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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