Examination of Witness (Questions 1 -
19)
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER 2001
RT HON
LORD SHELDON
Chairman
1. Welcome, very much, to the Committee, and
thank you for agreeing to guide us. You come here with a long
distinction on the Liaison Committee, of which you were Chair
in the last Parliament, and therefore you are a very appropriate
person to guide us on thinking behind the report of the Liaison
Committee, both shifting the balance and then the unfinished business
at the very end of the Parliament. Bob, to put in context this
exchange, we are commissioned to produce a report on the select
committees, particularly the departmental select committees, and
how they can better do their job of scrutiny. I would hope that,
at some point, at the turn of the year, we would produce a report,
looking at many of the points that were in your two reports. The
immediate and pressing problem we have, of course, is tackling
the thorny issue of how the House processes nominations to the
select committees, and it may be that we will feel that we should
bring forward an interim report, dealing with that single item
as a matter of urgency, because I have already got vacancies on
some of the select committees. So, our focus this morning, we
would like to begin with that question of the nomination process,
but I would hope that we would find time to widen out some of
the other issues, which it is also essential we address if the
committees are not only to be independent but also to carry out
a genuine job of scrutiny. Can I begin, Bob, by inviting you to
address your mind to the proposals in the Liaison Committee report
on the nomination process; initially, you proposed three senior
figures, nominated by the Liaison Committee, who would, post-election,
process the nominations to the new select committees. When that
was rejected by the House in the subsequent report on unfinished
business, you produced a number of variants on that, mainly to
make the numbers involved rather larger; but they all had the
same characteristic of being based on membership of the Liaison
Committee. I wonder if you would like to expand, before I proceed
further, on that proposal and why the Liaison Committee felt attracted
to it?
(Lord Sheldon) I think the crucial aspect
of all of this is that the Executive, via the Whips, ought not
to select those members of select committees who will be examining
the Executive; that is crucial. Now, it may be that had the Whips
operated in a more relaxed attitude it might not have been quite
so important a matter; but it was very important, because we had
seen, in particular, two examples, which really I considered quite
outrageous. The earlier one was Nick Winterton being removed from
chairman of his select committee, because he had served two terms.
I served three terms as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee,
and nobody ever thought that if I wanted to go for the fourth,
if we were unfortunately to be defeated at the subsequent election,
I would be barred from doing that. Now that was quite disgraceful.
And the other one was Gwyneth Dunwoody. Because, Gwyneth Dunwoody,
in the last months of the previous Parliament, in order to make
sure that the work of the Liaison Committee was carried forward
in some sort of way, we did meet and discussed how to do this,
and the way that we suggested was that we would choose three people
who would have the confidence of that previous Liaison Committee
to approach the Government to bring about the kind of changes
that the Liaison Committee of the previous Parliament had in mind.
And the ones we chose were, Gwyneth Dunwoody was one of them and
the other one was Nick Winterton, who I am glad to see here, and
the other was Archy Kirkwood, and it was agreed that they would
have the confidence of that previous committee. Now it had no
authority, we understand that, but the fact that the 33 members
of that Liaison Committee thought that these were worthy representatives
to carry their ideas forward, at least to make sure that it was
speeded up, I thought it would carry some weight. And I gather,
with you, Robin, it did carry some weight, I believe you had discussions
with them, and that was quite right. And to find that one of those
people in whom we had invested such confidence was debarred from
being the chairman of a select committee, which she had undertaken
with great distinction, and appreciated by that Liaison Committee
throughout all those years, we thought this was quite outrageous.
So you need to bring a change. Now there is no change that is
going to be perfect, but there is change that at least can be
less imperfect than the previous one, and that is that the Government
should not choose those people to examine the Government, that
is fundamental; if it had been done with a lighter touch we might
have just overlooked it, but it was not, and it may not be in
the future. So that is the most important thing. Now, how to do
it. As I said, there is no certain way, but at least if you were
to have three people they could have some sort of acceptance by
the House generally, they could be nominated, there could be discussions
through the usual channels, but at least you would have these
three people who would have that kind of authority to undertake
methods of selection over that Parliament.
2. That is very helpful, Bob. Can I just tease
out a little bit the question about the Government Executive,
the Whips, controlling the process. Effectively, the Whips will
always have some kind of initiative role in the party; do you
see the problem as being within the Committee of Selection and
the intimate relationship the Committee of Selection necessarily
has with the Whips on the other side?
(Lord Sheldon) The great advantage of the Whips is
that they do have some information which is not readily available
to others, and particularly at the beginning of a new Parliament
they will know something about the new Members. But, of course,
when it comes to selection of chairmen, in the United States,
of course, they have seniority rules; now we do not use those
seniority rules, because we think there is something better than
that. One way better than that, I think, is the method that we
suggested, that there should be these three, the chairman and
the two deputy chairmen, selecting members of Select Committees.
Now I am open to argument, if somebody comes up with something
better than that. All I can say is, the one that we have proposed
is far better than the existing system. The Whips, of course,
will have some input into this, nobody is disputing that, they
are very valuable and very useful colleagues they would be, but
they must not have the kind of power, we think, that they have
had up to now.
3. And, in the context of the Committee of Selection,
you believe that the Whips have too much power?
(Lord Sheldon) Yes, indeed; indeed. Well, they got
rid of Gwyneth Dunwoody, they got rid of Nick Winterton; this
was outrageous. And, of course, there are others as well, but
those were the two prime examples. Input, yes; domination, no.
4. I think, Bob, we would all agree that there
needs to be a change, and, indeed, I doubt if any member of the
Committee would be minded to go back to the House and recommend
the status quo; the issue, as you quite rightly say, is
how do we find a better system. Turning to the proposals of the
Liaison Committee, there are two problems; one is a practical
one, which the Liaison Committee wrestles with in its report,
which is that, by definition, the Liaison Committee itself cannot
exist when the select committees do not exist, hence the appointment
of three people to stand as proxies for the Liaison Committee.
The second consideration is a more fundamental one of principle.
Whilst it may be improper for the Executive to choose those who
scrutinise it, is it proper for those who may themselves be chairs
of committee, or aspire to chairs of committee, to choose those
who are members of a committee? Now, in your report, you suggested
the chairman of the three should not be such a candidate, but
you did not exclude the other two; is there not a possibility
of a conflict of interest there?
(Lord Sheldon) You would have more than just one,
of course, it would not just be the one person choosing, it would
be the chairman plus the two deputy chairmen, plus, of course,
the chairmen of select committees would have some sort of input,
and the Whips would have some sort of input. And, if one could
perhaps widen it to have the acceptance of the membership of the
House to be involved in some sort of way, I have no answers on
this, but that would obviously be one way of taking it further.
5. Ultimately, the House is going to have to
approve what is put before it, and, indeed, in July, famously,
it refused to do so. I think it would be very difficult though,
would it not, to devise any kind of voting system by which the
House could make individual voting decisions on membership?
(Lord Sheldon) I was not thinking of that, I was thinking
of those three members, the chairman and the two deputy chairmen.
There could be a very strong feeling on those three because they
would have this, I will not say power, because, remember, they
would have the whole of the Liaison Committee to deal with as
well, and they have not been too soft a touch in the past, and
I would hope they would not be in the future.
6. Tell me a little bit about that, Bob, because
I have never myself served on the Liaison Committee, although
one or two of our members have; it is a large committee, is it
not, unusually large, in the context of the House?
(Lord Sheldon) Thirty-three; 33 members is large,
and so we suggested there should be perhaps an executive committee
formed from them, but not all 33 have the same position, of course,
because some of them are House committees and some of them are
very senior committees, Foreign Affairs, Treasury, and so on.
7. Does it cohere as a group? As you rightly
say, those who are there come from a very heterogeneous group
of committees, who have in common only the fact that they are
termed select committees. Does it work effectively and cohere
as a group?
(Lord Sheldon) I think the committee system works
pretty well. There is great variation, of course. You do have
the outstanding committees, in particular the Treasury and Civil
Service Committee, they introduced a number of innovations, very
valuable, confirmation hearings, no authority, of course, but,
nevertheless, it is a valuable thing, it is a valuable exercise
to bring people before you and say, "Can you justify your
position there?", and, of course, having weekends where they
can discuss the whole of the future work of the committee. Those
were two innovations. But a number of the committees did bring
innovations, and they were useful.
Chairman: Thank you, Bob.
Mr Winterton
8. Chairman, would Lord Sheldon confirm that,
in the appointment to select committees, the procedure has been
abused, misused, by successive Governments, not just Labour Governments
in recent times but also Conservative? I want to get that on record,
that successive Governments have actually abused their power in
selecting people to go onto select committees.
(Lord Sheldon) Unquestionably; that is undoubtedly
true, and you are a living example of it.
9. Thank you very much. I wanted to get that
on record. Secondly, would it not be a constructive procedure
to announce that there are going to be appointments to select
committees, and that anyone interested should make their interest
known, with a full application, perhaps to a senior Clerk of the
House, or it might even be the Clerk of Committees, and, therefore,
anyone and everyone who is interested could make that known and
a full list could be published so it would be transparent? And,
secondly, the procedure which you have just articulated, namely
what happened between the last Parliament and this, that three
of us were, as it were, nominated by the old Liaison Committee
to act as liaison with the Government in the new Parliament, that
that proposal could, if necessary, be put to the House, debated
and voted on, so that the three people, chairman and two deputies,
could be endorsed by the House, and that any recommendation that
they made about appointments, and, of course, the Whips could
make their views known as well to the three wise individuals,
they would have then to be voted upon by the House. And this was
really the direction in which the Liaison Committee was pointing.
Would you accept that that is a sensible interpretation?
(Lord Sheldon) Very good, on the assumption that all
three were going to be re-elected, of course.
10. Yes, of course.
(Lord Sheldon) This was one of the problems that I
foresaw, in doing that, as a general rule. In the particular case,
I could see that those three were likely to be re-elected, but
there was no certainty about it. But I think it is a useful proposition.
Joan Ruddock
11. You spoke about the assumptions, I think,
which we would recognise that people who have been the chair of
a select committee, if returned to Parliament, would wish to become
the chair again; you spoke of people who had had two years, three
years, could conceivably have had four years. I wonder if you
cannot see that that could look like a vested interest, in the
way that the Whips have a vested interest in who is on the committee;
if one is not on the committee then you cannot become the chair
of the committee. And I think that is bound to be a matter of
concern. And I would add to that the question how consistent you
think it is with an alternative career path that people have those
assumptions, assumptions which I think no Minister could possibly
have, that from Parliament to Parliament he, or she, might be
the chair of a committee.
(Lord Sheldon) Remember, it is up to the Committee
to choose the chair. In the Liaison Committee of 1983, there was
one individual that had all the Whips' backing, and it was assumed
that he would become Chairman of the Liaison Committee. I happened
to be the most senior member at that time on the Liaison Committee,
and I moved another person, Terence Higgins, who got the approval
of the whole committee. So it is up to the committee to decide,
if they have got the guts to do it. In that case, it was a very
good decision, because Terence Higgins was a very good Chairman
of the Liaison Committee.
12. But not the norm?
(Lord Sheldon) Yes.
Mr Shepherd
13. I accept there is a danger, and some say
it, about old buffers forming their own committees and it continuing.
The Committee of Liaison though must have looked at the question
of why could not this be election, say, within party caucuses,
for instance, for their proportional membership of a committee;
why was that rejected, or why was it not considered, nominations
for membership of the committee itself, so it is set out, for
instance, that you put in your name for nomination? The party
caucus, for instance, determines by secret ballot who shall be
on the various committees, it meets the criteria of the independence,
in a sense, from the whipping system, and recognises the role
of, as we are here, proportionality on the committee itself, but
the parties, by secret ballot, are internally choosing who their
members are, taking it out of the grasp of the Whips?
(Lord Sheldon) I have nothing against that at all,
except the complications of having all these numerous elections,
that is the only thing; in principle, no objection whatever.
Mr Tyler
14. I suppose I should confess, as a former
member of the Committee of Selection and a former Chief Whip,
so I have collective guilt in the eyes of you and your colleagues.
What I think I am worried about is that we might create a new
little oligarchy to replace the Whips, which might be slightly
more transparent than the usual channels, but, actually, in the
eyes of the House as a whole, would still be a comparatively small
group of establishment figures who would act really as a court
of appeal, I think, more than an initiator of nominations. And
I wonder whether the Liaison Committee, in its long discussion
of this issue, has addressed the problem of an apparently rather
incestuous, establishment approach to this, when I think the House
is looking for something that is more open?
(Lord Sheldon) Of course, they need not be appointed
for the whole of the Parliament; it is always possible to have
a situation where, at halfway through, or at some stage through,
you could make a further decision on that. But, of course, what
we are talking about is should there not be, not an alternative
career because that sounds a bit too much but at least alternative
methods of working in this place; and given the dominance of the
Executive, which has certainly grown in my time, greatly grown.
The number of people who spoke their minds freely and easily on
all occasions; after all, I spoke against the Prime Minister on
devaluation, the thing that was dearest to his heart in 1965,
I spoke against him on east of Suez, again in 1966, the second
most dearest to his heart, and he still brought me into the Government,
in due course; but that sort of thing we do not see very often
now, and if you are not going to see it in the future, and it
may be that that is so, then we must look to the select committee
system to provide that kind of scrutiny which is so essential.
Mr Knight
15. Do you think there is a case for term limits
for select committee chairmen?
(Lord Sheldon) Yes. I think there is a case for looking
at it halfway through, or something like that. But, in general,
this has not been a problem, because select committee chairmen
have not thrown their weight around, they have been dedicated
people. There is no great reward in being a select committee chairman,
other than the interest of the job, and it is a fascinating job
to be able to decide on these matters, who comes, and take your
part in the discussions and the questioning, and it is an alternative
career in that sense, that you are doing a useful parliamentary
job and you get the rewards of that and nothing else.
Chairman: Bob, I am very conscious that
we have limited time, and the report is a rich one, covering a
large number of areas, and I would like to give the Committee
a chance to look at some of the other worries.
Mr Pike
16. On the appointments, just very quickly,
I just wanted to say that is it not important that we ensure that
these three people do liaise with the Whips, because we have to
ensure that we have got the right political balance, and at the
end it would be totally wrong if we had the Labour Party deciding
who the Conservative members were, and the Liberal Democrat Party,
and we have to also look carefully at the minority parties? And
would it not also be true that we should take into account the
views of the chairs of committees, because has it not been a fact
that, at the Liaison Committee, there have been occasions when
chairmen have reported that they found it difficult to get a quorum
at their committee and maintain a quorum; and, therefore, it is
not just names, it is being sure that we have people who are prepared
to attend the meetings and maintain their attendance at the meetings?
(Lord Sheldon) I think that is undoubtedly true. You
really do need to have the Whips' involvement, because, as I said,
they know so much about the individuals, and, indeed, of course,
a party balance. I do not think there is any doubt that the question
of party balance has to be maintained. And, as far as the chairman
is concerned, when I was Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee,
I was almost invariably asked for suggested names; but I did not
make decisions myself, I did not make a decision, and even the
Conservatives asked me, on occasion, which of them I thought would
be useful on it. But you do not decide these things, you make
your suggestions, and it is the general balance that decides the
membership itself.
Chairman
17. Bob, can I return to one of the proposals
that you have made in the report, concerning the question of payment
and resources for chairs. I think that there would be a broad
consensus of support for the fact that the chairs need more resources
in order to carry out their work effectively, to support them
in the additional work which necessarily comes from being chair
of a select committee, and that the select committees themselves
perhaps need some additional resources; but the proposal for the
payment of the chairs may well have some resistance, within quarters
of the House. I would welcome a feel from you as to how united
the Liaison Committee was behind that proposal, which, of course,
would be a departure from the broad principle on which you acted
hitherto, which is that Members of the House are paid the same
salary as Members of the House; but I am open to what comment
you might want to make on that?
(Lord Sheldon) The one advantage of paying the chairmen
would be the prestige. I see no other advantage than that. I think
it is an honour to serve as chairman of a select committee, a
great honour, I think, and very rewarding in experience and interest.
Whether the question of prestige cannot be obtained in some other
way, I would prefer to see it in some other way, but prestige
is an important matter. As far as the needs of the committees
is concerned, I think there is need for better monitoring facilities.
A committee produces a report, and there has got to be a system
whereby the consequences of that report are monitored; so that
you come up with some conclusions, have they been carried out,
and if they have not been carried out why have they not been carried
out, and bring them before you. This is what we did in the Public
Accounts Committee; we informed the National Audit Office that
they keep this, and two years later to let us know how it is getting
on, and if they had not done what they said they were going to
do then they come back before us, and they come back again and
again. The trouble with select committees generally is that they
have gone on to other matters and they have not got that kind
of monitoring system that makes sure that their task is properly
effective.
Mr Salter
18. It was on that point, Bob. Although the
subject of this inquiry is nominations to select committees, you
clearly touched on the importance, or lack of importance, that
the Government attaches to select committee recommendations. Now,
with the singular exception of the Public Accounts Committee,
it has seemed to me, in my short time in this place, that pretty
significant reports of major departmental committees, I am thinking
particularly in the case of Transport, have been ignored, almost
contemptuously, at times. And I notice in one of your recommendations
you are talking in terms of the value of allowing perhaps a half
hour slot after Tuesday Questions, so that selected select committee
reports can be debated, and in prime time, on the floor of the
House. Can I just ask you to think whether or not a half hour
would be long enough, and also to give us an insight into your
thinking into this particular area?
(Lord Sheldon) It just needs some sort of impetus.
What happens is that the report is produced and is so frequently
lost sight of. And, very often, you wait a few months, you get
a reply, sometimes anodyne, from the department, and that is the
end of it; and it should not be. There has been a lot of work
that has gone into this, by people who are very knowledgeable
about these matters, who have an expertise, frequently greater
than the ministers themselves, because they are dealing with a
narrow subject. I remember very well that once, in the Treasury
Select Committee, where we went into an area of great concern
to us and we knew so much more than the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and so we just smiled when he got it wrong. You see, now that
is the kind of situation you can have. Now if you do have that
kind of level of expertise and understanding you should be able
to monitor it and find out whether they are actually doing what
needs to be done, and to go back again and again at it. In the
Liaison Committee that is what we did, of course, in our report,
because we produced our report, we got what we thought was a wholly
inadequate reply, and came back again; and if the Parliament had
continued we would have continued again and again making the life
of the minister perhaps a little more difficult.
Mr Stunell
19. I would like to pursue that line of questioning,
but I also think I ought to ask a question rather at my own expense,
because one of the concerns which has come forward is the position
of the smaller opposition parties when it comes to nominations
to select committees, which is currently the function of the Liberal
Democrats to promote, through the Selection Committee. Do you
think that your three-person team, or any variant of it, can actually
overcome that problem, of a lack of ownership, if you like, of
those nominations by the people who are promoting them?
(Lord Sheldon) I would not like to think of these
three people as a closed system, oblivious to any outside influence;
that is not the way it works at all. Whenever any Member of Parliament
is in a position of some minimum amount of power, I was approached
regularly, you live in this place, you know each other, and you
hear each other, you quarrel with each other and you understand
each other, and that leads you to perhaps a greater acceptance
of I think the point that you are making. I do not know if you
need to have four people, or five people, to do this thing, and
I think such people should recognise the importance of the point
that you are making, and if they do not, for heaven's sake, we
can shout about it.
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