| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Hain: May I make an observation about the other place? If the right hon. Gentleman makes a detailed comparison of the extent of scrutiny of Bills in the other place and our own experience in the Commons, he will find that the Lords are not scrutinising Bills as effectively as us. In addition, the House of Lords does
not have a proper procedure for timetabling business, which is one reason why it is getting into a mess and effectively defying the will of the Commons.
Sir George Young: I would draw a different conclusion from the Leader of the House. If the Lords are to avoid the problems that we have been discussing this afternoon, it is important that the Government do not have the facility to introduce guillotines and programme motions in the upper House, as there would then be a risk of legislation going through both Houses with inadequate consideration.
The root of the problem that we are discussing this afternoon is the fact that we are trying get a quart into a pint pot. Until the Government exercise self-discipline on the volume of Bills that are introduced, we shall continue to have arguments about the way in which we programme legislation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst was generous about paragraph 11 of the report, in which the Committee outlined four basic criteria that a reformed legislative system should be able to meet. Three of the four criteria have not been met. The Opposition do not have a full opportunity to discuss and seek to change provisions to which they attach importance; all parts of a Bill are not properly considered; and Bills are not prepared properly in many cases and require a mass of new Government amendments. By the Committee's own criteria, the present regime is missing three of the four targets.
I have nothing against draft Bills, but I am slightly worried about paragraph 15, which looks at such Bills. Of the 10 draft Bills introduced in this Session, six were considered by departmental Select Committees whose members, in a sense, are the best folk to do that job. However, there is a risk of their agenda being captured by a hyperactive Government Department, and the Committee's other work being squeezed out. I can therefore see some advantage in establishing more Joint Committees so that the other place can help to deal with the legislative burden.
Finally, there is a risk that deferred Divisions will bring the House into disrepute and encourage cynicism outside about how we conduct our business. I think that there is something almost cynical about voting on a proposal five or six days after it has been debated. The hon. Member for North Cornwall sought to justify such an arrangement by saying that, in debating Bills, there were circumstances in which we voted on an amendment on the day after it had been debated. However, that occurs because of where an amendment falls in considering a Bill and I do not think it is a true parallel with what the Government are now doing. I shall certainly vote against the recommendations on deferred Divisions.
Like the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central, I have nothing against programming in principle, as it can represent a good opportunity to make better use of time, but we are certainly not there yet. I shall need persuading before I accept that the current Sessional Orders are the same ones that we should live with in the next Session. I urge the Modernisation Committee to revisit the matter and to see whether it can propose a better remedy for the problems that we have addressed this afternoon.
3.1 pm
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills): The only matter on the Order Paper that there has been no attempt to amend is whether we should continue with the existing Sessional Orders. I am a member of the Select Committee on Modernisation, which has now deliberated on that question twice. On both occasions, a majority has concluded that the arrangement is not working quite as we would like. We must ask why. I have had enough of this.
We have a history in this House, and rules and regulations called Standing Orders. We can compare the past with the present and look at the one question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) asked: are our Orders working? My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said that the arrangement does not even meet three of the four objectives set by the Select Committee. It certainly does not do so.
The purpose of my minority report—I shall speak to it, if I may—was not to be contentious, but to try to give a history and the background to what we have been through. I regret that tables A and B, which form a crucial document for anyone who wants to examine how programme orders or guillotines have operated in this Session, do not follow my one question: have the Sessional Orders achieved their objective? I sought to list appendices A and B in that part of the report so that the text flowed and so that we could ask ourselves what the effects had been on the basis of a direct comparison. The truth is that, when the information is set out and seen on the page, there is no evidence to support the contention that we are discussing Bills any better than we have in the past. What we have put in the hands of the Government, however, is the means systematically to guillotine every Bill that comes before this place.
One member of the Committee, whom I shall not name, said that they had never read "Erskine May", which records the traditions of this House, how Standing Orders have been used and the practice that has been followed. "Erskine May" refers to guillotine motions. The 1997 edition notes that such motions
- "may be regarded as the extreme limit to which procedure goes in affirming the rights of the majority at the expense of the minorities of the House, and it cannot be denied that they are capable of being used in such a way as to upset the balance, generally so carefully preserved, between the claims of business, and the rights of debate."
The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), the distinguished Chairman of one of our Select Committees, had it in mind that the focus of why we are here—the assemblage of Clerks and the majesty of Parliament—is not about us, but about those whom we represent. Having given the Government this enormous power of majoritarianism in Sessional Orders, there is no weighing process whereby we can criticise them for giving only three minutes to debate the slaughter of a first-born Bill and for insisting on their out-date. Not one Member can say "Hang on, I think that the slaughter of the first-born might require half an hour."
We have so accepted a process that seeps through our understanding of who we are and what we are about. Outside bodies, including the Hansard Society, for which I have great respect, and Clerks have toiled over the years, saying, "Surely, as reasonable people, we can construct a system whereby we can weigh elements of debate, and allow freedom of expression and the rights of opposition." Yet in looking at the history of this place, we see that its origin was to give opposition ownership in Committees, as they were taken from the Floor of the House and put off the premises, so to speak. That was about doing our job for ourselves and it gave opposition the ownership of saying, in one sense, "This is the proposition of us, the majority; we believe this is right—challenge us."
That is familiar to every Briton. We do it in our courts: I make a case, and the defence makes its case. That is essential to our concept of equity and justice. This high court, as it once was, followed that tradition, but, as the figures given by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) showed, it broke with it almost a century and a third ago. The Irish question had brought the Government to despair: three months, no less, were spent on one measure. The effect of the new arrangements were recognised at that time—indeed, some of the comments that were made have been cited. At the will of the majority, a great constitutional measure could, if necessary, be swept through in an afternoon. People were mindful of the fact that that was a very important departure, and that its effect was significant for the well-being of the nation.
When we discuss guillotines in the modern age, it is one of the ironies of life that, as we become less educated, in a sense, about who we are, where we come from and who we represent, we find it tedious that oppositions and minorities should be allowed to rattle on. The truth is that Governments have had the power, and have maintained it over the years, to say "We have had enough of this." However, that power should be used only at the end of the process once it has been ascertained that what is happening is deliberate obstructionism rather than considered argument about whether a Bill is appropriate for the country.
I totted up slightly different figures from those of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central—my hon. Friend—and I put them in the report. Between 1946 and 18 February 1997, 67 Bills were guillotined. It was an accelerating process. I criticised Mrs. Thatcher's Government, whom I supported, for guillotining as many as 43 Bills. I thought that that was terrible. At the time, I was happy to note that so many distinguished figures in the present Government agreed; they, too, thought it was terrible. Between 1946 and 1997, 67 Bills were guillotined: under new Labour's six years, 94 Bills have been guillotined.
The truth is that, historically, most Bills were not opposed. I have sat through debates as the House has supported tranches of such legislation. Committees have undertaken detailed scrutiny quite satisfactorily. This has become a major issue because guillotines represent an instrument of the Government's control over this House. That is why the Government want the Sessional Orders to continue.
I have many beliefs that I want to represent on behalf of my constituents. I profoundly believe that the new constitution for Europe destroys the very essence of
democracy in this country. I want that to be fully debated, but if the Orders are passed there is nothing to stop the Government saying that two days in Committee of the whole House is sufficient—and I cannot even debate whether that is so. Yet when we are denied a referendum, the Prime Minister advances the argument that our custom and usage is for Parliament to consider all such issues and that the will of Parliament will prevail. That is why this is a major constitutional issue. We want to find a way in which rational and decent people can properly discuss legislation, but the Leader of the House, who sits on the Select Committee that makes these proposals, has delivered into the hands of the Government the means by which they render us ineffective.Other hon. Members touched on the consequences. Power has moved from here to the House of Lords, which is drowning in the examination of legislation that we are not considering. I urge hon. Members, the public, the Hansard Society—anyone who trusts in Parliament or is interested in the fundamentals of our democracy—to look at the detail on the guillotines in tables A and B. When I speak to people outside who question what we are, or are not, doing has no idea that if I want to speak on, say, the fluoridation of water, I am subject to a two-hour guillotine that will not even remotely allow me to express a human rights interest in the autonomy of the individual. They do not understand that the new Labour Government have constructed Sessional Orders that throttle and belittle our purpose.
We talk about connecting with the outside world, but we are not connecting with anyone. Parliament would revive if we were allowed to carry out the task that we were elected to perform—to come here to give assent or acquiescence to the measures proposed by the Government or to reject them if we think them inappropriate. The massive armies of parties locked in debates between themselves have lost the wider purpose of our business. These Sessional Orders should be rejected: we should revert to the practice that has been successful in the past.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |