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27 Jan 2003 : Column 679—continued
Mr. Forth: Fortunately, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was not going to talk about wallpaper, as that is perhaps
a matter for another day. I hope, however, that the House pays at least some attention to the point I am making. We want to be careful about how far we go in the direction that we are now taking. It will be important to justify each new Select Committee strictly on its merits and to give no hint that we are creating it for any other reason.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough): There is one serious and worrying point to make. There is a question of possible interference by the new Committee in judicial appointments. It is axiomatic in our constitution that Parliament should not become involved in judicial appointments. Has that concern flitted across my right hon. Friend's mind?
Mr. Forth: It would have, but for the fact that the motion says that the Committee's work will be
- "including the work of staff provided for the administrative work of courts and tribunals, but excluding consideration of individual cases and appointments".
As far as I know, we only ever increase the number of Select Committees. I do not think that we seek ever to reduce it. There may well be a good case for increases, as there is on this occasion, but is this a one-way process? Can we only ever increase the number of Select Committees? Might there not, with the passage of time, be occasions on which we would be justified in saying that the work of a Committee was otiose or redundant, or that one Committee could be readily combined with another? In that way, we could reduce the number of chairmanships and the amount of travel and give the taxpayer some relief.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne): Along those lines, does my right hon. Friend agree that one answer might be to use the same solution that the Government have available to them when it comes to deciding how many Ministers they may have and pay? Would not putting a ceiling on the number of paid Chairmen of Select Committees meet my right hon. Friend's point?
Mr. Forth: That is a possible approach. Putting an arbitrary statutory limit on the number of Select Committees and having to prioritise within that number might well be the way forward.
I am worried that we have a tendency only ever to expand our role and the institutions, and therefore costs, of the House of Commons. It would be more responsible to look at ourselves much more critically. We are, after all, the custodians of the taxpayers' purse. We represent taxpayers and are supposed to be here to scrutinise not only the Government's expenditure but our own. In that spirit, although I believe that there is ample justification for the setting up of the Select Committee proposed tonight, I hope that such an action will not be seen as automatic, axiomatic or something that can be put through simply on the nod.
I recommend the motion to the House and to my colleagues but add that we must be ever vigilant against further suggestions that we should increase the number of Select Committees. Someone, somewhere—perhaps the Liaison Committee—will have to take a good look at that.
Mr. Leigh: I want to explore further the point that I raised earlier. Although the new Select Committee may not become involved in the appointment of a judge, we constantly receive complaints about judges, which we refer to the Lord Chancellor's Department. He often replies telling us that he cannot interfere in judges' work, and our constituents write back to us again. Might not Parliament try to become more involved in what judges do in their courts, and does that not worry my right hon. Friend?
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend is on to an important point. I was satisfied that the Select Committee could not interfere in the appointment of judges, but given that the Lord Chancellor is ultimately responsible for our judicial system, there is a distinct possibility that it will inevitably become involved in cases in which, for example, there have been complaints about judicial matters or other matters that should be strictly for the courts. I am not sure that I know the answer. Perhaps we should have foreseen that and sought to amend the motion. The best that I can offer my hon. Friend is that we, as a House of Commons, will have to keep a close watching brief on the Select Committee and how it conducts itself to guard against any temptation to do what he suggested might happen.
Mr. Swayne: I sense that my right hon. Friend wants to move on, but he has urged us to support the motion. In view of what he said earlier about the ratchet effect, can he reassure me in respect of the Select Committee on Public Administration—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We are not debating the Public Administration Committee.
Mr. Swayne: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it be in order to draw attention to the fact that some of the responsibilities taken on by the Lord Chancellor's departmental Committee, as proposed, are currently matters that come before the Public Administration Committee?
Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for the Chair.
Mr. Forth: If what my hon. Friend states were the case, I am sure that the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee either would have sought to amend the motion or would have been here to take part in the debate. Since neither event has happened, I must assume that he is content.
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight): I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), with which my right hon. Friend was inclined to agree. Would it not be more
appropriate for a Committee of this House to scrutinise judicial appointments than to leave them wholly in the hands of the Lord Chancellor?
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend is getting into some interesting territory. That is the kind of matter that may well emerge in a different form from the debates about the reform of the House of Lords and the role that the Law Lords play. There is undoubtedly a case for having a separate supreme court. Following that, there may well be a case for considering the election of judges rather than their appointment, and so on. But, Madam Deputy Speaker, this is not the occasion for that debate. I detect from your demeanour that were we to pursue this matter at all—never mind much further—we would get into some trouble. I take a certain pride in the fact that I am rarely called to order; I do not say that it never happens, but it happens relatively rarely, even when I am tempted by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner).
Mr. Forth: I hope that my hon. Friend is not going to tempt me to stray, but I will give way to him. Then I really must sit down.
Mr. Syms: As the Lord Chancellor's Department is responsible for the judicial system in England and Wales, will my right hon. Friend consider whether the membership of the Committee should consist only of English and Welsh Members rather than those from, say, north of the border?
Mr. Forth: You know better than I, Madam Deputy Speaker, that there will be a separate motion to consider membership. It is not a matter for today and my hon. Friend might like to consider the sensible point that he has raised in the context of that further debate. I believe that there is an amendment on the Order Paper that will allow him to deal with that very matter, since it touches on what he suggests.
Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): I have listened to this claptrap, which is demeaning Parliament, particularly since so many Conservative Members are great travellers. On this point, the Lord Chancellor does not cover Scotland, but he certainly covers Northern Ireland, where he makes all the judicial appointments.
Mr. Forth: The hon. Gentleman's charm school refresher course does not seem to have done him much good. In trying to be helpful to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), I said that a future debate would touch on the matter that he raised and allow it to be aired in a more relevant way. If the hon. Gentleman is going to get so tetchy at this time of night, he should go home earlier.
I hope that I have made the case for supporting the establishment of the new Select Committee, but I hope equally that, in future, we shall be careful not to rush too far, too readily or too frequently in such directions.
10.55 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I am sure that the House will be relieved to hear that I shall speak briefly.
When I saw the motion on the Order Paper, I had a hunch that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would want to speak. No doubt he has been wrestling with the temptation all day. The right hon. Gentleman has a Pavlovian reaction; the magic words "until any hour", especially at 10 o'clock, always encourage him to be in his place, although he may not be there earlier in the day when we are discussing matters that require longer and more careful scrutiny.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, must feel that, given the terms in which the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has just expressed his support, it would have been preferable to have the right hon. Gentleman's opposition—it might have been shorter. However, I hope that the whole House will support the motion. I notice that the Conservative ranks have suddenly diminished, so perhaps an advantage of my speech is that I have cleared them out of the House.
We are delighted that the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, is in the Chamber this evening. The key issue is that there is a lacuna at present. The Lord Chancellor's Department has taken on important responsibilities. It is extremely important that when a Department of State has a wide range of responsibilities, there is a corresponding Committee of the House that can monitor its activities.
As the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst pointed out, in addition to its judicial responsibilities and its responsibilities for the law offices, the Department has important responsibilities for the way in which our constitution operates and for its future. The Electoral Commission and party funding are just part of that remit. It is thus extremely important that the Department has the attention of Members of the House through the scrutiny that only a Select Committee can give. Hitherto, the Select Committee on Home Affairs had most of the responsibilities in this field and its Chairman, the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), suggested that given the Committee's responsibilities to the Home Office, it was time to deal with the omission as regards the Lord Chancellor's Department.
We strongly support the motion and recommend its acceptance. We hope that the Select Committee will be up and running shortly. Through no one's fault, we have had a long wait for it. Since the last general election and certainly since the last reshuffle, which gave the Lord Chancellor's Department new responsibilities, it has been suggested that there should be a Select Committee. We believe that the new Select Committee has an important duty to perform on behalf of the whole House.
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