| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle): That followed a recommendation from the parliamentary Labour party to the Labour members of the Home Affairs Committee. The key question is this, however: if the parties are to be instrumental in placing people on Select Committees, should their procedures be published? It is, after all, openness and transparency that are so important.
Andrew Mackinlay: My hon. Friend and I have discussed the issue informally. He attaches great importance to the fact that Labour's parliamentary committee—the equivalent of the 1922 committee—decided that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen should chair the Home Affairs Committee. I think he sees it as something of an advance. I want to be generous this afternoon, but it is at best a marginal advance.
We are talking about party patronage. What if it became the norm in our party and thereby, ipso facto, became part of the British constitution? Along with others, I joined Conservative Members to install the late Sir Robert Adley as Chairman of the Transport Committee in place of the person nominated by agreement between the Conservative Whips in 1992. I would have been denied that opportunity had the parliamentary committee said "No: this is the person for whom you, Mackinlay, must vote". In fact it said that anyway, but I felt confident enough, as I was following the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). She and I, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Keith Hill), baulked at being told who to choose. We honoured the choice of a Conservative Chairman, but it was Robert Adley whom we chose—and we could not have done so under the system proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice).
Before agreeing to these motions, the House should take account of an arrangement that has just been implemented by our cousins in the Ottawa Parliament. They have instituted their first ever secret ballot—we know how interesting those are, do we not?—for committee members to choose their chairpersons. If we did the same here, there might be a case for these proposals.
Mr. Forth: Just to dot the i's and cross the t's, may I ask whether the hon. Gentleman favours the continuation of a rough apportionment of Chairs according to party before Committee members are allowed to select? Otherwise, given an imbalance in the
House of the kind that currently exists, there would be a risk that every Chairman would be a member of the Labour party.
Andrew Mackinlay: That is a racing certainty. Yes, I think there should be an apportionment. I also think—as, I believe, did Gladstone, whose fingerprints were on the establishment of the Public Accounts Committee—that in some instances there should be a presumption that the Chairperson is not a member of the governing party. That would mean a sacrifice, but it would be in the interests of democracy. I hope that the Leader of the House will leave office—having, I hope, held it for longer than his immediate predecessors—knowing that he has revolutionised some of our procedures. I am thinking both of changes in our methods of selection and of the possibility of a presumption—I use the word advisedly—that some Committees should be chaired by a member of a party other than the governing party.
I want to frame my final point in the form of a question, phrased somewhat facetiously. The Foreign Secretary and I have argued repeatedly about the Intelligence and Security Committee. He claims that the fact that it is not a Committee of the House of Commons constitutes a distinction rather than a difference. I say that it has absolutely nothing to do with the House of Commons. It is not paid for by the House of Commons, and it is not clerked by the House of Commons; it is clerked by the Cabinet Office. The chairman and secretary are anointed by the Prime Minister.
What do the Government intend in regard to the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee? She cannot be paid with House of Commons money, because the ISC is not a parliamentary Committee. If she were paid with Government money through some Executive action, it would mean that she held an office of profit under the Crown, and she would therefore be disqualified from holding office in the House of Commons. If the concept that the ISC is somehow equal to or comparable with a parliamentary Committee—the concept of a distinction without a difference—is to survive, primary legislation will be required. I am, in a sense, saying to the Leader of the House, "Discuss." I should like to hear his views.
All that should take place against the backdrop of the Foreign Affairs Committee's recommendation that the ISC should be made a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed by the House of Commons, inadequate though its appointment procedures are. As I have said, I should like them to be improved.
This is another increment my argument to the House that the motion is premature and has not been adequately thought out. There is the question of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the heart of the matter is how we select the members and appoint the Chairmen of our Select Committees. We have not yet earned the reputation for providing adequate scrutiny in this place; we are only scratching the surface. We know of the obstructions that have been put in our way; every Committee could give evidence on how it has been obstructed and misled. Until such time as we grapple with these big issues, it is wholly wrong to advance money for the so-called Chairmen of these Committees.
2 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I have a great deal of sympathy with the point of view of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), and not for the first time; I hope that that does not embarrass him. Indeed, I represented some of the views that he has expressed when the Modernisation Committee discussed this matter, a point to which I shall return. However, I should draw to his attention the fact that there are precedents for Members receiving additional salary, over and above their parliamentary salary. I am talking not just about the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, who, as we all accept, hold very onerous positions. The Leader of the Opposition receives a considerable salary—[Interruption.] Well, there is a problem here to which attention needs to be drawn. Let us consider a hypothetical situation in which, numerically, the two Opposition parties are within one seat of each other after the next general election. If one Member transfers from the Conservative Benches to the Liberal Democrat ones, he comes with £500,000. That is a considerable incentive, perhaps, although I am not making an offer. That could be a very interesting transfer fee, and some percentage might be considered.
I should draw the attention of the hon. Member for Thurrock to appendix F of the Senior Salaries Review Body report, on page 18. Considerable sums are involved, and I should also point out that a car and driver are made available to the Leader of the Opposition at public expense. The point that the Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee made about the resources available to the Chairmen of Select Committees is very valid, and although we have made some modest improvements in that regard, that remains the core issue, rather than the question of salary incentives. I shall return to that point a little later.
This afternoon's discussion is extremely important. As the Leader of the House and the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) said, we are talking about not servants of the Executive or those who are simply aspirant Ministers, but servants of Parliament: those who believe that serving the nation and their constituents in an effective Parliament that holds the Executive to account is not just an honourable profession, but an extremely important one. In that respect, I very much share the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst.
Naturally, those colleagues on both sides of the House who endorsed my amendments appreciate and respect the decision not to select them. We understand the dynamics of this place, but I would be letting them down if I did not express some disappointment at that decision. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House can give us explicit assurances in respect of concerns already expressed—not least by the hon. Members for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) and for Thurrock—about the way in which the package has unravelled, a point to which I shall also return.
The clear mood of the House this afternoon is that this is not a full stop. I hope that the Government will make it clear that the wider concerns already expressed today—they were expressed extensively during the debate of 14 May last year and are reflected in the reports—will be considered very carefully in an appropriate forum.
In the meantime, I yield to absolutely nobody—whether inside or outside this House—in my admiration and support for the increasingly effective scrutiny by Select Committees. It is clear that the question of the leadership of those Committees is extremely important. The hon. Member for Thurrock, in his usual modest way, expressed some reservations about the extent to which the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that our own processes are not fully adequate to the task that we set for our colleagues who do that job. I accept that, but at least we are moving in the right direction. What we must make clear this afternoon is whether the effort to improve the way in which Select Committees operate in future is being helped or hindered. I would suggest that, to some extent, the jury is still out.
I am not selective in my admiration for Select Committees, so I shall not be selective in my admiration for the Modernisation Committee, of which I am delighted to have been a member since its inception. I want to draw the attention of the House, and of the Leader of the House in particular, to the package of recommendations put to the House in February 2002. It was not just a one-off proposal to pay the Chairmen of Select Committees; it was an entire package. We have referred to the resources issue, which is extremely important. On that occasion, we made an important point about limitation on term. It was clear that, if we were to pay Members to be Chairmen of Select Committees, it would unreasonable to specify an unlimited period, given that there are many volunteers. So we recommended a period of two Parliaments, with special provisions applying if a speedy change should occur between general elections. Indeed, when we last debated this issue, we effectively wrote in a limitation on term, so to some extent that concern has been met.
Other concerns were expressed, however. Although it is clearly right to try to devise an alternative career path, it has to be done in the context of specific safeguards. Limitation on term is one safeguard, but it is not the most important. It is even more vital that the House regain overall responsibility for and the right to supervise the appointment of members of Select Committees. Here, I very much endorse the concerns expressed by the hon. Members for Buckingham and for Thurrock—in other words, on both sides of the House—about unfinished business. I do not want to take away from the parliamentary parties the right to make nominations, but there must be a safeguard. Some opportunity must exist for appeal—for this House to take responsibility for who is to serve it on Select Committees; otherwise, there will always be a question mark about increased patronage on the part of those who, although they may not want to muzzle Select Committees, may want to finesse the way in which they are led.
I have the greatest respect for the current team of Select Committee Chairmen, regardless of party. I hope that I am not embarrassing the one or two who are present. Many of the Chairmen have past ministerial experience, and I suspect that that helps. I am not sure that the immediate jump from one part of the political spectrum into that role is quite as admirable as some would suppose. I yield to no one in my respect for the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), but the hon. Member for Thurrock makes a good point: does leaving a Department and then
becoming Chairman of the relevant Select Committee provide an opportunity to find the skeletons that much quicker? That is possible. On the other hand, does the new Chairman arrive with a mindset that makes scrutiny less effective?Safeguards are extremely important. We should consider the question of it being thought, whether inside or outside this House, that the Whips Offices have effectively given themselves extra leverage over existing Select Committee Chairmen, whereby they say, "Take it easy, boy, because we've got an important and difficult job to do. By the way, you do remember that your salary is to some extent dependent on the support of your Whips Office." That is an extremely important issue. Even if that were not the reality, but the perception was that in some way or other, the effectiveness of a Select Committee and its leadership was in any way being hampered by the new financial pressures that the Whips Office could exert, that would be very damaging indeed.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |