Examination of Witness (Questions 20 -
24)
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER 2001
RT HON
LORD SHELDON
Mr Winterton
20. Could I come back to the payment or provision
of additional resources for the chairmen of select committees.
Do you believe, Lord Sheldon, that there should be an opportunity
for people to serve Parliament, i.e., on the one hand, as ministers
serving in a Government for the benefit of the country; and, secondly,
people who perhaps do not want that particular opportunity but
people who do want to serve Parliament and the House of Commons
for the benefit of the country; and that it is important to attract
the very best people to do that, as well as to attract people
into government and serving in a particular government? And would
you not accept that perhaps by offering some incentive, now what
that incentive would be we could talk about at great length, but
that it is appropriate that there should be these two channels
which are available to Members of Parliament, to serve Parliament
or to serve Parliament through being a member of a government,
and that both are important and both must attract the very highest
calibre of individual man or woman? And, therefore, those that
take the parliamentary channel would very much appreciate, if
I may say this to my colleague Andrew Stunell, they would take
account of the importance of the smaller parties, the minority
parties in this House, and the role that they must play and the
fact that they should have their representation within committees.
So do you think that, again, is a fair appraisal of what the Liaison
Committee was seeking to do in establishing people who were independent
of government and political parties, albeit elected here under
party flags, to decide how people should, in fact, be appointed
to committees, including minority parties?
(Lord Sheldon) If I can deal with the point about
payment; if this goes through in the way that I hoped it might
then the authority of the chairmen would be greatly enhanced,
the authority of the select committees would be greatly enhanced,
and it would be an alternative career that would be very valuable
indeed, and membership of that committee could be more valuable
perhaps in the future than it has been in the past. There are
two careers, the ministerial career and the select committee career;
there is another one, of course, the person who speaks very well
as a backbencher on various occasions, but there is only a handful
of those who really make their name in that sort of way; the most
important one, of course, is government and if you are not in
the government and you see that you are not going to be in the
government then you should not feel you have got a diminished
role, there is a role for you, you have been elected, and if you
are not in the Government you can still look and make suggestions
to the Government and press for things, and the select committees
is a way of doing it in a very thorough, detailed manner, with
much greater authority than most people will have on their own
account.
Mr Kidney
21. Bob, you were asked a question about the
size of the Liaison Committee, you said perhaps the way to reform
it would be to elect an executive committee from amongst them.
What do you make of the Hansard Society's suggestion that the
chairs of all the domestic committees should come off the Liaison
Committee and that that is not the right place for them?
(Lord Sheldon) They all occupied a lesser role in
our deliberations because of the point that you made; but you
mentioned the Hansard Society, for which I must express my thanks
as well. The precursor to all this, perhaps I should just mention
it, was that we sent out, about two years ago, some complaints
that we had had, to see if chairmen of select committees found
that they agreed with those complaints; we did not get very much,
so I suggested that really this is the time for discussion of
the role for select committees and bringing other people into
it. So we got other people involved, and fortunately the Hansard
Society came in on this and the London School of Economics gave
some assistance as well, and we had a one-day conference, which
brought everything to a head, on which we produced our reports
of the kind that you mentioned. But I thought I would just like
to get that in, if I might.
Ann Coffey: One of the ways of solving
the problem would be to, in fact, increase the size of the select
committee, so that more Members were able to sit on select committees.
Do you have any view about that? I gather some of the larger select
committees work on a sub-committee basis, which is a way of managing
a large number of members, but, clearly, if more Members were
able to sit on select committees, in fact, on them all, we would
not have this problem about deciding who should go on, because
that would be available to everybody. Do you have a view about
that?
Chairman
22. Can I just couple with that, Bob, a question
about another part of your report, where you recommended that
where a Member, for no good reason, had failed to attend over
a period of time the chair might recommend to an appropriate panel
that that person be removed. I see the logic of that and I think
the question of attendance is one we should focus on, not focus
unfairly, but the power to withdraw somebody from a select committee
would be a novel one and might attract criticism. Perhaps you
could respond to both parts?
(Lord Sheldon) It is, of course, essential that a
member of a select committee must be interested in the work of
that select committee and attend that committee. Eleven, I think,
is pretty large, actually, I would not like to see it exceeded
in that; in my experience, if it is well attended you get such
a range of views, it is more than adequate, and in some cases
there are problems. In the Public Accounts Committee, for example,
whereas years ago you had difficulties getting people to join
the Public Accounts Committee, in the more recent years I had
to send a note round stopping everybody, fifteen minutes is all
they had; and this is not the time for reminiscence.
Ann Coffey
23. Can I just follow on quickly. Some of the
select committees examine the work of departments that are very
large, Environment, Transport, and how they have dealt with that
is actually divide the committee into areas of specialty; and,
I agree, if you are having a select committee it is difficult
to have more than 11 or 12 people asking people who give evidence.
But there is a facility for dividing people, and, in fact, some
of the committees have done it. So you could perhaps have a select
committee, Treasury Select Committee, that had 20 members, but,
in fact, decided itself which aspects of the Treasury's work it
would look at, and a smaller number of people looking at those
aspects of its work?
(Lord Sheldon) There may be a case for that in certain
instances, but, of course, sub-committees can always be arranged,
and so we had the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, a Treasury
Committee and the Civil Service Committee was a sub-committee.
That worked reasonably well, but I am open to further suggestions,
of course.
Mr Knight
24. Can I take you back to Nicholas Winterton's
point about payment for select committee chairmen. You said you
felt it would be good for the prestige of the chairmen, but you
did not appear to be fired with enthusiasm on this particular
proposal. Do you not think there is actually an argument that
the workload of a select committee chairman warrants the payment,
because if you look at, say, the workload of a minister of state,
is not the workload of a select committee chairman roughly comparable
with that? Do we not also, as a House, expect select committee
chairmen not to have the same level of outside interests, say,
as a backbencher? And if we are expecting the select committee
chairmen not to have outside interests, or certainly to the same
extent, and to be on top of his brief, is not there an argument
for payment on those grounds alone, totally disregarding any prestige
that may follow?
(Lord Sheldon) I think you are on stronger grounds
when you put it that way. For prestige, I would hope that the
position of being a chairman of an important select committee,
with perhaps the greater enhancement of its standing as a result
of your future decisions on these matters, might be sufficient
to produce that kind of prestige. As far as offsetting some of
the disadvantages of earning a bit of money outside, that is a
separate point; it may be that this Committee might look at that
more favourably. I was rather more concerned with the other aspect.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Bob, and
we are very grateful to you for your guidance to us. We will try
to respond as quickly as we can to the problems of the present
appointment system, and we are very grateful to you for your guidance.
Thank you so much.
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