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3.13 pm
Barbara Follett (Stevenage): I welcome the opportunity to speak, albeit briefly, in the debate. Before I do so, I apologise to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) for having come into the Chamber halfway through his passionate speech. I am afraid that I was a victim of programming—the programming of planes from Germany, where last night I attended an awards ceremony: not for me, I hasten to say, but for my husband. I got here as quickly as I could.
As a member of the Modernisation Committee, I am extremely pleased to support the reinstatement of the Sessional Orders and broadly to support the contents of our report. The report is not, as some hon. Members assert, blindly in favour of programming—in fact, it criticises it and says that we need to revisit it constantly. It says that the programming that we have at the moment is imperfect and that we must continue to work on it as a Parliament—not as parties—to make it better.
I welcome the comments of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) and
for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), because I believe that we have to consider where knives fall in Committees. It is not sensible to set knives—or even, sometimes, an out-date—before the Committee has first met and has looked at what it has to discuss in terms of contentious areas and areas where more time might be needed. We should be able to do that together, as adults, and to arrive at a decent compromise that allows proper scrutiny and debate.The report says that the purpose of programming is to enhance legitimate debate and scrutiny. Frankly, when I first came into this House in 1997, a great deal of our debate was not legitimate. Had I been present for John Golding's 11-hour speech on telecommunications, riveting and encyclopaedic though it may have been, I am afraid that I would not have felt it to be a legitimate use of the House's time; and, as a taxpayer, I would have been extremely irritated that the only way in which the Opposition—which was my party in those days—could think of opposing the Bill was by delaying it.
Mrs. Dunwoody: I know that my hon. Friend has strong views about another place, but, for her information, two Labour Members once managed completely to derail an inadequate plan for its reorganisation by using the tactics of delay, not only against that legislation, but against every piece of legislation, until the Government of the day abandoned it. They were Lord Joel Barnett, who had been a Treasury Minister, and my most honoured friend, the right hon. Robert Sheldon. It would be difficult to make remarks such as those that she just made if one was not here and did not understand how such procedures worked.
Barbara Follett: I bow to my hon. Friend's greater knowledge of what happened in this place before I entered it, but I was referring to a specific example. What those noble Friends did was useful and good, but I am talking about using 11 hours of delaying tactics. When I came here in 1997, we did not have programming. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central said, it was not introduced until 1998, and that was out of necessity. I have served on the Standing Committees on two Bills—the National Minimum Wage Bill, which had no programming, and the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, which had programming, but is specifically mentioned in the report as being an example of bad programming that did not allow enough time.
Mr. Fisher: My hon. Friend says that we were forced into considering programming. Presumably, therefore, she is suggesting that during our first Session in 1997 we were completely stymied by mindless opposition, but there is no evidence for that. Indeed, the details that the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) appended to the report show that we needed to use the guillotine only four times during that Session, which is about the average for the previous 10 years.
Barbara Follett: I thank my hon. Friend for that. I did not say that we were being paralysed. Let me underline again what I was saying about legitimate debate. The National Minimum Wage Bill Committee once sat for 36 hours. The Deputy Prime Minister and I listened to
the Opposition discuss almost anything except the minimum wage. That was the longest sitting of any Standing Committee.
Mr. Forth: It sounds to me as if what the hon. Lady is complaining about is the fact that she was inconvenienced. We come back to this time and again: whatever the pros and cons may be of delay or irritation—I am in favour of that being used against any Government, and I experienced it when I was in government and did not complain about it at the time—I am irked that Labour Members seem to be obsessed with having an easy, slick, organised, convenient life, rather than occasionally accepting inconvenience. Is that what the hon. Lady is saying?
Barbara Follett: That is precisely what I am not saying. I came into politics to make things better. I do not care how inconvenienced I am or how long I spend in this House if what we are doing is legitimate and useful. On the National Minimum Wage Bill Committee it was not legitimate or useful. It was wasting time. The right hon. Gentleman seems to think that time wasting is the only way in which we can oppose. It is not.
Barbara Follett: It is one way, but it is a fairly useless way. The best way is by persuasion.
Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings): The point, surely, is that what is legitimate in the hon. Lady's terms should not be solely in the purview of the governing party. Legitimacy is not for the Government to dictate or define; that is for the House and individual Members. Surely she would acknowledge that.
Barbara Follett: Nor is that just for individual Members to define. Individual Members and the Opposition held members of the National Minimum Wage Bill Committee prisoner. [Interruption.] I am not complaining about it. I am saying that it was a waste of time and that we should not be in Parliament wasting our time and taxpayers' time.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Barbara Follett: No, I should like to make some progress.
The purpose of programming is to enhance debate and scrutiny, so I am glad to support it. We need to revisit exactly how we impose programming on lengthier Bills. This report outlines that and gives a steer towards it. We have to stop harking back to the old days. They were not all that good, nor all that bad. I hope that I will not hark back to my time in the House in quite the same way as some have done today. I am 60 years old and a pensioner. I am not young or particularly keen on modernisation. I am too old for it. However, I am particularly keen on this House being effective and respected. A reason why we are losing respect is not, as some hon. Members say, because we are not working long hours. We all work impossibly
long hours either here or in our constituencies. It is because we talk rubbish a lot of the time and we have to admit that.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne): The hon. Lady should know.
Barbara Follett: The hon. Gentleman knows more than I do about talking rubbish. I have heard him do so in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill Committee. We must stop it if we are to be respected and taken seriously again.
Mr. Shepherd: My only observation, other than congratulating the hon. Lady on being 60, a year which I also celebrate—important as it is to the debate—is that the old days are just seven years ago. They are not some mythical past. I should be grateful if she, too, would explain why she supports these measures when they are clearly not working.
Barbara Follett: I believe that the measures are working—not well, but they are working. We have a duty to make them work better. What we are doing in Parliament is to prevent them from working at all. We resist programming and say that if we go back everything will be all right. We have to look at what we have. It is there because it is necessary to stop us talking rubbish.
We must also stop drawing a comparison between guillotining and programming. Guillotining is cutting off debate, whereas programming is getting together to decide where and when we debate. We need to make sure that we understand that programming is something that we do together. It is the responsibility in particular of Ministers and the usual channels to make sure that it works.
Mr. Cameron : In relation to the Criminal Justice Bill, where 106 clauses were not even debated, will the hon. Lady explain the difference between a programme that allows that and a guillotine that causes it?
Barbara Follett: The Committee had a chance to do something about that, but, as far as I know, it did not so. I was not on that Committee, but I know that there were a massive number of clauses.
We are not taking responsibility for what we are doing. The report tries to get us to do that. I have enormous respect for the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and I respect his minority report. I pledge to work with him to make programming work better. We must understand that guillotining is suppressing debate and programming is trying to work out together how to give the Opposition enough time to discuss contentious areas and not just filibuster contentious areas. I support the report.
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