Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)

15 SEPTEMBER 2004

MR ROGER SANDS AND MR ANDREW WALKER

  Q80 Martin Linton: Proposals are proposals.

  Mr Sands: I have made a suggestion.

  Q81 Mr McLoughlin: Perhaps, Mr Sands, you might be able to tell us how often the Government table amendments late to Bills. It does seem to me that let alone Members, it is the Government that usually brings rafts of amendments to Bills at very late stages, so perhaps the Government could set us an example and make sure that they do not bring amendments to Bills if you think that would be significantly helpful.

  Mr Sands: The normal expectations that chairmen will not select starred amendments provides some discipline to the Government in that respect, and so what one would be suggesting would be, in effect, that the administrative rule applied by chairmen became the rule of the House.

  Q82 Martin Linton: Just to conclude that one, as far as I am concerned I would welcome it if you saw it as your role as Chief Executive of this organisation to come forward with a proposal that would make the system work properly. We are now 15 months on into the new hours and you are saying these are the consequential changes that need to be made. I agree with you entirely, but let us get on and do it.

  Mr Sands: I cannot do it on my own, Chairman.

  Q83 Martin Linton: You can propose them, can you not?

  Mr Sands: I am proposing them. We have made the system work, the system has worked, I am not saying that it has not. Basically, the approach of the staff is to try and take what the House agrees and make it work, and I think we have.

  Chairman: Thank you, Mr McLoughlin. I see the sitting is suspended.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton: I think because of the activities outside the House which have become a little fractious.

  Q84 Mr McLoughlin: In your paper you seem to be a little dismissive or worried about the consequences of moving Private Members' Bills to possibly dealing with them on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Can you say what you think the problems will be in a bit more detail? You do set them out to a degree in your paper, but are there any other problems which changing the way of dealing with Private Members' Bills which are currently done on 13 Fridays to Tuesday and Wednesday evenings?

  Mr Sands: I certainly hope I was not dismissive.

  Q85 Mr McLoughlin: You highlighted a number of problems.

  Mr Sands: I think the introduction of a regular sitting day which spans from 11.30 in the morning to 10.30 or 11.00 at night would pose some administrative problems for us, in that it would be building in something which would intrinsically make it more difficult for us to comply with the Working Time Regulations without some increase in staff to cope with peak periods. We could do it, but of all the changes that I have seen proposed in papers to you, that is the one which I think would need the longest lead time, and we would need a good deal of warning about that.

  Q86 Mr McLoughlin: When you say the longest lead-in time, what sort of lead-in time would you require?

  Mr Sands: Longer than the two months we got last time.

  Q87 Mr McLoughlin: Surely there are going to be a number of difficulties, because if we look at the amount of hours currently given to Private Members' Bills—I think I am right in saying that it is 13 Fridays, is it?

  Mr Sands: It has been, but that is not stated in the rules[3]

  Q88 Mr McLoughlin: So 13 Fridays, of which we get five hours of parliamentary time, so you are looking to replace some 65 hours of parliamentary time. Let us say it was an Opposition day and you had the two votes at seven o'clock, that means you would not be able to start at 7.30 and presumably you would have to give some protected time to the Private Members' Bills so you would have to give them two and a half hours effective time and you would have to do that on two nights. It would be quite difficult to find all this extra time.

  Mr Sands: I think there are some quite serious procedural issues here. One of them is the pattern of this time. As you say, we now have a five hour day on a Friday. When, for example, there are second readings listed, there is a sort of expectation that if there are enough people to debate the first Bill to fill the day, then the Speaker will grant a closure within sight of the end, perhaps after four hours or so. How would that work if we were splitting that five hours into two tranches of two and a half hours? You would have to start building up new expectations or you would have to regularly face the prospect of a debate being cut in two which I think, generally, Members would find unsatisfactory, if it started on one day and finished on the other.

  Q89 Mr McLoughlin: Chairman, if I may just finish this off, it may not be a point that Mr Sands can help us with, but on the last day of Private Members' Bills a lot of them are objected to, right at the end of their stages. We do not record who actually does the objection, but I think it is fair to say that quite often it can be a member of the Government who objects to these Private Members' Bills making further progress; presumably there would still be the same encouragement as far as the Government is concerned to see that some of these Bills do not ever see the light of day as far as the statute book is concerned.

  Mr Sands: I assume that even if one went over to a new pattern of time for Private Members' Bills, one would not change the expectation that a Bill talked through the moment of introduction would be dead. You can change it: this is what some Parliaments do, they have a system whereby they have a little committee which looks at all the Private Members' Bill propositions and selects some that will be "votable"—which is the expression used in Canada—and they are guaranteed a vote. I talked to Sir Nicholas's committee about this a few months ago, so I will not trespass on that.

  Mr McLoughlin: Very diplomatically put, thank you very much.

  Q90 Joan Ruddock: May I put it to you, Mr Sands, that first of all some of us would support a Tuesday night only for Private Members' Bills, so it would not be two consecutive nights at all. Secondly, when the Oppositions decide to have two debates on an Opposition day, and in many other circumstances, a three hour sitting is deemed appropriate for a full debate. So we could decide that Private Members' Bills would be limited to the full three hours and they would only be on a Tuesday; we currently have 13 Fridays and I am sure that doing it one day a week we could still get through as many Private Members' Bills. On Fridays, often people think that if they have travelled or stayed in London for Private Members' Bills they might as well speak for 40 minutes, when of course there are restrictions in many debates for speeches to be limited to 10 or 12 minutes. So I put it to you that there are other ways of looking at a much more manageable shift of Private Members' Bills from a Friday, say, to a Tuesday, to be taken every Tuesday when the House is sitting. I wonder if, in the light of that sort of arrangement, you would feel it was a bit more manageable than perhaps is suggested in your paper.

  Mr Sands: The maths works, Mrs Ruddock, yes, I appreciate that; but it is just whether the House is happy with the idea of a typical second reading debate on a Private Member's Bill (1) having time-limited speeches imposed by the Chair; and (2) possibly being closured after three hours.

  Q91 Joan Ruddock: It would mean taking just one Bill on one occasion, that would be the discipline.

  Mr Sands: The other point I would make is the one that Mr McLoughlin referred to in passing, the question of what time one is providing, whether one is providing guaranteed hours, in which case we would be routinely rising at 11 o'clock because there will be routinely two divisions at seven o'clock, so the staff will find that Private Members' business would start at 7.30, be interrupted at 10.30 and then the adjournment. That is where we are getting on to a 12 or 13 hour working day for some staff.

  Chairman: I apologise for interrupting, but apparently some protesters have broken into the Chamber itself, I understand, that is the reason for the sitting being suspended. I have to go and speak with the Speaker, and it may be that your advice is needed as well, Mr Sands, but I wonder, Nick, if you could take over as chair. We have got to question five and there are only about three or four to go on this side.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton: You will be coming back.

  Chairman: I will be coming back.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton: I will certainly do that.

  Chairman: Thank you.

In the absence of the Chairman, Sir Nicholas Winterton was called to the Chair

  Q92 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Having assumed the Chair, can I use the Chair to ask a question myself, really to Mr Sands and following up the question that Patrick McLoughlin asked and what Joan Ruddock has said. Bearing in mind that previously Members would come in on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday at nine o'clock in the morning, because there were always staff on duty, and we went through sometimes until 11, 12 or one o'clock the following morning, what are the administrative and procedural problems about having Private Members' Bills on a Tuesday night, as Joan Ruddock has suggested? We did it before, we were sitting long hours before; is it that people have got used to the shorter hours or are not prepared to work as long hours as Members of Parliament? What were the procedural and administrative problems before when we were sitting very long hours?

  Mr Sands: Yes, we did, but they were not built in to the routine pattern of Standing Orders. The routine pattern of the day was 2.30 to 10.00, that was the moment of interruption and, very often, the moment of interruption was waived and we would sit later into the night. Here one would actually be building into the Standing Orders that the day would start at 11.30 in the morning and if you provided a guaranteed three hour period for Private Members' business the moment of interruption would be some time between 10.00 and 10.30.

  Q93 Sir Nicholas Winterton: But it is not an insurmountable problem.

  Mr Sands: It is not an insurmountable problem.

  Q94 Sir Nicholas Winterton: You are really saying there needs to be, Mr Sands, a longer lead-in.

  Mr Sands: Yes. Of the proposals that I have seen on the table, I think that is the one which would take the most adjusting to.

  Q95 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Does Mr Andrew Walker, who I know clearly has a responsibility in this area, have any view?

  Mr Walker: Sir Nicholas, it is certainly not an insurmountable problem. As you say, we have done it before, but there are perhaps three differences I might mention to the Committee that might affect how we deal with it. One is that there is quite a lot of business of one kind or another, committee work and so on, starting earlier in the morning routinely now, and if that were to change that would affect the position. The second is that the law has changed in between and we now have rules about 11 hour breaks which, even though we have negotiated with our trade unions eight hour breaks, we would find we were not able to guarantee those. We are keeping an eye on the development of the law in this area. The third point is that when I started work 30 years ago I did exactly what I was told, but these days people expect to have some say in their working patterns. We are getting our staff used to change and this would be more change, so it uses up "credit", so to speak. We would need to work with people, give them plenty of notice so they can change their domestic arrangements and so on, and in some areas we might need extra staff in order to run more of a shift system to allow us to comply with the law as it develops.

  Q96 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Again, because I feel very conscious of the role that Members of Parliament play, you are not too concerned about the very long hours that Members of Parliament work.

  Mr Sands: Members of Parliament are self-employed.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton: Mr Sands, thank you very much. I wanted to get that on record, you need not take it further. Mr Pike, do you wish to add something to that?

  Mr Pike: No, thank you.

  Sir Nicholas Winterton: Paul Tyler.

  Q97 Mr Tyler: In your memorandum I am very struck by something I think we should acknowledge and applaud, which is you say very firmly: "House staff have shown considerable flexibility in adapting to the changes agreed in October 2002 and implementing them just two months later." I think we should put on record that we recognise that and we applaud that, and that is why what you are telling us today is so significant and, indeed, this immediate preceding conversation. Can I ask though whether any consultations have taken place with staff about the quid pro quo? Have the staff indicated any enthusiasm, or lack of enthusiasm, for release on more Fridays, for example, because I think the pattern of work for most people is that long weekends are very attractive, and I wonder whether that has featured in the discussion.

  Mr Sands: When applying these flexibilities which the Working Time Regulations allow us we obviously do use Fridays as mop-up time. One of the Working Time Regulations is that staff should not work more than 48 hours a week.

  Mr Walker: Averaged over a period.

  Mr Sands: So, yes, we are more flexible on a Friday.

  Q98 Mr Tyler: If, for example, the proposal that Joan Ruddock is suggesting was put through, and you knew that the House in normal circumstances never sat on a Friday, would not both the certainty of that and the attractions of it implicitly be something of a quid pro quo in your discussions with staff?

  Mr Sands: With some, but not with most because there is a lot of work to be done which does not depend on being here supporting the sittings of the House. A Select Committee clerk has to find time to draft his or her reports, for example; Hansard need time to catch up with Standing Committee meetings, so much work does get done on Friday.

  Q99 Mr Tyler: But by definition if they are being asked to do more on a Tuesday night, those very same staff would not get asked to do that work on a Friday. That is my point, there is a direct equation, is there not?

  Mr Sands: Yes, there is—well, fairly direct.


3   Note by witness: This is incorrect. The provision of 13 Fridays is now stipulated in Standing Order No.14. Back


 
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