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A system of programming of bills by agreement between the parties was introduced in 1997, but had broken down by 2000, and has been replaced by the current system governed by a set of sessional orders which do not require any cross-party agreement (although such agreement was envisaged by the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons in its 2000 report). Since then, the great majority of Government bills have been programmed. The system is the subject of a good deal of controversy, and programme motions are often divided on.
We recommend that programming motions should be decided without debate only where there is cross-party support; on other occasions the Government would, if necessary, have to justify such a motion in a one-hour debate. In exchange, we would expect parties to adopt a constructive approach to programming.
The initial programme motion for a bill should be taken not less than 48 hours after second reading, to allow the proposed date for the end of committee stage (the "out-date") to take account of the second reading debate and any representations made; there should also be the possibility of a vote (without debate) on an amendment to the programme motion before the vote on the motion itself.
In standing committees, chairmen already have the power to intervene and suggest a meeting of a programming sub-committee to change the programme; we believe that this is a suitable activity to assist with orderly consideration of the bill. If no member objects, the standing committee should be able to dispense with a meeting of the sub-committee and itself make any arrangements which the sub-committee could have proposed. We believe that it is usually best for programmes in standing committee to specify as few intermediate deadlines ("internal knives") as possible, and that chairmen should have discretion to postpone a deadline by up to 15 minutes when it would be for the general convenience of the committee (during which time amendments to a programme motion could be considered if necessary); and any deadline should be delayed by the length of any suspensions earlier in the same sitting caused by divisions in the House. If time is insufficient, longer afternoon sittings may sometimes be a reasonable alternative to a later out-date.
We do not recommend speech limits in standing committee, but expect all concerned to use good sense in deciding the length of their speeches.
For report stage and third reading, we recommend that the Government should table its amendments in good time and that the House should be provided with a factual statement of which clauses and schedules were not considered in committee because of the operation of the programme; and we believe that the House will usually want to spend most of the time available on report stage rather than third reading.
As with programming, we believe that the introduction of carry-over of bills to the next session, which has the potential to lessen bottlenecks in the legislative process, should proceed with cross-party agreement.
A full list of our conclusions and recommendations is on page 19.
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