primacy of the Chamber: the House has had no difficulty in keeping the business in the main Chamber going on Thursday afternoons when the parallel Chamber has also been in operation.

26. There is an important side benefit of Westminster Hall of which the House should be aware. The old Grand Committee Room in no way lived up to its name; it was a dreary, depressing place of limited appeal. As a result of the refurbishment and alterations made it is now a meeting place of which the House can be proud and it has been used for a whole range of meetings to the mutual benefit of all.

27. Outside critics have frequently complained that we as a Committee have been merely tinkering at the edges of Parliamentary reform and have not touched the really fundamental concerns. While we agree that there is more to be done, there can be little doubt that the creation of Westminster Hall is a radical innovation, the importance of which is recognised in many other Parliaments. Indeed, we note that the Australian House of Representatives, from whose Main Committee the concept of Westminster Hall was drawn, is about to revamp that body, incorporating many of the practices of Westminster Hall. At this stage of the current Parliament it would be wrong to make major changes or indeed to make the experiment permanent, but we see the current experiment as an exciting and major new development which should give the lie to those who claim that the House of Commons is hopelessly antiquated and impervious to any change whatever.

28. We recommend that sittings in Westminster Hall should be continued beyond the end of the current experiment, and that the next Parliament should decide whether or not they should be made permanent.

29. One of the purposes of having an experiment is to try different ways of doing things. The remainder of this Report makes various proposals.

30. The Chairman of Ways and Means has made two suggestions to us for changes in the arrangements for Westminster Hall which we believe the House ought to try out before deciding the future of sittings in Westminster Hall.

31. The first relates to the layout of the room. In our earlier Report we recommended the use of a continental-style "wide" hemicycle, but we were open to the possibility of replacing this layout with a horseshoe-shaped "long" hemicycle, with a self-contained public gallery and press gallery at the back.

32. The Chairman of Ways and Means has pointed out that with the present layout there is a good deal of unavoidable disturbance when large parties of visitors enter or leave the room, and that it is not always easy to see which Members are rising. He suggested that the alternative layout considered in our earlier Report should be tried next Session if the experiment were to be continued.

33. The advice we have received from the Serjeant at Arms, which is appended to this report, indicates that the Grand Committee Room could be rearranged in the course of a few days without significant extra expenditure. We recommend that this should be done but we stress that this change is equally an experiment which will be monitored. Any final decision on the permanent layout of Westminster Hall will be for the next Parliament to decide, should it determine that the experiment be made permanent.

34. As part of the revised seating arrangements we believe that two seats in the gallery should be reserved for the initiator of a particular debate so that constituents with a special interest can be guaranteed access.

35. The second suggestion from the Chairman of Ways and Means relates to the timing of sittings for private Members' business. The Chairman observed that

"there may be an increasing tendency for the short debates to deal with 'general' topics rather than the more traditional subject matters, which have a strong constituency element... It occurs to me to ask whether we have the right balance between longer and shorter debates."

As we pointed out in paragraph 17 above, the unsatisfied demand for longer debates is much greater than that for short debates, either in Westminster Hall or in the Chamber. The Chairman of Ways and Means also wondered

"whether there may be a case for making the times of sitting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays the same, to avoid any possible uncertainty."

36. The present arrangements provide for short debates, participation in which is effectively restricted to two Members, and for general debates, which are open to all comers and usually include contributions from the official Opposition and the second largest opposition party. We believe the need identified by the Chairman of Ways and Means could best be met if some provision were made for debates lasting one hour, which would allow two or three backbench speeches to intervene between the opening speech and the Minister's reply. To that end we propose that sittings in Westminster Hall on Tuesdays should last from 9.30 am to 2 pm, as they do on Wednesdays, and should consist of three debates of one hour each followed by three debates of half an hour each. The extra time provided on Tuesdays will of course have implications for the Chair which we hope will be recognised by those responsible.

37. Flexibility is of the essence in Westminster Hall. Although we believe that the new pattern of timings which we have proposed will provide much greater flexibility than hitherto, there may be occasions when further variations will be necessary. In particular there may be some general debates where one and a half hours are insufficient for the numbers wishing to take part; the recent debate on the Middle East was one such occasion. We therefore recommend that the Speaker should use his discretion to permit a debate to continue for up to three hours; to assist him in deciding whether to use his discretion, Members applying should indicate clearly the numbers they think may wish to take part.

38. At the beginning of the next Parliament (and to a lesser extent at the beginning of any further Session of the present Parliament) it will not be feasible to begin sittings in Westminster Hall immediately, since a few days at least will need to be allowed for the holding of ballots for adjournment debates, for the necessary consultations over the business to be taken at Thursday afternoon sittings, and for the appointment of additional Deputy Speakers. We therefore propose that sittings in Westminster Hall should resume as soon as the debate on the Queen's Speech has been concluded.

39. There is one further set of changes which we propose, in the interests both of simplifying the arrangements for Westminster Hall and of providing more time for private Members' general debates. As we have already observed, the Government Thursdays have proved to be the least successful component of the Westminster Hall experiment, and we consider that some reduction in their numbers could easily be sustained. We therefore propose that the Liaison Committee should be given two-thirds of the Thursday sittings for debates on select committee reports, rather than the half it currently receives. In return the three Wednesday mornings currently allocated to select committee reports should be used for private Members' general debates. This would provide time for six extra general debates. In order to ensure that business selected by the Liaison Committee had precedence as of right on certain days, as it does on the existing select committee Wednesdays, the Speaker should at the beginning of the Session appoint six Thursdays on which the business to be taken in Westminster Hall should be select committee reports chosen by the Liaison Committee. Those six days would be included in the overall allocation of two-thirds of the Thursday sittings.

40. Accordingly, in this our fourteenth Report we recommend that the experiment with sittings in Westminster Hall should be continued until the end of the first Session of the next Parliament, and that after the end of the present Session—

the Grand Committee Room should be arranged as a horseshoe-shaped "long" hemicycle;

as part of the rearranged seating arrangements two seats in the public gallery should be reserved for the initiator of a particular debate so that constituents with a specific interest can be guaranteed access;

sittings on Tuesdays should last from 9.30 am until 2 pm and should begin with three debates of one hour each;

the Speaker should use his discretion to permit a debate to continue for up to three hours should there appear to him to be sufficient demand;

sittings in Westminster Hall should resume as soon as the debate on the Queen's Speech has been concluded;

select committee reports should be debated at two-thirds of the sittings on Thursday afternoons; and

six Thursday afternoons instead of three Wednesday mornings should be designated for debates on select committee reports.

3  Sittings of the House in Westminster Hall, HC 194 (1998-99). Back
4  HC Deb. vol. 332, cc 81-130. Back
5  HC 194 (1998-99), paragraph 24 and Appendix 6. Back