Examination of Witness (Questions 240-259)
THE RT
HON ROBIN
COOK MP
WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2002
Chairman
240. On a Thursday, I think, we have done, mainly
because of absenteeism.
(Mr Cook) Because of withdrawals. Maybe 25 might be
more prudent than 20, but we are certainly never going to come
anywhere near question 40. I think Mr Luke is asking a slightly
different question, to which I am quite sympathetic, and that
is that we should take question time and look at it in ways in
which we can increase the exchanges on a particular theme or a
particular topic. For instance, if we go to question time in the
House of Lords, they will have four questions for half-an-hour
and each is more or less timed at seven-and-a-half to eight minutes.
So you will get a mini-debate, as it were, on that topic before
you move on. I think there is a very rational case to be made
that at present in the Commons we try to cram in too much and,
as a result, possibly are not as effective as we might be in having
a serious exchange on some issues. If you were to do it on that
basis there would need to be greater discipline on the part of
Members to be present, or if they cannot be present to withdraw
in sufficient time for another to take their place. We could do
that by having 15 questions originally tabled and if up to five
questions are withdrawn from the original ten the rest will move
up.
Sir Robert Smith
241. Presumably, really, if it is a much shorter
notice period, the chances are people are a bit more up-to-speed
on their diary when they table the question, and are less likely
to need to withdraw.
(Mr Cook) That seems a perfectly rational inference
and, indeed, could be one of the bonuses of the shorter notice
period.
242. When we were taking evidence from the civil
servants, there was the thought of reducing the workload by reducing
the number of questions. So there is seriously no risk in the
department that they will say "Okay, this is no 40, we will
not need to do a big briefing on it" and they actually will
do all the work right the way down?
(Mr Cook) I think I probably have to be honest and
say I do not very often find myself reading to the end of the
briefing on question 40, but in terms of volume it was identical
to the questions that went beforehand, and if you are the official
I guess you cannot take the risk that you are suddenly going to
be found to have question 40 reached. It must be a soul-destroying
task. Realistically, though, if we are going to ask officials
to produce briefings in a shorter period of time—and I am
sympathetic to that—we also have to relieve them of work
which, frankly, is wasted effort and must be a very demoralising
task.
Ms Munn
243. Can we move on to the issue of open questions,
which is a matter we have discussed with other witnesses. At the
moment we only have open questions to the Prime Minister and we
wondered whether there is reason for, perhaps, looking at extending
it to departmental question time. One of the reasons might be
that that might allow for topicality if there was a number of
open questions and a number of closed ones, which would narrow
down the possibility of closed questions (?), but obviously balanced
against that we get the issue that we know a lot of Prime Minister's
Question Time is really about political point-scoring. The amount
of preparation time, again, that goes into what could possibly
come up could also be detrimental. What are your thoughts on those
two angles of open questions?
(Mr Cook) I probably should declare a personal prejudice
here. I am not attracted to open questions and, indeed, I think
that we tend to use open questions not to elucidate facts or to
shed light but to try and trip each other up. If I take an example
from today, the first question for the Prime Minister was on how
many school playgrounds we had sold recently, to which the Prime
Minister gave an extremely competent and professional reply. I,
frankly, do not think it is the real world of politics to expect
the Prime Minister of Great Britain to be up to speed on how many
playgrounds have been sold in the last few months. If a Member
wants to pursue that question the Member is perfectly entitled
to do so, but it seems to me to be more rational from the Member's
point of view, and everybody else's point of view, if that is
given by means of a specific question, so that the notice is there.
I would not want that culture of what I sometimes call party political
mud-wrestling to be extended to the other departmental question
time as well. I think if a Member has an issue that they want
to pursue then the honest and proper way to do it is to table
a question about it. If in the course of the exchanges they can
then display to the Government an inadequate answer it is all
the more impressive when the Member can give that they received
advance notice. There should be room somewhere in the major question
times for there to be a question, possibly to be tabled overnight,
to be taken in the last five or ten minutes of question time—or,
indeed, the first five or ten minutes of question time—but
I think it entirely reasonable that if Members have an issue they
want to pursue particularly if question notice is short, that
they should declare that in advance. I do not think we advance
respect for Parliament or our own political exchanges by treating
them as some sort of finals exam in which you cannot see the paper
until you sit down at the table.
Chairman
244. Are you then saying that from your point
of view, Mr Cook, you would like to see Prime Minister's Question
Time revert to what it used to be (I forget when it changed) and
go back to specific questions to the Prime Minister rather than
have, as we do now, half-an-hour of open questions when we have,
as you say—and I share your view—a rough-and-tumble
of the scoring of political points?
(Mr Cook) I did not come here to argue for removing
open questions to the Prime Minister. That would be a big step.
However, I certainly think that it would be in everybody's interest
if people were free and indeed were encouraged to table specific
questions for the Prime Minister to answer. Obviously, we would
have to have different rules for the Leader of the Opposition,
who must, quite properly, be free to raise issues of concern at
the moment. Without wishing to be discouraging, one can easily
spot what the opposition is going to raise because there are only
so many issues around in the ether. Personally, I think it would
be to everybody's advantage if there were more specific, targeted
questions and fewer open ones in which you can be asked about
anything at all.
245. Can I seek to strengthen here: there are
some who believe we should go back to the old situation where
question time was primarily for backbenchers and it was only infrequently
that opposition frontbench spokesmen and women actually took part.
Do you think that question time should revert to being primarily
a backbench occasion for backbenchers to raise matters with the
ministers that are appearing in the House?
(Mr Cook) It is a very delicate question you raise
there, Chairman, and I would hesitate to stick my neck too far
out. I would like backbenchers to have the opportunity to raise
the questions and areas of concern. Of course, that is a particularly
sensitive issue on our side because the alternating practice means
it comes to our side much less often than the other side of the
floor. However, the reality is that the public out there have
come to see Prime Minister's Questions as the opportunity for
an exchange between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime
Minister, and that is at the heart of it. Indeed, it is a very
important part now of our process of Parliamentary debate and
scrutiny, and I do not think, realistically, anybody would wish
to lose that.
Rosemary McKenna
246. I understand it has cult status in America
and on a Sunday night it is watched by many people. It is a bit
of theatre, I think, without actually throwing any light on things.
However, going back to the closed questions, specific questions,
it has been suggested that occasionally a minister has not answered
the question—blatantly. It has also been suggested that,
perhaps, the Speaker should have the right to allow the Member
a supplementary question.
(Mr Cook) It has been suggested and I can actually
see the attraction in it. If we were to move to something similar
to the House of Lords' style of questions, as I was discussing
with Mr Luke, in which you had, say, ten questions which went
through in your hour and each question got five to ten minutes
(some longer than others at Speaker's discretion), in that kind
of envelope of serious discussion on a limited number of questions,
I personally think that, without making any judgment about whether
the question is properly answered, it would be entirely reasonable
to allow the Member who initially asked the question to ask a
supplementary at the end. That would seem to give a reasonable
balance and shape to it. I genuinely think we would have a more
serious, more useful, more viable and more productive form of
scrutiny question time if we had that serious exchange over a
reasonable period of time in which the Member could come back
with a supplementary. Of course, it really comes back to what
I find is a frequent dilemma when looking at modernisation: if
we are going to be effective and relevant we need to be reported
and what the media like to report best of all is the theatre.
If we want to restore our respect among the public we have to
show that we are carrying out serious business and not party political
point-scoring. I think the form we were exploring earlier might
help.
Chairman: You will be aware that we have taken
evidence from Lord Norton of Louth and, as many here are aware,
he has also given evidence to your Committee about modernisation.
I am going to ask Desmond Swayne to come in and put two questions
to you, basically to do with what Lord Norton has proposed.
Mr Swayne
247. Actually, it was the Father of the House
in his evidence to us who said that if there was one thing which
he could put his finger on that had so lowered public perception
of Parliamentarians it was the open question at Prime Minister's
Question Time and the corrosive effect that has had. Lord Norton
suggested that we would do well to have a fixed number, say five,
closed questions at least in, say, two sessions of half-an-hour
each per week of Prime Minister's Questions. How would you react
to that suggestion?
(Mr Cook) As I said earlier, I am sympathetic to having
more closed questions within Prime Minister's Question Time. I
think it would advantage Parliament and it would be to the advantage,
also, of the way in which it came across as a serious attempt
to advance public interest and the public knowledge, as opposed
to what—if I am honest—often appears to the public
outside as if we are looking to score a point, taking part in
political advantage rather than pursuing the public interest.
The public love it in terms of watching it as theatre, but I do
not think they respect it in terms of serious Parliamentary exchange.
You also, Mr Swayne, in your question, refer to two half-hour
sessions. I think I would be remiss if I let that question pass
by without saying that the fact I am answering the question does
not imply assent to two half-hours. If I can respond to this from
the perspective of the administration, which is a matter, after
all, of legitimate concern to all Members of Parliament, enormous
effort goes in, by both the Prime Minister's office and by the
Prime Minister himself, to answering questions in the House of
Commons. Since we moved from two quarter-hour sessions to one
half-hour session the current Prime Minister has actually missed
question time less often than his predecessors because he is obligated
there once a week rather than twice a week, and therefore, pro
rata, for time in office, has actually answered more question
time than his predecessors. It is an enormous demand we make of
our Prime Ministerial time, entirely justifiable when you are
accountable to Parliament, but I do not think it would be prudent
to double that demand we make of him, particularly in the modern
world where so much of the job that is done by the Prime Minister
necessarily and unavoidably (and I am talking about the office
not the person) has to involve a degree of foreign travel and
foreign meetings. When I was Foreign Secretary I found it difficult
enough organising Prime Minister's foreign visits on the basis
that he had to be in Parliament every Wednesday, and you sharply
reduce the number of places in the world you can go for a working
day if you have to be in the House every Tuesday and every Thursday.
I do not think that is in the national interest.
248. Given that the theatre—however much
the public might enjoy it—does not necessarily enhance the
quality of scrutiny, what case is there for removing Prime Minister's
Question Time from the chamber, at least on occasion, and setting
it in the context of a Select Committee-type environment?
(Mr Cook) Are you proposing that as an alternative?
Mr Swayne: No, as an occasional feature.
Chairman
249. In Westminster Hall, Mr Cook, perhaps where
there could be greater informality in putting specific questions
to the Prime Minister.
(Mr Cook) First of all, I would certainly have said
that if we can escape from the gladiatorial combat on the floor
we might enhance the status of Parliament, even if we reduced
our ratings, by being seen to be doing something more serious.
I think we would have to be careful that we were not, in taking
this step, introducing a gladiatorial approach in places and procedures
where at present we are free from such things, eg. in Westminster
Hall and Select Committee hearings. Speaking as an individual
I would not close my mind to it, but do remember that we have
had over decades a very firm rule that has run through many Prime
Ministers that they do not give evidence to an individual Select
Committee, and the moment they give evidence to one where do you
draw the line with others? I think if we were looking for this
the Liaison Committee is probably the place where it would happen.
250. Desmond may want to develop this further
but we were thinking of having a period of questioning with the
Prime Minister, as it were, in a more informal environment than
the chamber. We know why the chamber is designed as it is and
I think it has, perhaps, prevented revolution and, literally,
physical fighting over the years. Sometimes it might be very appropriate,
for Members in all parts of the House in numbers that can be accommodated
in Westminster Hall, to have a half-hour session, as I think Desmond
Swayne indicated, perhaps once every six weeks, when Members could
meet the Prime Minister in rather closer proximity than across
the despatch box in the House of Commons to put questions that
are of particular relevance to them or their constituents or constituencies
to the Prime Minister.
(Mr Cook) It is a very innovative and interesting
idea, and I think I would want to be careful that I neither killed
it at first sight nor committed the Government to taking forward
something which is put to me as a new idea. One thing I would
say is that, if you look back at, for instance, the exchanges
that we saw on television in which the Prime Minister did that
with members of the public before the last election, if one is
quite honest and humble in approach to Members of Parliament,
I am not sure that those exchanges were not more illuminating
than what happens across the floor of the House in the House of
Commons. It is certainly an environment in which our Prime Minister
would be very comfortable, with a more informal, less combative
exchange geared more to actually making progress in identifying
the truth and identifying solutions which might actually do a
lot of good for us. One would have to, first of all, weigh very
carefully whether the Prime Minister, with the demands and pressures
on him, would permit time for such an innovation, and we would
have to think very carefully about how we preserve the kind of
informality of approach that you outline without us finding in
Westminster Hall that we have simply transposed the gladiatorial
atmosphere of the chamber. On the design of the chamber, of course,
it is pure accident that we sit the way we do. We sit the way
we do because Henry VIII gave us St Stephen's chapel in which
to sit and we still sit, to this day, in seats facing each other
in the way they did in the original chapel.
251. Can I, then, put a further question to
you, Leader of the House? At the start of your government, in
the 1997 Parliament, the present Prime Minister authorised arbitrarily
a change to Prime Minister's Question Time, replacing, as you
have indicated already, the two weekly 15-minute sessions with
a single 30-minute session. Do you think that any future changes
to the format of Prime Minister's Question Time should be done
on a basis of consultation with the House and its Committees,
or should what the Prime Minister did be the order of the day
in future? Should provision for Prime Minister's Questions be
made in Standing Orders and, thus, brought under the formal control
of the House of Commons rather than, as I say, a decision that
the Prime Minister was quite legitimately able to take for himself?
(Mr Cook) I think we can make too much of the distinction,
Chairman. You say that standing orders are under the formal control
of the House of Commons and, plainly, that is the case and any
standing order has to be voted upon by the whole of the House
and command a majority. Equally, it is the case that, on the other
hand, only the Government can table a standing order and nobody
else can table a standing order so the degree of latitude to the
House could not possibly be over-stated. In 1997 we were a new
government and we came in with a thumping new mandate. I think
the Prime Minister was quite right to seize the initiative and
make the change there and then. I fear consultation, which you
aspire to, would have meant we would have ended up doing it months
down the line, by which time we would have established a new precedent
of this Prime Minister doing it the old way. For what it is worth,
I think the new way of doing it is much better; it is more efficient,
certainly in relation to Prime Ministerial time, and a more efficient
use of the House's time, and it has enabled us to have a sustained
exchange for half-an-hour instead of what were two jerky and short
15-minute exchanges.
252. Some of us believe, yes, perhaps it has
been good for the Leader of the Opposition because he, or she,
can have six bites of the cherry, but of course six bits of the
cherry reduces the ability of other, what I call genuine backbenchers,
from getting an opportunity of questioning the Prime Minister.
Do you not feel that perhaps, although indeed it is a bite and
a large bite of half-an-hour, that really has not increased the
genuine backbench participation because, of course, the Liberal
Leader gets two bites of the cherry, the Leader of Her Majesty's
Opposition gets six bites of the cherry and the Prime Minister
has to answer each time? Therefore, that is quite a section of
that half-hour dominated by what I call the front bench.
(Mr Cook) There is an issue as to what is the balance
between the frontbench questions and the backbench questions.
I do not think it directly arises from whether you have one half-hour
or two quarter-hours. In the days of the quarter-hours the Leader
of the Opposition got three bites in each of the two 15-minute
sessions and did have a total of six bites if he wanted to use
them all. If you take today, Mr Ian Duncan Smith got up at 16
minutes past and was finished three minutes later. You still had
the rest of the time for backbench Members, which is certainly
no worse, and possibly better, than it was in the old days. That
is not to say that I can see that from the point of view of the
backbencher on the Conservative side it may well be attractive
to have more time for them than for Mr Ian Duncan Smith. I would
not imagine you would want us to put that to the vote of the Labour
Party.
Chairman: Minister, I congratulate you on your
level of briefing before you came to this meeting.
Ms Munn
253. Moving on now to issues about written questions,
I want to ask a couple of questions. We have heard an awful lot
over the period we have been looking at this about a steep increase
in the number of questions being tabled. I am seeking your general
views about this, what you think is behind this and, also, whether
because of that you think there is an erosion in the quality of
the answers people get to those written questions?
(Mr Cook) The answer to the second question is yes,
and the answer to the first point is that we are getting an absurd
number of priority questions. As the figures show, we are approaching
roughly half of all questions being given priority by the Member
tabling the question. I have the greatest respect and affection
for my colleagues but I just do not believe that 48 per cent of
all questions tabled are really pressing and urgent questions.
I do think that we have to try and find some basis in which a
cap, or a discipline, is placed upon the use of the Named Day
and short notice to elicit the answer. Unavoidably, if almost
half of all questions are given priority by the Member and in
the context in which the overall volume of questions is sharply
increasing anyway, there is going to be a rise in answers that
say "We will write or we will get back to you another time.
We intend to reply at a future date." That is unavoidable.
Personally, I would much rather we could have evolved to a situation
in which there were fewer answers which were holding answers and
more substantive replies but to get there we need some realism
on the part of Members. Some of the questions asked can be statistically
enormously complex and difficult. Unless statistics are held in
a convenient way to answer a question, it can involve hours and
days of work for civil servants trying to establish what that
might be. Mr Bercow—bless him, I make no complaint about
him—asks formidable questions of statistical detail which
you are not able to produce at short notice if you are attempting
to answer it within the Named Day process. The fairest and most
logical way of resolving this would be for Members to be required
to demonstrate the urgency to the question: do they need it for
a particular event or a date? Is there some external pressing
reason of public interest why this question has to be answered
in the next three or four days? In truth, I think, that would
put the Clerks in the Table Office in an impossible position,
having an argument with a Member as to whether or not the reason
for urgency was bona fide. I personally think that the
only way in which we can actually get a grip on this in a way
that would be fair to the public servants and fair to Members
also would be for there to be a quota of priority questions by
a Member so that if you have used up your quota for the week or
the day it would come to an end. To be honest, I am sceptical
whether most Members would need to table a priority question on
any one day for answer within three or four days in excess of
three or four questions.
Chairman
254. You are, at the moment, apparently reserving
your remarks to the Named Day. Would you not extend it also to
the ordinary written question where, again, particular Members
appear to dominate the order paper with not just dozens of questions,
Leader of the House, but hundreds of questions?
(Mr Cook) Thousands, in the case of Mr Baker and Mr
Bercow—thousands. At this point we have to assert what is
the very important principle on which questions are tabled, which
is that Government should be open to scrutiny and Members of Parliament
are there to carry out that scrutiny. I would be reluctant to
impose a quota on the total number of questions that can be asked
by a Member. I do think we have to impose a quota on the priority
of Named Day questions because, frankly, it is unfair to other
Members because resources are being diverted at short notice to
get an answer in an unreasonably short period of time at the expense
of other Members' questions. Yes, there are questions that go
down which, I think, frankly, are a waste of everybody's time,
including the poor research assistant who typed it up. I have
just answered a question on whether I have carried out a cost-benefit
analysis of the exemptions order from the Pensions Act 1999. The
exemptions order applies to the three great offices of state:
Prime Minister, Speaker and Lord Chancellor. It relates to exempting
them from the division on divorce of pension liabilities between
partners. To my knowledge we do not have a Speaker, Prime Minister
or Lord Chancellor who has actually divorced since coming into
office and, in any case, even if they had there is no cost to
my office or anybody else's. I really do question whether it makes
sense for anybody to table a question inviting me to carry out
cost-benefit analysis on such a narrow point.
Ms Munn
255. Helpfully, you have anticipated the second
part of the question—helpfully to me because written questions
still remain somewhat of a mystery to me, as to why people do
the Named Day Questions, for the reasons you have outlined. One
of the issues we have talked about is whether there should be
an overall limit, perhaps, over a year or whatever, which you
seem reluctant to bear. The other issue in relation to this is
my concern that when I want to know something the first thing
I do is I look to see if anybody has asked that before, and whether
the information is readily available. Would you want to comment
at all on whether enough questions are rejected on the basis that
that information is there, given the intranet and the internet,
etc?
(Mr Cook) In terms of whether a question has previously
been asked, yes, the Clerks of the House will not accept a question
which replicates a question that has recently been answered or,
indeed, recently been refused. You touch on what, I think, is
an entirely reasonable point, which is that an awful lot of questions
which go down are asking about matters which are easily in the
public domain. To be frank, when I was in opposition I found it
more useful to wander along the library and ask for information
than to try and put questions to the Government. I am not making
a party point but I got the answer in more convincing detail and,
sometimes, quicker than when I tabled a question to the minister.
Since those days the internet has exploded in terms of the availability
of information. It is not for us, as a Government, nor for me
as Leader of the House, to say Members cannot table what question
they want, but possibly they could receive more guidance as to
what is available other than going through the process of a question.
Perhaps, also, we could do more with the Table Office to encourage
Members to think of other ways of getting the information they
seek. I think that has to be permissive. I would hesitate to do
anything to restrict the right of Members ultimately to table
what questions they want. They have had, I am afraid, to have
some restriction put upon the use of the Named Day device because
that is as expensive in attention to other Members' questions.
Mr Burnett
256. That is the very point that I wanted to
just finesse, that I personally do not want to see restrictions.
I noted your point about priority questions and perhaps there
should be a quota, and then no quota whatever on ordinary open
questions. Would you say that your suggestion might be changed
slightly so that if you did have a quota (not that I agree with
that) there could be additions to quota subject to justification,
notwithstanding the problems for the staff in the Table Office?
(Mr Cook) No doubt, if the Committee is minded to
propose that it may wish to propose an experimental period, which
will give us an opportunity to see whether it was working out
fairly. In fairness to the Clerks, if we do propose a quota we
have to have it pretty absolute. The moment you leave anything
dangling at the edges Members will argue about it, and we have
to protect Clerks from being in the difficult position of disagreeing
with a Member.
Chairman
257. You do not think there could be, as Mr
Burnett has, I think, sought to establish, Minister, a strategic
reserve to deal with unexpected but important developments?
(Mr Cook) Yes, I see what you are driving at, Chairman,
but, you know, we could give every Member a very generous quota
and still halve the number of priority questions at present. I
would take a lot of persuading that a generous quota would legitimately
and seriously inhibit the ability of a Member to get the urgent
questions that he really needed to have urgently answered.
Rosemary McKenna
258. On that point, there has been concern raised
by people who have given us evidence, and I think it was somebody
from the Scottish Parliament who said they were concerned at the
number of researchers who were clearly tabling questions for spurious
reasons and these being used not to answer the question but to
use the fact that all these questions had been tabled on behalf
of the Member. That actually leads on to the main question I wanted
to ask, which is about electronic tabling. Given the recent increase
in the tabling of questions in general, is there a danger (and
I very much support electronic tabling) that it will lead to an
even greater increase in the number of questions tabled? Is there
anything we can do to guard against that?
(Mr Cook) Certainly I think it is very important we
make sure we protect the integrity of the system, and of course
there are technical ways in which that can be done, and your consultant
will be better placed than I to advise you on that. In terms of
whether it will necessarily stimulate more questions from a Member,
it may do but if members of staff want to table questions now
they can and do so. That has been going on for a long time. I
remember, back in the 1970s, one of my mining colleagues was impressed
that the Tory member was asking a lot of questions on pneumoconiosis
compensation and looked out for the member at several division
lobbies and never found him. He chased him up in the Conservative
Whip's Office and was told that the member very rarely came to
Parliament. My colleague complained "No, he asks all these
questions on pneumoconiosis", to which the Whips laughed
and said "Ah yes, but you see he has a constituency agent
whose father died of it and he is always tabling these questions
to give the impression he is here." That goes back 30 years,
it is not a new phenomenon. I would not let that stand in the
way of e-mail.
259. Although you have said already you would
not want to express a view about the system or the security, in
the Scottish Parliament they have a system which says they can
give written authority to the Table Office—that is all they
need to do—to accept e-questions from the mailbox. Would
that be sufficient, or would you rather leave it to the experts?
(Mr Cook) I am not technically qualified to advise
on what would be the most robust system of protecting the integrity
of the system. I am quite sure, however, that we can do it. It
is widely used in other parliaments, it is used even in this Parliament
by the other place. There are immense gains from it, of course,
for the Member and for the Government, especially if it gets us
the answer quicker. If we can put it in a proper electronic basis
we can then, of course, provide the reply electronically as well,
which would be a great advantage to Members.
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