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Mr. Tyler: I have some sympathy what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but I am sure that he realises that the specific purpose of the Short money is to give the Front Benches of both Opposition parties some resources to assist with that role. His points about other Members are extremely valid.
Mr. Curry: The Short money cannot solve the problems that I am talking about. There is little practical support when Bills are going through Committee. As the hon. Gentleman knows, however substantial the Opposition parties may be in the House, they are enormously dependent on lobby organisations pursuing measures to generate amendments and to give them the type of back-up and support that they should perhaps receive from somewhere else. Equally, it is true that, when the House is as unbalanced as it is at present, both the principal Opposition party and the Liberal Democrat party have problems stretching their resources widely enough to man Committees.
There are many issues that we should consider. We should look more generally at the systems and structures of rewards in Parliament. As I said, I reject the notion of a separate career path, but we should think hard about the issues. I realise that the House has taken a decision in principle, but the pay of Select Committee Chairmen is postulated on assumptions that would be difficult to sustain in practice and which could create tensions and difficulties that might act as grit in Select Committee procedures rather than facilitating them; nor would they provide incentives.
2.51 pm
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle): I have only a few observations. The proposal is premature; it puts the cart before the horse. We are talking about awarding some Select Committee Chairs an additional £12,500, yet we have not resolved the central conundrum: how do we appoint people to Select Committees fairly in the first place?
How did the issue come about? A couple of years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) were dumped by the Government as Chairs of their Select Committees. That provoked huge outrage. The Modernisation Committee went into conclave and, on 14 May last year, presented us with proposals to set up a committee of nomination.
I agreed with that proposal and voted for it, but many Members did not. Indeed, in a free vote, no members of the Cabinet supported the proposal made by the then Leader of the House, yet I recall that Labour Whips were pointing to the No Lobby, saying "PLP, this way". I raised the matter on a point of order and in the
parliamentary Labour party committee, from which I stood down last week. There was supposed to be a free vote, yet someone—the situation did not materialise out of thin air—instructed Labour Whips to torpedo a proposal that had been made by the Leader of the House. That situation should never have occurred.
Mr. Tyler: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that the majority was only 14? It was extremely narrow. I entirely endorse what he says. I voted with him and it was extremely disappointing that the Government Whips achieved that small majority.
Mr. Prentice: Yes, the proposal squeezed through on a tiny majority and we are left in a situation where political parties make their own nominations. That is why I told my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) that all the parties, not only the Labour party, should publish their procedures so that the matter is open and transparent.
My good friend, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), is now Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs after a minuet in which the former Chair of the Committee has gone back into the Government. I was astonished when the matter came before the parliamentary committee and I found out for the first time that it had the powers, buried somewhere in the rules of the parliamentary Labour party, to recommend someone to the PLP as the Chair of a Select Committee even though he was not even a member of the Select Committee at that point. That was astonishing.
On reflection, I am disappointed in myself because I did not make an issue of that at the time. I thought that I was some kind of expert on Labour party rules, yet even so, I did not appreciate that the committee had that power. It is wrong. I am not being personal; I am making no personal asides about the competence or otherwise of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen, but the procedure stinks.
There are many other things that stink about how people get on to Select Committees. In the current Session, there are 65 Labour Back Benchers who sit on no Committee. That is a disgrace. As the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) said, it is disgraceful that people who have the privilege to serve on a Select Committee cannot be bothered to turn up. People who constantly absent themselves from a Committee, without good reason, should be kicked off and other more assiduous Members should be appointed.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman's last remark. Does he recall that part of the Modernisation Committee's report on Select Committee nominations and chairmanships noted that if Members did not turn up they could be reported to the Committee and removed, and that a Member who was prepared to give the time to serve should be appointed?
Mr. Prentice: I agree with that; such a reform is long overdue. My Labour colleagues, as well as Members from other parties, deserve a fair crack of the whip.
Mr. Peter Pike (Burnley): Does my hon. Friend agree that not all Select Committees are equally popular? I chair the Select Committee on Regulatory Reform, which has great difficulty in attracting a full membership. Conservative Members rarely attend, and Labour finds it hard to fill the numbers.
Mr. Prentice: I realise that some Committees are more popular than others. Post-devolution, it is extremely difficult to find people to serve on the Scottish Affairs Committee because all the action now takes place in Edinburgh; recently, a vacancy went unfilled for about four months. Other Select Committees, however, are very popular—for example, the Foreign Affairs and Treasury Committees. Often, between 10 and 15 Labour Members apply for each vacancy on those popular Committees. The situation varies.
People should be given a fair chance to get on to a Select Committee. In the current Session, 17 Labour Parliamentary Private Secretaries are serving on Select Committees, which is unacceptable. People on the Government—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. May I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that his remarks should relate to the payment of Chairmen of Select Committees?
Mr. Prentice: Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall get back to the point at issue. However, it is central to our debate that we clarify the issue of how people get on to Select Committees in the first place. That is integral to the whole debate. Earlier, I said that it was premature for us to agree the £12,500. It is premature because we have not agreed on a fair system for putting people on to Select Committees, thus, with respect, I think that what I am saying is germane.
Fifty-six Labour MPs serve on more than one Select Committee. That, too, is wrong. We cannot have people serving on multiple Committees while a large number of colleagues are straining at the leash to serve on just one.
Mr. Salmond: I did not know that people served on multiple Select Committees. Does that mean that, theoretically, someone could be the Chairman of two Committees simultaneously and be paid twice under these proposals?
Mr. Prentice: I speak from memory, but I think that that point is covered in the motion. The hon. Gentleman may not have read it closely enough.
Now, what should I say next? There is so much to say and I do not want to stray out of order.
Let me finish on this point: after the Dunwoody-Anderson furore, the Labour party changed its procedures. It used to be the case that the Chief Whip, without consultation, would bring forward names to the parliamentary Labour party, which would rubber stamp them, and that would be it. Now, a kind of intermediary phase exists, in which the Chief Whip brings forward names to the parliamentary committee, which is like the 1922 committee, which can amend those names and then put them to the PLP for
endorsement. It is important that people understand the procedures and feel that they are fair. There will always be some element of judgment somewhere in the system, but openness and transparency are absolutely paramount.I will not support the motion before the House today, and I hope that we can revisit the issue in a way that allows us to resolve the problems that have been identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock and other Members in relation to how we introduce fairness into the appointments system in the first place.
3.1 pm
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), who twice during his speech mentioned the saga of some two years ago in respect of the Chairmen of the Transport Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. Of course, that was not the first occasion on which there had been flagrant and blatant interference in the appointment to Select Committees. That happened in 1992, when my party, displaying complete arrogance towards the House, ill-advisedly created a law or rule whereby a Member of the House could not sit on the same Select Committee for more than three Parliaments. It did it with one intention—to prevent my reappointment to the Health Committee. It did not want me to be re-elected as Chairman of that Committee, which, with members such as the late Member for Preston, Mrs. Audrey Wise, and others including the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon), had done a wonderful job and had got the confidence of those throughout the country who were interested in health care and the health service. It acted quite wrongly.
The repeat of that was two years ago. The House will rue the day when it rejected by just 14 votes the recommendations of the Modernisation Committee, which sought to introduce impartiality into the appointment of members of Select Committees. Of course, were there impartially and properly appointed members of a Select Committee, such a Committee would should select its Chairman.
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