Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2001
RT HON
LORD NEWTON
OF BRAINTREE,
MR PETER
RIDDELL AND
MS ANNA
COOTE
Joan Ruddock
60. One of my great concerns with the proposals
that came from the Liaison Committee was that they were vested
interests in this in that they were all chairs of select committees
anyway. We have a culture of reappointment of existing chairs
of committees of previous parliaments. In that context, if we
moved to what would be the Chairman's Panel do you believe that
no person who serves on that panel should themselves be a candidate
for a select committee? Secondly, should the term that the chair
of a select committee is to serve be limited? Finally, do you
believe we should continue with the system that exists at the
present time whereby which committees have a chair of which party
is determined in advance because clearly that is an influence
on who serves on the committee?
(Lord Newton of Braintree) Peter, do you want to take
those on this occasion and I will come in.
(Mr Riddell) On the latter, it goes back to the point
Tony has been making, that we cannot end politicisation and there
have to be some deals otherwise inevitably you will just be a
government cheerleader. There has to be some distinction, and
the distinction I would draw is between the party and the nominee
because I think it is very important, if it is agreed it should
be a Tory Chairman or Lib Dem Chairman(although it is not likely
to arise with the Lib Dems because you are not going to have more
than one on a committee if) that the committee then decides which
of the Tories. I think that is important.
61. May I ask for clarification, you do believe
that the parties should go on deciding which of the committees
should have a chair of that particular party?
(Mr Riddell) I cannot see how you do it to ensure
that the Opposition parties get it unless you do do that, given
that this is a majoritarian chamber. I went to the States ten
years ago and the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives
from 1954 to 1984. There was a chap there Bob Michael, an Illinois
Congressman, who was for 30 years a Congressman and who never
chaired a committee in his life apart from internal party committees.
I think we have some advantages over that. That can only be done
by deals between the parties on the fact of which party (but not
the identity) is chosen for the chair. Term limits. To go back
to the initial point you made, I think on the Chairman's Panel
what was suggested is perhaps two senior people from the Chairman's
Panel would augment the Deputy Speaker and other Deputy Speakers
in practice. I can be worked out which members of the Chairman's
Panel want to be on select committees. I do not know what the
figure is now but I cannot remember how many are apart from office
committees and so on. I think that can be sorted out in practice.
I am less sure about the term limits. I think there is an advantage
in a bit of turnover in practice. There is such a turnover on
the committees. There is the extraordinary turnover in the Public
Administration Committee—I think it is 66 per cent, rather
like the first day of the Somme—and Tony Wright, unlike
having to write to the relatives to comiserate with them for their
losses, was having to write to congratulate them for becoming
PPSs and member of the front bench. You do want a bit of continuity
but it is very difficult to establish a rule, especially an invented
rule, as turned out two years ago, that it should only be two
Parliaments.
Mr Kidney
62. Can I put to you that the phraseology is
wrong about a court of appeal and we want a system that is fair
and open where members can make application and give reasons for
a particular job whereas the people who make the decision against
competing applications are working to some understood criteria
where people who are turned down are told why they are turned
down and if the Whips have any say at all people are told what
that say is? Is that not the system we are actually aiming for?
(Mr Riddell) I think the hidden topic—and I
gather the PLP is having a review of the issue itself—is
the extent to which the individual parties decide on their own
selection of nominees according to whatever formula—going
back to the last question—it is done, and I think most people
would say that you should not necessarily allow Tory members to
choose which Labour member serves, apart from when the committee
meets and they decide who is chairing the committee. I think it
is going to be rough and ready. Everything to do with it is rough
and ready and it will produce obvious unfairnesses. Its aim, like
in the example Martin Salter gave, is to have a second look so
that it is not just rammed through. That is what I meant when
I was talking about political reality, that it is not just done
on the nod like the farce of the Committee of Selection but is
regarded and is saying robustly, "Perhaps it would be desirable
that at least one or two every parliament are turned over and
not recommended." It is not easy but I think there is a robustness
there.
63. Tony Newton was asked earlier who should
decide, the House or the executive, and in fact he said yes!
(Lord Newton of Braintree) Yes was to the House!
64. You are introducing this third element of
the political parties themselves doing their slate and handing
it into somebody. You are saying it is the political reality.
Again that is not necessarily what is being sought here. If I
could illustrate with a niche question. Induction of new members
is in its infancy but I could foresee new members getting their
say like everybody else in select committee applications through
an improved induction procedure. Can you not see Members outside
their party making applications to whoever the decision-maker
is?
(Mr Riddell) I do not think anyone would suggest ruling
that out but in practice you have to balance it. The suggestion
is that parties have to be much more open and democratic on voting
and so on, but it does allow for, when that has been done, what
you are working towards, and what we have talked about is someone
writing to this panel saying, "I was ignored, I happen to
know an awful lot about this." On your other point—and
here we get into training and induction—one of the things
that came across in our hearings over 18 months is that MPs are
very well trained to be campaigners, they are very good on the
welfare officers' role compared with 30 or 40 years ago. We had
Tom Sawyer on the Commission and he was very much involved with
the Labour members of the committee pre-1997 and he said, "We
never talked about scrutiny at all". I am struck in my conversations
with new Members how this is a strange world. There needs to be
much greater familiarity, training and explanation.
Mrs Fitzsimons
65. Speaking as somebody who made five attempts
to get on this Committee before I eventually got on it, do you
think we are being slightly naive here in trying to take politics
out of politics? Inevitably with 659 of us it is going to be competition.
Applying for a job is a competition and what realistically would
probably aid the process is some established criteria which were
agreed that could be referred to so at least there were a few
reference points for Members to understand if they had not been
successful (because inevitably it is a competition) and they would
understand why and also the "why" would have to be justifiable
by the people who decided to deny the application. Do you not
think that trying to apply not totally scientific criteria but
some form of criteria would give it the fairness that I think
colleagues are looking for from the system?
(Lord Newton of Braintree) My answer to that would
be yes and I would link it with the point that David raised just
now which in turn linked back to something that Nick raised earlier
on. I think greater openness about this, both in terms of what
the criteria for selection are—which is your point—and
those who have expressed interest in relation to those criteria—your
point and to some extent Nick's—could play an important
role in this. To re-emphasise, I am not suggesting you can take
the politics out of politics, but I do think that greater openness
and the strengthening of forces of something approaching an objective
judgment about the contribution people could make in that subject
area would be helpful.
66. People talk about the way to soften the
blow is to extend the membership and we have heard colleagues
talk about changing the formula, but I think—and perhaps
the Committee can look at some of the statistics—in all
the committees I have sat on, standing committees specifically,
the Opposition's ability, and especially the smaller Opposition
parties' ability to provide people to sit through the whole of
the scrutiny process of that standing committee is patchy—I
think is the honest truth—and therefore is there not a possibility
that we will create a bigger problem and a bigger imbalance by
seeking to perhaps fudge the hard decision which is that it is
a competition?
(Ms Coote) If Members are unable to attend, is it
to do with the fact they really are too busy doing other things
which they absolutely must do or is it about the priority they
attach to their committee work? Does this not come back to the
issue of the status of committees and how they sit in the order
of things that MPs want to do. If we are trying to increase and
develop a culture of scrutiny, then the aim would be to reach
the point where MPs would drop other things in order to be on
committees rather than feel it is just something they do on the
side.
(Lord Newton of Braintree) You did use the phrase
standing committees; did you mean that because that is a different
scene?
67. There are many scrutiny fora in this place
done by many committees and the question is which takes supremacy
because there is scrutiny through a bill process and then there
are the select committees and often they complete with each other.
We have to be very careful when talking about scrutiny to understand
that often it is competing committees of scrutiny that make it
hard for members to prioritise.
(Lord Newton of Braintree) I understand that and indeed
I remember in respect of an earlier Hansard Society Commission
that was looking at the scrutiny of delegated legislation, among
other things, which made the suggestion for committees of all
kinds all over the place, and I remember making exactly the same
point in my then more defensive role as Leader of the House along
those lines. I do not think that problem can be denied. We have
sought however to address it in various ways in the report. One
is by suggesting that more emphasis should be given to committee
work on at least one day a week by comparison with what are relatively
routine sittings of the Chamber. There should be an adjustment
of the priorities there. And, equally, there should be an enhancement
of the size of select committees so that the burden of some of
the work could be done more on a sub-committee or rapporteur basis,
in other words, looking at new ways for select committees doing
the work. None of those will completely avoid those tensions but
they will reduce them.
Mr Shepherd
68. Just responding to Tony's points—and
the point was well made by Lorna—serving on the Public Administration
Select Committee (I had a particular interest so I wanted to)
I noticed there was a great deal of difficulty, particularly on
the Conservative side, in supplying members. We were over-stretched
so people were asked to keep their names on the books of select
committees perhaps whilst they tried to find someone, and there
is a genuine conflict between standing committees, which is the
legislative process of this country, and the select committee
process, Lorna is right about the scrutiny function of those.
Peter mentioned a court of appeal. Clearly from the House of Commons'
focus on the Committee of Selections' nominations the House wants
some reform and hence why we are sitting here now. But who is
appealing to whom and for what? If we follow the instruction that
the Chairman of Ways and Means and senior Deputies, who actually
performed the role of the Committee of Selection, took it over
and owned it, the appeal is obviously the House of Commons, just
as it is in theory at present.
(Lord Newton of Braintree) Not only in theory in recent
times.
(Mr Riddell) One possibility would be that you would
have the parties on whatever form you had in relation to the balance
of membership of committees putting up names. They would then
be known and for people who felt aggrieved in some way, in that
sense it would be a court of appeal. The term "court of appeal"
would obviously not be an appropriate term but it has that sense
where someone aggrieved can raise that issue. These very experienced
parliamentarians could have a look at it and see whether the person
had a fair case or not. As I suggested, it would be quite good
if a couple of times every parliament it did just to prove themselves,
but of course the final decision would be the House's naturally.
We do not know what would have happened in July if this procedure
had applied, we do not know what would have happened in 1992 with
Mr Winterton. It gives a further chance of looking at it; that
is the key thing.
69. But the argument that has gone round the
House is that this is not an appropriate function for the Whips,
it is an effective method of finding people but it does not meet
the challenges of competence, application and all the things one
seeks from this and therefore the body that would be best placed
to do this in an independent way without applications being channelled
through the Whips would be the one that was outlined perhaps by
Philip Norton last week. They would have probably the greatest
competence in this House to assess the capabilities of former
and existing members. I say that because there is the problem
of new parliaments that come in. They know these qualifications
and the spirit of the nature of the work that they do in the House
itself does remove them to a certain extent from that partisan
bias or challenge. What is your response to putting it so face
on?
(Lord Newton of Braintree) I have already indicated
there will be a flavour of our own personal views in some of our
responses. I have to say I personally am more attracted by what
you suggest, Richard, than perhaps might have been implied by
Peter's remarks, not that I would wish to distance myself from
him in any way. I do not know whether he wants to comment further.
Putting it in the vernacular, if I thought you could pull it off
and it would be accepted, I see a lot of attractions in what you
are suggesting, and I suspect you will not be alone in that.
(Mr Riddell) I think it would be difficult to take
the parties out of it completely. That is why I am suggesting
a multi-tier thing rather than the old single approach which,
in pure terms, has considerable attractions. I wonder in practice
whether it would be do-able, if you have 320, or whatever it is
at present, Labour backbenchers and whether they are all going
to write in and say, "I want this and that" and whether
there will be a filtering process. Ideally yours is the preferred
solution but I am just sceptical in practice.
Mr Pike
70. Firstly, on the point Anna was making in
relation to Lorna's point on the clashing of committees, would
you not accept that it is not often a question of members deciding
what they believe is the most important but that the whips expect
members to go to a standing committee if it is dealing with legislation
and will pull them out of select committees to do that, so that
does put members in an extremely difficult position. Secondly,
on the point Peter was making that whichever party is in government
will decide who will chair which select committee, was that not
best underlined by the Conservative Government in 1992-97 when
the Deregulation Committee was established and the Government
decided it was going to be a Conservative chair and therefore
had to make another chair available for Labour in one of the existing
select committees and, indeed, appointed somebody as a minister
to change the chair during mid-term. In fact the Environment Select
Committee was dealt with in that way at that time because the
Government decided that the Deregulation Committee was too important
to give to an opposition chairman. On the point about select committees,
is there not a danger that whatever the flaws are in the system
we fail to recognise some select committees have done extremely
good work over the years—
(Lord Newton of Braintree) Yes.
71. Does that not need underlining? My first
select committee was Environment under Hugh Rossi which published
a number of reports which the then Government did not like, most
of which have proved to be very wise and ahead of their time,
and I think there is a danger that we fail to do that. The final
point I want to make, and it has come out when we were talking
about Chairman of Ways and Means and the Chairmen's Panel, do
not the people on the Chairmen's Panel in their job as chairing
Westminster Hall and committees now as part of their duties exercise
an impartial role, and does that not underline therefore if we
want to use them in this additional way that the House accept
they do already act quite impartially on behalf of the House if
the House were to function in the way we would wish?
(Lord Newton of Braintree) The first of those was
directed to you, Anna.
(Ms Coote) And the third one to a certain extent.
On the first one, this clash of timing, I would hope that better
or different management of the time of the House would make that
problem at least a lesser one than it is now.
72. The clerks are not always available, that
is one of the problems.
(Ms Coote) Is it not a bigger thing about when the
standing committees and select committees are scheduled, so that
people can attend both? If more time were given to committee work
anyway, then one would assume it would be easier for members to
attend each of them and clerks as well. So I think it is an issue
about time management. On the other point, is it not true and
should we not recognise that some select committees have done
good work, of course we all know there are some really excellent
committee chairmen and they have done some excellent inquiries.
I think the danger is that the reputation of those individual
events and individual chairmen over-shadows the underlying problem,
which is that an awful lot of members are ill-prepared for the
job, are almost entirely untrained for it, take ages if not a
lifetime to learn how to be an effective committee member and
the House itself takes apparently little or no collective responsibility
for building up the capacity of its members to do that job. For
anyone in industry, indeed anyone in the voluntary sector where
I work, it is just assumed that if you have people coming in who
are new to the job, they do not know how to do it, they get trained,
or they have a career development process. There is nothing like
that in the House and I think there needs to be.
Chairman
73. Thank you for those trenchant remarks, Anna.
(Mr Riddell) I think this touches on a rather broader
argument which is if you are going to change the culture of scrutiny—and
there are some procedural changes which we have suggested—a
lot of it is to do with how you lot use your time and how occupied
you are. A lot of the power is in your hands. I agree entirely,
there are some extremely good select committees, and we have given
a number of examples in the report of innovation produced by various
committees in various ways—the Treasury Committee having
its combination going to the Bank of England—proper accountability
which has given rise to major constitutional change. But the thing
is to ensure it is more systematic. Our feeling at present is
it is a difficult balance but, when we talk about core functions
and core duties, we are not saying the House tells the committees
how to do it but that they should every year look at estimates,
they should look at the regulatory bodies. We also use the phrase
that Parliament is at the apex of the system of scrutiny. There
are lots of bodies out there doing things, but you do not use
them enough. It does not necessarily involve more members' time
or more resources, it is looking in particular areas at what is
going on. For instance, some could be very interested in air traffic
control and that would involve the Transport Committee keeping
in touch with what is going on. It probably is going to report
in the next year on that for obvious reasons. There is a whole
range of quasi public bodies which in a sense escape scrutiny.
They are out there. It does not always involve sitting around
in a horseshoe like this, it involves rapporteurs and members
of staff keeping an eye on what is going on and alerting the committee
and saying, "Actually there is something wrong here."
It does not have to be done every year. I think that is what we
are suggesting, that committees retain their independence but
with some duties and, as Anna rightly said, some pilots and experiments
which extend scrutiny enormously and also deal with what I believe
at present is quite a lot of wasted time.
(Lord Newton of Braintree) I do not disagree at all
with what has been said but I would want to underline the point
which emerged partly from Peter's question or comment on something
Anna was saying about clerks needing to be in two places at the
same time. We ought to clearly acknowledge—and I noticed
Joan had obviously picked up this point—that anything remotely
like the proposals we have sketched out here would require a significant
increase in the resources made available to select committees.
I happen to think that is sensible and important anyway. Of all
the changes made in Parliament during the period when I was here,
and I can say this because I had nothing whatever to do with it,
the introduction of departmental select committees, for which
Norman St John-Stevas takes the lion's share of the credit, at
the back end of the 1970s was the most important. It has been
hugely successful, in my view. The best select committees have
made a real contribution to the development of the role of Parliament
and the development of public policy. What we sought to do here—you
can call it incrementalist if you like—was to build on that
to respond to new pressures and new needs in Parliament, but it
would involve not just the change in culture we have talked about
but a willingness to invest more resources in select committees,
both the resource of MPs and the resource of the support they
would need to do that job effectively.
(Ms Coote) On the question of resources, I absolutely
agree with what Tony said. There is the issue of communication
and how committees communicate their work, both to colleagues
and to the outside world. We were very struck by the poor quality
of the presentation of reports and findings by committees. We
described them as 1950s mathematics text books. There is very
little effort made to present them in ways that people can easily
grasp. We were struck by the fact that there were 1,083 media
relations staff in Whitehall and one, possibly one, media relations
or information officer attached to the select committees. There
is obviously an imbalance here. Communications are a very important
part of the—
Mr Pike
74. Not a spin doctor!
(Ms Coote) It is not about spinning, it is about communication,
and that must be indigenous to the work of Parliament. It is very
important and under-rated.
Mr Knight
75. Do you think we should pay select committee
chairmen? What is your view on the proposal to introduce the automatic
removal of a member of a select committee for prolonged non-attendance?
(Lord Newton of Braintree) On the first question,
it is one I have thought about and I suppose really worried about
a bit. I can see pluses and minuses, I am afraid I am not going
to give you a clear-cut yes or no answer here. I would not want
to go down the path of paying chairmen of select committees unless
and until I was confident that this did not just become another
part of the whips' patronage system. If you can solve some of
the problems we talked about earlier, then I think it would be
worth considering because to do it well, certainly in the context
we have sought to set out in the report, and it has been implied
by much of the discussion this morning, it is a large and demanding
job and the effectiveness with which it is done is heavily dependent
on the input, skills and time of the chairman. So I would not
rule it out, but I certainly would not want to do it unless one
was confident of the basis on which these appointments were being
made, and that it took into account more of the factors we have
been talking about and was not just yet another gift in the hands
of the whips. I am afraid I have put that very bluntly but that
is my view.
(Mr Riddell) We had a very interesting seminar from
Robert Sheldon last week, Chairman of the Liaison Committee, who,
along with Archie Kirkwood and others was actually a catalyst
for a lot of the thinking of the Liaison Committee, and it was
the first time we had discussed these issues. It produced quite
a lot of reservations about payment because then it was viewed
as patronage. I think that provided you ensure it is not patronage,
then it should be paid. I know that something which was raised
last week was the issue of alternative career paths. I do not
think it is as simple as saying, "Front bench, back bench"
because in practice people move from one to the other and in some
cases it is disappointment and in others not, and people move
in and out, and I think that is a thoroughly good thing. I believe
that provided you get that insulation, there should be payment,
obviously at a level to be agreed. A more difficult issue is paying
the senior opposition member because immediately people say, "Hold
on, what is a senior opposition member", with some fairness
in the current Parliament. But I would do that. The problem at
present is that the executive has grown enormously with PPSs,
despite devolution we still have as large a government as we had
in 1997, it is just people have moved somewhere else, and we now
have three times as many ministers in the Commons as a century
ago when we ruled a rather large empire, for understandable reasons
I think. I think there is an automatic assumption that people
want to go to the front bench, rather than saying, "Actually
I want to do a select committee." The interesting example
is Chris Mullin. I remember when Chris Mullin became a minister
I talked to him about it—and he went public on this so I
am not breaching any confidence—and he said, "I just
want to see what it is like." Of course, as we know, at the
election he said, "Actually I prefer being on select committees".
Very few people have his attitude to life in that way. A payment
does not necessarily say, "You shall be purely a select committee
person all your career", it is much more likely that people
will go in and out, have a period on the front bench, then go
out, so it does offer an alternative rather than immediately saying,
"Whoopee, I have been made a PPS, I come off select committees."
There was an enormous turnover in the last Parliament of members
of select committees. A few became ministers but a lot of people
became PPSs and I wonder if that is a sensible trade-off.
Chairman
76. The turnover was almost equal between the
two sides of the House.
(Mr Riddell) Absolutely, it is not a particularly
partisan point in any way. I do find the number of PPSs rather
startling.
Joan Ruddock
77. When Peter was answering my previous question
about which party should control the chairs of which committees,
there is an obvious way, there could be a rotation from the current
fixed position so that it was not determined as at present. That
would take out another aspect of the patronage and I think that
is quite an important aspect of patronage. On your report, the
summary we have says that key posts should be paid and I would
like clarification. You have said the senior opposition member
would be paid, but if there were to be rapporteurs then the chances
are that the rapporteur would be doing an equivalent amount of
work and therefore it would raise the question of, are we even
talking about three posts?
(Mr Riddell) Not easy.
(Lord Newton of Braintree) Clearly the detail of this
would need thinking through and there is no point pretending otherwise.
I was asked a general question by Greg and I do not think I can
improve on the answer, which is that I would not rule out payment.
I was thinking primarily of the chairmen and I would not want
to rule out other things, but it would need very careful thinking-through,
provided you had tackled the appointment process, so to speak.
None of us replied to Greg's second point, which was whether people
should be tipped off for non-attendance. I certainly think in
a world in which the demand exceeded the supply, that would be
sensible—were such a world to exist and it is patchy, I
suspect, at the moment, as Richard implied. If the purpose is
to enhance the role of select committees in their overall contribution
to Parliament and public affairs, and to increase the importance
attached to them, then I think that should be reflected in saying,
"If you are not interested, we will look for somebody who
is."
Mr Winterton
78. How would Tony reply to the situation which
occurred in the Procedure Committee yesterday where at least three,
if not four, members of the Procedure Committee were otherwise
engaged and they chose not to come to the Procedure Committee?
Some were on a standing committee and at least one other was on
a select committee, Trade and Industry, because he felt the inquiry
they were undertaking was on that occasion more important, albeit
I would question it, than the inquiry that was being undertaken
by the Procedure Committee.
(Lord Newton of Braintree) As in almost any body which
might have a rule of such a kind, many charity trust boards, for
example, you would clearly want some small print that recognised
good cause or something. You would not want it to be, "Three
meetings missed and you are out, regardless of all circumstances",
but something which allowed you to say, "If you are not interested,
we have other people who are" I think would be sensible and
reasonable.
(Ms Coote) I agree, there has to be some flexibility
for those sorts of circumstances, but if you are going to look
at attendance and perhaps strike off members who do not attend
regularly, I think it is important there is a recognition that
attendance means attending and not just coming in for ten minutes.
I have seen this quite often and that is not attendance. If you
are going to have that rule, they have to attend for a reasonable
proportion of time.
Mrs Fitzsimons
79. The truth of the matter is, as we all know,
there are some select committees which people do not want to go
on and, I am sorry, Nick, having duly served under your great
chairmanship, Procedure is one, primarily because most people
do not realise until they are on it and get into it the importance
of it and the power it can actually have. The truth is that whips
ask members to do them favours by going on committees so at least
they can nominally function. How do you feel about being honest
and, if you are allowing members to have choice to focus on what
they consider from their constituency basis is the important thing
for them, saying some committees just do not attract enough members
through pure choice?
(Mr Riddell) I think this is partly a matter of duty.
You might say to your constituents in Rochdale that you are doing
all these wonderful things by turning up at 10 o'clock at night
when you are voting, and there is an element of truth in that,
but there are aspects of an MP's life which are duties and if
you are put on a committee you should do the duty. I am accepting
there are differences though. One of the arguments is that you
would be able to operate more flexibly if you had larger committees
and if you had sub-committees too it would give some members of
the committee a more fulfilling role. One of the things we suggest
which we have not talked about is finance and audit where, apart
from the PAC, some committees where money is so important, like
Defence, Social Security and so on, do not look enough at estimates.
That is not going to interest all members but if you had a sub-committee
looking at the financial side, drawing on the various resources
which we suggest, that could appeal to a number of members. One
of the things which we do feel keenly is the range of experimentation.
My observation as a journalist of the House as well as discussing
this is that change does not happen unless people regard it as
permanent, and that it is very dangerous to experiment—and
this was one of the objections to TV in the 1980s—because
once you make a change everyone will assume it is going to be
permanent. Just as journalists are always supposed to have read
Evelyn Waugh and Scoop, I rather feel perhaps the clerks
have all studied Francis Cornford and his Guide to Cambridge Politics
and the Danger of the Wedge and so on. Anna was talking about
other organisations. You ought to be willing to experiment and
possibly fail. One of the things we have suggested, and this is
one of the things Mr Salter took up last week, is the idea of
having a half-hour session on select committee reports and he
wondered whether it was long enough. The idea behind this was
drawing attention to the report. It may not work out, it may fail,
but I think you need to be prepared for failure. A number of the
other ideas we have are to broaden the debate and to try out things
because I do feel there is a sense that we cannot do anything
unless we are willing to accept it is going to be here in a century's
time. I think that is dangerous, it is much better to experiment.
Many select committees do but some of that involves procedural
changes. We can have it time-limited, have a sunset clause.
(Ms Coote) There is a link between not knowing about
something and not being enthusiastic about going on a committee,
so there is a link between attendance and training or development
of the skills and knowledge of the members. We have quoted in
our report one chairman of a committee saying that he could not
get members to attend for those sessions when they were looking
at finance because they did not know how to scrutinise departmental
finances, so they were not interested in it. So some of the problems
about getting members to attend the more so-called boring meetings
might be dealt with by training, induction and development of
the knowledge of the members, so they could understand why it
was necessary to go on and felt they could contribute. Who is
going to want to sit on a committee if they do not understand
and feel they have nothing to contribute?
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