Examination of Witness (Questions 233-239)
THE RT
HON ROBIN
COOK MP
WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2002
Chairman
233. Leader of the House, can I very warmly
welcome you here to this afternoon's meeting of the House of Commons
Select Committee on Procedure. We are very grateful to you for
the memorandum which you have submitted, at our request, on the
important subject of Parliamentary questions. We believe that
this is a very, very critical and important inquiry that we are
undertaking, and as I think you will be aware from a meeting we
had this morning it goes, I think, in tandem very much with the
important work which you are leading and which is currently being
undertaken by the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House.
All Members of the Committee present will be asking questions,
and may I begin with the first one which is fairly general. What,
as Leader of the House, and from your experience of many years
as a Member of Parliament, are the strengths and weaknesses of
the current system of Parliamentary questions? What part does
a reform of the questions procedure play in the wider process
of modernising Parliament, in which you are currently so much
involved? Which of the proposals set out in your memorandum, which
we have all received and read, do you regard as the most important?
(Mr Cook) Thank you very much, Chairman.
Can I just first say that I am very keen that our two Committees
should work closely together. It would not be helpful to what
I think is our joint interests in taking forward improvement and
modernisation of questions if the Modernisation and Procedure
Committees were not to co-operate very closely. I warmly welcome
the Inquiry the Committee is carrying out and I hope we can secure
a timetable in which the Modernisation Committee in its report
to the House can draw on and buttress the recommendations that
you may come to in the course of your study. On the question of
the strengths and weaknesses of question time, question time is,
of course, at the heart of our process of scrutiny of government
ministers. As you will be aware, I repeatedly assert the principle
that good scrutiny makes for good government. That is my watchword
and I want scrutiny to work well. One can then, of course, ask
questions as to whether or not the way in which we use question
time is really securing the best, most effective, scrutiny that
it could. I will here, if I may, respond to the second element
of your question, which was what are the most important elements
in my memorandum towards modernisation. I would, if I may, identify
two very important strategic objectives, which I hope will be
shared by your Committee. The first is we really have to do something
about the length of notice for oral question time. It was only
when we began the study in the Modernisation Committee that I
discovered for the first time that the tabling period of two weeks
which we have at present is, actually, not the minimum it is the
maximum. It is the first day on which you can actually put down
questions for oral questions. Of course, since everybody does
it that day it has also become the minimum. However, the minimum
Standing Order provides for oral questions to be tabled a couple
of days in advance of their answer, not that there would be any
point whatsoever in attempting to do that. I think we have got
somehow to achieve standing orders that reflect the spirit in
which these standing orders were originally written. If you look
back over the last few months there are some spectacular cases
where the length of notice for oral questions has vitiated the
topicality of question time. If I just take the Foreign Office
questions, which I am particularly familiar with because of my
previous role, when we came back in January there was not a single
question on India, Pakistan and Kashmir, despite the fact that
that was the lead front page story on foreign affairs. The next
month there was not a single question on Gibraltar, although there
was enormous interest in the negotiations with Spain—so
much so that the Foreign Secretary did a PNQ at the end of question
time because there was no question about it. Last week we did
not have a single question in the Foreign Office question time
on the Middle East, either the intifada or on the peace process.
There was a question on Iraq which people used to get round to
the Middle East but there was nothing on the Middle East. This
gulf between the subject matter of question time and what is of
interest to our constituents outside arose because all these questions
were tabled a minimum of two weeks in advance and where there
was a recess (in the case of Christmas and the New Year) tabled
over a full month in advance. I do not think Parliament is going
to restore itself as a central point of national debate unless
we are talking about what the world outside is talking about,
and we have to dramatically shorten that period of notice for
question time. The other point I would stress is that I really
do think we have to move with the times and allow new technology
into the process in which we prepare, table and output our questions.
Interestingly, there is quite a large lobby for this among the
Whitehall departments whose Parliamentary Clerks are responsible
for chasing up questions once they arrive at their department.
At the present time we can, effectively, lose 24 hours between
the question being tabled by the Member and actually surfacing
with them. Even a few hours makes a big difference if you have
only got three or four days in which to answer a question. Tabling
the question by e-mail and putting the Table Office on e-mail
would greatly speed up the process in which the question can move
between the Table Office and the government departments, and gives
a better chance to give a fair answer in fair time to Members'
questions. It would also greatly increase the convenience and,
therefore, the effectiveness of Members of Parliament. There is
really no reason why a Member has to be in the House to table
a question. Why should a Member who is absent on Parliamentary
business be prevented from tabling a question? I would only end
in a spirit of clarity, that when all is said and done the House
of Lords now tables questions by e-mail; why on earth can we not
do so in the House of Commons?
Chairman: Maybe we have something to learn from
the other place. Just so that you are aware, Mr Cook, we do have
Professor Hinds here who is advising this Committee on technology
and electronic communication. So we do have an expert here who
clearly has heard what you have said. I now pass the questioning
to John Burnett
Mr Burnett
234. What do you think, therefore, would be
the minimum feasible time for notice for an oral question? Would,
say, two days' notice allow sufficient time for ministers and
officials to be properly briefed? In that connection, I would
like to know (not ever having been a minister) especially when
you are a new minister—and you yourself became Secretary
of State very shortly after the 1997 election—how much input
time was devoted to preparing for questions? What sort of time
was devoted by your officials preparing you not just for the question
but the supplementaries as well?
(Mr Cook) The answer to the first question is quite
a lot of time, but then one should add the rider, as is the nature
of political life—and I think we are all familiar with this,
although ministers are not—quite a lot of time at the last
possible moment.
235. What is "quite a lot of time"?
(Mr Cook) I would give the morning over to question
time.
236. The whole morning?
(Mr Cook) I would try to keep my diary clear for the
morning question time so I could focus. In the nature of the Foreign
Secretary's job, keeping a diary clear is an impossible task because
something happens somewhere in the world and you have to find
time out to deal with it. But you would start with a clean sheet
so you could focus on question time in the afternoon. In terms
of tabling, that of course is consistent with a pretty short period
of notice. I do have, of course, when I sit down to do that (as
the present Foreign Secretary will have), extraordinarily detailed
papers that have been diligently prepared by officials. The answer
to your second question is a lot of effort goes in by departments
preparing for question time, possibly sometimes on angles that
might never come up. However, if you are the official responsible
you want to cover all angles. I think, therefore, I would have
to say to the Committee that there is a trade-off between shortening
the period of notice and, as I recommend in my submission, the
number of questions for which there is an available quota each
time. When you pick it up you get a great big loose-leaf folder
and that goes, in the same detail and the same voluminous background,
up to question 40. I feel for the poor official who has slaved
for days to produce their answer to question 39 in the full and
demoralising knowledge that it will never, ever be reached. I
think if we are going to ask officials to do the preparation at
a much shorter period we have to radically alter the number of
questions we are asking them to prepare for. I have effectively
suggested we halve the numbers and I do not think I am being unrealistic
in what I propose there.
237. And minimum period of notice?
(Mr Cook) I have not got any hard and fast prejudice
on this matter and possibly not all my colleagues would concur,
but I would personally think two days is not unreasonable, but
I add the rider it has to be two working days. That I think will
be reasonable.
Chairman
238. Before I call in Mr Iain Luke, could you
indicate whether you believe that it is in any way abusing Parliamentary
questions if a Member of your own party, or even myself as a Member
of the opposition, would perhaps get in touch with your office
and say to your Private Secretary "The purpose of my question
is this. This is what I am trying to find out"? Do you think
that that is an abuse of questions or do you think, actually,
it is the best use of questions?
(Mr Cook) I would not regard it as an abuse at all.
In fact, if the Member has a particular angle that they want covered
it is entirely rational for the Member to let the minister know
what is the particular point he is trying to elicit so that the
minister can focus on that point. Members are entitled to the
best possible answer and if they give ministers warning of the
particular angle they are looking for, that increases the chances
that they will get answers to the point that concerns them.
Mr Luke
239. We have talked about this in previous sessions
with other people on the actual number of questions. We were looking
at (and you mentioned halving the actual questions), including
perhaps ten questions per session of question time giving more
focus and, perhaps, even a categorisation of the actual questions
to be asked, given the actual issues of the day, so that we have
much more focus on question times and get more detailed answers
back.
(Mr Cook) I think that is a very interesting question.
At paragraph 29 of my paper I suggest the new quota that we should
have for oral question time. For instance, I suggest that we slash
the number of questions that are tabled now from 40 to 20. I have
never known anyone to reach question 30 and very rarely go anywhere
near question 25. In modern times we have never, to my knowledge,
reached question 20, although I think there was one case with
the Ministry of Defence recently where three were linked and three
were withdrawn.
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