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Mrs. Dunwoody: No. I do not want to take too long and I want to make some serious points.
We should make it absolutely clear that if we allow these measures to go permanently into our Standing Orders, we will be giving away the right not only to debate legislation properly, but to alter the way in which the House of Commons organises its business in future.
The Leader of the House told us that we did not need to worry too much about the breakdown of consensus because the Programming Committees seldom debate or argue. It does not surprise me if Whips Office managers come to an agreement. In many instances, Whips on both sides of the House will have much more common cause with each other than with Back Benchers and Front Benchers. That has not changed in all my
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time in Parliament. It is also important to understand that if we are to have this sort of arrangement, the Government must be far more flexible and far more serious about the way in which they debate these matters with Back Benchers.
The Leader of the House mentioned the Traffic Management Bill, which was a classic. We were told that, under the new arrangements, everyone would have time to get here and "programme their travel". Well, I do not know how anyone who wanted to talk about the Traffic Management Bill could have programmed their travel. It was printed on 11 December and had its Second Reading on the first day we got back, so there was absolutely no opportunity for anyone to debate it either with Back Benchers or others. That was truly extraordinary; clearly, the Government's real attitude is that much legislation should go through at a certain pace, irrespective of its faults or difficulties.
We should also understand that deferred divisions, for example, enshrine a principle that says, "You may be a debating Chamber, but we do not want you debate things that you will have to vote on at the end of the day. That might be embarrassing because you might listen to the arguments or even change the way you decided to vote." The Government want to divide people from the proper ordering of how they cast their votes in the hope that no one will notice what is going on.
Mr. Shepherd: On deferred Divisions, the hon. Lady makes an excellent point. The worst possible feature is the fact that those who did not participate in the debate can vote on the Wednesday while those who did participate may be unavoidably unable to vote on Wednesday. It is a ridiculous system.
Mrs. Dunwoody: The trouble is that that shows that some Members of Parliament—I am not making allegations about one party or the other; it is the view of many who have recently entered the House—believe that being the Government is simply a matter of announcing what they want, pushing it through Committee and moving it on to the House of Lords, where any debate is seen as inconvenient and unhelpful. The idea is that the Government should get what they want through at a particular time. It is not a new attitude. It has been the attitude of Governments ever since I became a Member. Sadly, we seem prepared to enshrine it in the Standing Orders in a way that will prove very difficult to amend.
That goes for many of the other points about the carry-over of Bills. I sat and listened to the debates and explanations. Apparently, there will be no carry-over of legislation unless it is a very important Bill or specifically needed. The Government will not routinely carry over Bills, we are told, but will do so only where special circumstances apply. The reality is that what the Government are seeking to enshrine in the Standing Orders will make that an almost routine procedure.
If the Minister believes that not operating with a cut-off point is a good idea, I recommend that he spend some time in the European Parliament. He should examine what happens when the procedures to bring unsatisfactory legislation to an end at a reasonable time do not exist. If we ever reach the state of the European Parliament in my day there, we will have legislation that
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has hung around for 16 years because nobody wants it and nobody can think of a way of getting rid of it, and there is no procedural method of making it clear that such legislation will go no further. If we ever get to that position, the Minister will rue the day that he seriously made his suggestions about the carry-over of Bills.
Mr. Francois: I do not want to miss the hon. Lady's point about the European Parliament, which affects the proposals on short speeches. I accept that there may be some merit in trying to squeeze in a few extra speakers at the end of a debate if they have sat through the whole procedure and are bursting to make a point. However, does she agree that we should put down a marker, but that we should not allow it to become a slippery slope? If the proposals are extended as she suggested earlier and the Government tried to make short speeches the norm, Back Benchers could end up with only three minutes, or even two, to speak, as is the farcical situation in the European Parliament?
Mrs. Dunwoody: Other organisations have an even better idea. I was once offered one minute and 30 seconds for my contribution to a debate. Luckily, the Conservative sitting beside me—this was in an international Parliament—was offered the same, so we decided that we would get up, announce our names and our country and sit down. I am sure that that would never happen in the House of Commons—[Interruption]—but it is something that we should be aware of.
If these matters had been considered properly, I would have expected the Leader of the House to demonstrate clearly to us today which of the particular measures has worked and improved the way in which we do our business. For example, I would have expected to be told how many Bills had been amended massively on Third Reading or how many clauses of Bills had been affected.
I sought to acquire that sort of information and found that, in 1996–97, there were 896 clauses and schedules on the introduction of legislation. There were 1,044 pages, which had become 1,143 on Royal Assent. In 1999–2000, there were 2,637 clauses and schedules; 2,796 pages, which had become 3,600 on Royal Assent. There may be a dozen different reasons for that. I am not suggesting that it was the result only of programming, but it would have been helpful had we heard a reasoned argument this afternoon. It is not good enough to hear, "We tried this and it is very good, so we must keep it and make it permanent". I want a proper debate of the House's privileges, interests and commitments before I agree to permanent changes to our Standing Orders.
Finally, some of us are regarded as beyond the pale because we dare to think that some things that happened in the House before 1997 were not wholly reprehensible. Some of us value some of the changes that took place. The Leader of the House mentioned my friend, John Golding. He is an interesting example because of the length of time he once spoke to a Bill. He had been a telecoms engineer, understood the Bill perfectly—it changed that industry for ever—and spoke for about 14 hours without repeating himself. I can assure the House that, had he done so, the Chairman of the
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Committee would have had him thrown out. In other words, he did not break the rules of order; nor did he seek to distort the debate. He used genuine and acceptable methods to ensure that the legislation did not pass in a wholly unamended form. MPs should strongly defend that right.
I do not necessarily want to go back to filibustering or to abandon programming, but I want something much more important. I want the Government to understand that we are not elected to the House simply to agree every bit of legislation that is put forward. Proposals are often unfinished, inadequate and insufficiently debated. I want the Government to agree that I came here to help produce good laws, not bad ones. The Procedure Committee has made some very mild suggestions; if the Government persist in not accepting them, I shall begin to have very grave doubts.
2.40 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall) (LD): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who speaks with great commitment, conviction and experience. I want to pick up on her final point. She will have noticed that, in business questions last week, the Leader of the House answered my question by making it absolutely clear that this is a free vote. I hope that all Labour Members recall that. These are not Government recommendations, and there will be no interference or influence from the Whips. I shall be interested to see whether the hon. Lady and other colleagues are able to take advantage of this unusual opportunity.
The whole House owes a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), and to all his colleagues on the Procedure Committee. The Committee reached a unanimous decision and it would be invidious to pick out too many names, but the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) is worthy of particular note. She is no patsy, but she was persuaded by the evidence that these proposals are the right way to go.
I also endorse what the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich said about this set of proposals being carefully constructed, and based on evidence. The recommendations have not been grabbed out of the air, but have been considered very thoughtfully. It is worth noting, too, that the Leader of the House and others gave evidence to the Committee.
When the Deputy Leader of the House responds to the debate, I hope that he will be able to address the Committee's recommendations. We are talking about a Select Committee of this House giving advice about House matters, and the evidence that it has taken is very comprehensive.
I do not want to make you blush, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I want to draw particular attention to the excellent memorandum that you put to the Committee. I think that it shows the base of experience shared by all those who chair our Committees—and you, sir, also have that responsibility—and the memorandum contains a number of very practical suggestions that the Committee clearly took very seriously.
I hope that all hon. Members taking part in this debate have read pages 19, 20 and 21 in the evidence section of the report, which are of critical importance
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because that evidence is based on real experience. The Leader of the House has come to these matters comparatively recently, but experienced people from all parts of the House have decided that something must be done along the lines recommended by the Procedure Committee.
I have the advantage—I suppose that it is an advantage—of having been in on the act when we were first considering how to improve procedures. Unlike the Leader of the House and the Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), I was involved in the discussions from 1997 onwards in the Modernisation Committee and through the usual channels. There was general recognition that the blunt instrument of the guillotine—I suppose that, in this context one can call a guillotine a blunt instrument—was no longer appropriate for our business. All too often, it was being misused by hon. Members on both sides of the House to prevent good discussion and examination. As a result, we were not doing our duty in terms of effective scrutiny.
The amendments tabled by the Procedure Committee take account of the experience since 1997. As has been recognised already, they also make it clear that no golden age preceded that date. Successive Governments used the guillotine procedure in a way that did not help good scrutiny, and which certainly did not give opportunities to the Opposition parties to do their job.
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