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3.26 pm
Mr. David Cameron (Witney): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett). She did not tell us whether her husband won the award in Berlin, but I am sure we are all keen Ken Follett readers and hope that he picked up a globe or whatever last night.
We have had an excellent, albeit short debate. Perhaps in contrast to some contributors I should stress my inexperience. Nevertheless, I can say that I made my maiden speech during a debate on programming. I expressed my scepticism then and I have had little reason to change my view since.
Several hon. Members talked about the Modernisation Committee report. Perhaps it is wrong for me to express a view, having joined the Committee so recently, but I have great sympathy with what my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said. I do not think that the Committee works properly. It is neither a Committee of the House, independent of the Government, nor something else. It is half way between. It is ably chaired by the Leader of the House, but it would be better if the Committee looked at the processes and procedures—[Interruption.] I would not call it the Modernisation Committee; it should be renamed. It would be better if parliamentary colleagues had a proper look at these issues without the Government being so involved, so I agree with my right hon. Friend that it does not work.
Summing up the debate for my party, I oppose the Sessional Orders for three good reasons. First, the routine programming of Bills is wrong. Hon. Members have expressed differing views. Some favour having an out-date for all Bills, but only that; some, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), whose minority report is very good, would go much further. It is interesting that we heard only one contribution from someone—the hon. Member for Stevenage—who believes that the system is working and that there should be routine programming of Bills.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills made an extremely strong speech, and I want to quote the opening line of his minority report, which says it all:
- "The working of the House is dependent on a degree of tolerance and forbearance by the majority towards Opposition and minority opinion."
- "in the 57 years from 1946 to 1997 only 67 bills were guillotined",
Therefore, my first reason for opposing the Sessional Orders is that routine programming should not be necessary. The Government should look at the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), among others, and try to give some Bills just an out-date and not a detailed programme motion.
My second reason for opposing the Sessional Orders is that by any stretch of the imagination the current system is simply not working, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) and many others said. The figures in the memo at the back of the Public Bill Office report are staggering. There are 27 Bills in the current Session, and knives have come into play 53 times. Two hundred and sixty-four groups of
amendments have not been reached because of knives. Last night I added up all the clauses and schedules not reached, and it comes to a staggering 519. Many of those are not discussed at all, not even on Report. The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons asked what the figures were previously, but he must listen to Members in his own party who, after careful consideration, are saying that the system really is not working.In an intervention on the hon. Member for Stevenage I mentioned the Criminal Justice Bill, on whose Standing Committee I sat. There was no filibustering in that Committee. The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) also served on it and I am sure that he would back me up if he were here. On that Bill, 71 groups of amendments were not reached and 106 clauses and schedules were not discussed at all. Just to give one example, that Bill made the big change in criminal procedure of moving the charging of suspects from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service. It was not debated at all in Committee. It was not reached and therefore went under the knife. If our constituents knew how badly we were doing the vital work of scrutiny, they would rightly be even more concerned.
Barbara Follett: The hon. Gentleman said that I thought that the system was working well, although I may be misquoting him. I think that it needs a great deal of improvement, and he has just given an example of where that is needed. That is why I am glad that he is on the Modernisation Committee. Perhaps we can work on that.
Mr. Cameron: That brings us to some of the points that I have made during my brief time on the Committee. We need to look at those issues. We need some change.
The third reason why the Sessional Orders should not remain as they are is contained in the very powerful evidence that we heard from the Chairman of Ways and Means, which has been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire and by the hon. Members for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and for Stoke-on-Trent, Central. That is powerful evidence from someone who really understands how previous systems worked or did not work, and how the current system is not working. We should take that extremely seriously. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), too, referred in a powerful speech to the contribution of the Chairman of Ways and Means and said that we were going down the wrong track. Why are the Government so scared of having further debate in this place? That is a third reason why the system needs radical surgery.
Any newcomer to this place cannot help but be struck by these simple facts: we pass too much legislation, we do it too quickly and we do not give it enough scrutiny. Many Members have expressed those views this afternoon. The situation is already bad and the evidence seems to suggest that it is getting worse. The Modernisation Committee minority report, drafted by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire, gave some figures for the pages of legislation passing through this place. In 1997–98 there were 1,900; by 1999–2000 that had risen to 2,537. I have figures from the Library, showing that the situation is getting worse still. One could argue that the
introduction of programming has made the Government's life simply too easy because it encourages sloppy legislation. The number of Bills has not risen markedly—there were 39 in 1997–98 and 40 in 2001–02—but programming encourages sloppy legislation because the Government know that they can programme legislation and ram it through the House.In the remainder of my time I shall point out what I think is wrong with the system and say where we need to make progress. The hon. Member for North Cornwall took a similar approach. Here comes the shopping list. First, it should not be necessary to programme all Bills. There should be flexibility. Why not have an out-date where possible and, if the Government believe it to be necessary, programming where needed? They should consider that, rather than just having routine programming to drive everything through.
Secondly, as a number of hon. Members have said—for instance, the hon. Members for Stevenage and for Stoke-on-Trent, Central—programme motions are dealt with at virtually the same time as Second Reading. There should be time for a Committee to consider points made on Second Reading, and to decide whether to oppose the Bill and which matters need to be discussed in most detail. No account is taken of the number of amendments that may be tabled, not just by the Opposition but by the Government.
Thirdly, nowadays most programme motions are not debated. Surely they should be debated, especially when they relate to big Bills. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills gave a good example: will the programme motion on the legislation relating to the European constitution be taken straight through the House, with no proper discussion of how much time should be spent debating that legislation? I would prefer us not to have these wretched programme motions at all, but in that instance it would certainly be wrong for us not to be able to discuss the amount of time to be spent on debate.
Fourthly, the use of knives in Committee is far too inflexible. I know that the Programming Sub-Committee can change the arrangement, but that happens far too rarely. In the case of the Criminal Justice Bill, important measures fell under the knife. The Modernisation Committee report gives a brilliant example relating to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. All credit should be given to the Leader of the House for allowing us to include it, for it is pretty shocking. The report says:
- "The effects of the short timetable were exacerbated to some degree by lengthy speeches . . . In the end, 58 groups of amendments and 73 clauses and schedules were lost to the knife. Clauses which were taken forthwith under the knife included all but four of the 11 clauses in Part 1".
Several hon. Members have mentioned the provision for debating amendments tabled at a late stage. That is mentioned in the report. Will the Leader of the House give us some guarantees regarding the allowing of more time for debate? The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central used a good phrase: he said that there should be transparent public and published discussions on that.
The hon. Members for Stafford and for North Cornwall and I would all like a proper Report stage. Members who do not serve on a Standing Committee may be interested in the Bill none the less, and may want to know what has happened to it. They may have spoken and listened to speeches on Second Reading; once the Bill has disappeared into a Standing Committee, they may find it difficult to follow the Committee stage in detail, given all the work we must do here. What is needed is a proper report, perhaps from the Chairman of the Committee, listing amendments that were not debated, clauses that were not reached, schedules that were not discussed and Government amendments that were introduced, and specifying the amount of time spent debating those amendments. That would give hon. Members a sense of the shape of the Bill, how it had changed in Committee, and what work Parliament should still be doing to ensure that we do our job properly.
Third Reading has not been discussed today, but I want to place it on the record that Report stages much too often last only one day, with Third Reading following immediately. Members with an interest in the Bill who were not involved in the Committee stage might want to consider what happened on Report before deciding what to say on Third Reading. Third Readings are becoming a dignified rather than an efficient part of the constitution, which I think is wrong.
Another issue not mentioned today was the subject of a powerful point made to the Modernisation Committee by the Chairman of Ways and Means. I refer to Back-Bench amendments. The hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas), who has done a huge amount of work on the subject of historical allegations of abuse in children's homes, came up with some serious amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill. A lot of thought had gone into them, but because of the way in which the knives operated on Report, they fell. Obviously, there is little transparency in what is selected and what is not.
The Chairman of Ways and Means makes an excellent suggestion, which is to set up some form of legislative business Committee, to which Back-Bench Members could appeal and explain why their amendments should be selected and debated. I hope that that idea will be considered. Back-Bench amendments are all too often lost, particularly under our present harsh programming regime.
There are some good suggestions in the Modernisation Committee report. Programming Sub-Committees should meet as a matter of routine if the Government table a lot of amendments; I hope that that will happen. I also hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will give us a guarantee about the paragraph that says that more time should be guaranteed between the introduction of a Bill and its Second Reading, and also between the choosing of a Standing Committee and the start of its work.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), I remain of the view that a great deal more needs to be done. The test should not be whether we are getting home early, or whether the passage of legislation is predictable; it should be whether we are doing our job properly—and as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich and others have said so clearly, we are not doing it right at the moment.
We have three things to do in the House. The first is to stand up for our constituents and the second is to hold the Government to account. Those two we do quite well. The third, however, is the business of passing legislation, and in my experience over the past two years, that is something we do very badly. I do not believe that the Sessional Orders will address that problem at all, so I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote them down when we get the chance, and start with a clean sheet of paper.
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