APPENDIX 38
Letter from The Speaker to the Chairman
of the Committee
I have read with great interest the consultation
paper (HC 440) which you have submitted to the Modernisation Committee.
Some of the suggestions you have put forward have implications
for me as Speaker as well as for Members more generally. I thought
therefore that your Committee would find it helpful to have my
initial reactions to these.
I recognise and welcome the fact that your objective
is to create a more modern and effective House of Commons. Reforms
that genuinely enhance the ability of the House to scrutinise
legislation and hold the Executive account will have my strong
support. That, I believe, should be the primary test of the acceptability
of proposals for change. If, at the same time, it is possible
to make changes that allow Members and staff of the House to work
more social hours and to have greater certainty about the parliamentary
calendar, that would be a useful additional benefit.
I believe you are right to focus on the House's
ability to scrutinise legislation. Rushed legislation is often
bad legislation and your proposals for publication of Bills in
draft and for longer scrutiny (including the carry-over of Bills
between sessions) deserve serious and sympathetic consideration.
In paragraph 12 you suggest that an indicative
list of speakers should be published for debates. While I understand
the attractions of this suggestion to Members who suffer the frustration
of sitting through debates without being called, it carries with
it the following serious disadvantages which in my view greatly
outweigh the perceived benefits:
— It would limit my flexibility and
freedom of choice as well as my ability to protect minority views.
— It would enable Members to limit
their attendance at debates, promote the idea of set piece speeches
and pre-determined text rather than genuine contributions to discussion
of the subject matter. While some individual Members may see this
as acceptable, it is doubtful whether the House as a whole would.
— It would be difficult for the Chair
to change the published order or add any additional speakers.
— It would cause embarrassment to Members
who for whatever reasons choose to withdraw their names.
— It would enable Members on the other
side of the House, including Ministers, to prepare "knocking
material" against the Members on the published list.
— It would make it easier for Members
to squeeze out or seek to cause difficulty to Members expressing
minority views within their own Party.
The system and culture of the Lords where speakers'
lists are published are quite different from ours and I hope the
Committee will not pursue this suggestion. I and my Deputies are,
however, always ready to give informal guidance in the course
of a debate to Members seeking information about the likelihood
of being called.
In paragraphs 29-32 you put forward the suggestion
of Wednesday morning sittings, based on the perceived success
of Thursday morning sittings. I agree that on balance the Thursday
experiment has been a success. The significant advantage has been
that business finishes early on a Thursday and enables most Members
to get to their constituencies in good time to undertake duties
the following day (providing Friday's business does not require
their presence, as has generally been the case). But I should
not like your Committee to think that morning sittings are without
problems for the Chair. On Thursdays it is more difficult for
me to be properly briefed for Question Time and statements and
thus to prepare myself for my duties on Members' behalf. Decisions
on PNQs are more difficult because they often have to be determined
without any-or adequate-factual briefing from Departments and
there may be insufficient time for me to be briefed on difficult
Points of Order notified in advance to my Office. On Thursdays
the difficulties and inconvenience are outweighed by the clear
advantages to Members of finishing early. On a Wednesday there
would be no commensurate advantage, as Members' presence would
be required the following day—and, at least so far as the
Chair and staff of the House are concerned, there would be no
early finish and the same number of staff need to be on duty whether
the House is heavily or thinly attended. I do acknowledge, however,
and welcome the fact that Wednesday morning sittings could lead
to more constituency Fridays. I hope that these considerations
will be given due weight by the Committee.
In paragraphs 36-39 you suggest that a period
of an hour might be set aside for statements before the
normal meeting time of the House. I would regard such an innovation
as hugely disruptive and inconvenient. Until a few days before
(perhaps even the day before) neither I nor Members would know
when the House was to meet, with all the implications that would
have for the crowded schedule which all of us have. All Members
have a right to be present at every sitting and unpredictability
of the kind envisaged would be most unwelcome. The difficulties
I already face on Thursdays (and on Wednesdays if morning sittings
were introduced) would be immeasurably increased if the House
met at 10.30: rational consideration of PNQs would become almost
impossible for example. In addition such an arrangement would
remove from me the flexibility to run statements for as long as
I think necessary (and that is often for more than an hour on
difficult or sensitive issues). The perceived (and in many cases
actual) beneficiary of this proposal would be the Government who
would be determining not only when the House should meet but also
how long statements should run. Time limited exchanges on a controversial
statement would be likely to deprive some of the critics of the
Government of the day of an opportunity to put sharp questions
to Ministers. I believe the House as a whole would share my concern
about any such development. I hope the Committee will see the
disadvantages of this proposal. I recognise that the purpose of
the proposal is in part to obviate the problem of statements eating
into debating time on Bills, but I believe that this could better
be tackled by the use of programme motions providing a specified
length of debate rather than timetabling by reference to a fixed
time.
I am on balance in favour of your proposal to
sit in September. While this would limit my flexibility in undertaking
overseas engagements on behalf of the House, the long summer recess
does reduce the House's ability to react to current events and
to hold Ministers to account. It is also—as my own post-bag
demonstrates—the cause of much adverse public comment.
There is one additional point that I should
like the Committee to consider. Under existing arrangements the
final few minutes before the start of Prime Minister's Questions
are inevitably very noisy. This is in my view unfair both to Ministers
at the Despatch Box and to those seeking to question them. This
problem could be obviated if on Wednesdays Prime Minister's Questions
came first, followed at 3.05 by the relevant Departmental Question
Time.
5 March 2002
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