Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-279)
19 MAY 2004
RT HON
PETER HAIN
AND MR
PHIL WOOLAS
Q260 Chairman: I think in other evidence
we have had, it has been established that the clerks do have a
very difficult but very important job to do and, if they are working
the previous evening late getting in from where they live sometimes
before 8.55 is extremely difficult and puts them under, I think,
unnecessary pressure.
Mr Hain: I very much agree with
you, Chairman. Indeed, if you recall, that was one of the early
points you made forcibly to me in your usual moderate fashion
when we met very soon after I took up the job.
Q261 David Hamilton: Do you think there
is any advantage in giving chairmen powers to limit the length
of speeches in standing committees?
Mr Hain: I understand the reason
for the suggestion because Members find it a little irritating
when one or two can speak at great length, whether it is a deliberate
filibuster or just verbosity, but I am not sure that speech limits
of the kind that operate in the House would work in standing committees
and I would be interested in your views on this because Members
are not limited to speaking only once on a question. I would be
more inclined to apply persuasion and your Committee might encourage
short speeches and the Chairmen's Panel might find ways of encouraging
good practice, but I would be very reluctant as a government to
make that an issue for us, but it is an issue for the Chairmen's
Panel and an issue for perhaps your Committee to look at in the
round.
Q262 David Hamilton: I am sure we will
look at that. My second point is, are the interests of minority
parties—the Liberal member is not here, he has had to go
to a meeting—and back benchers sufficiently recognised in
the current procedures and, if not, do you think it should change?
Mr Hain: The minority parties
do have a number of concerns, which they represented to me, about
the extent of representation they have between them and as a collective
whole, but I do not know that I have any words of wisdom to add
to where we are on that.
Q263 David Hamilton: Let us explore the
case that the Liberals used to represent the minority parties
but that has ceased, as I understand it. Is there any mechanism
to change that?
Mr Hain: It has created a bit
of difficulty from our point of view. That has broken down. I
have not heard of any good solutions to that problem.
Mr Woolas: Our attitude, Chairman,
is that we would prefer it if the parties could agree an arrangement.
Q264 Chairman: But, inevitably, the Selection
Committee, in choosing people to go on to Standing Committees
will clearly pretty accurately reflect the minority parties I
referred to—Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party, the
Ulster Unionists and other Northern Ireland parties—where
legislation is specific to those parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr Hain: Indeed.
Q265 Chairman: So that, in fact, they
are not treated that unfairly, it is whether or not they are always
going to get representation on all Standing Committees.
Mr Hain: I think that is a very
fair point, Chairman.
Mr Woolas: What annoys the Whips
in Opposition of Government is when a lot of time has been spent
debating the numbers of the minority parties and then, in fact,
in practice there is an absence on the Standing Committee.
Q266 David Hamilton: What mechanisms
could be devised to extend the time available if the Government
tables substantial amendments during the course of Committee stage?
Mr Hain: We have already shown
on, for example, the Pensions Bill that we have been prepared
to extend the time, and I think it would be unreasonable if the
Government was just reining down amendments, as I am afraid has
happened far more often than it should in recent times. We stand
ready to make more time available when it is asked for.
Q267 Chairman: Thank you. We now pass
to someone where still wisdom abides—
Mr Hain: Chairman, there is one
other thing, if I may? I apologise. We have been willing, on an
exceptional basis, to recommit bills to Standing Committee. That
happened, of course, with the Planning and Compulsory Purchase
Bill.
Chairman: Thank you for that information.
Q268 Mr McWalter: We are back with knives
again, really. Before asking my question, I just do think that
if the reference class is all bills then, in a sense, it looks
like having a knife is quite a rare event, but if the reference
class is, as I believe it should be, Chair, those bills that either
the Opposition or some of the Government's own backbenchers believe
to be controversial, then I suspect that knives apply nearly all
the time. If that is the case, then I think maybe that should
be the reference class that we go on. If that is the case, since
a knife, in fact, is a block of a bill which has actually not
been debated, that is a hugely important thing to happen—to
have something that is going to pass into legislation and nobody
has worked out its implications, its consequences, and whether
the wording is to the satisfaction of those who represent the
communities that are going to be affected by that legislation.
Is that not a huge thing to impose on anybody?
Mr Hain: We are not talking about
a cut-off point to stop debate, we are talking about a way of
arranging business to actually enable progress to be made instead
of debate, perhaps, to be bogged down on only one area.
Q269 Mr McWalter: I can understand that.
In the end, what happens when a knife falls is that clauses and
schedules, and so on, do get ditched. I sat on a Northern Ireland
Bill, very sensitive stuff, and it actually looked as though,
if we had had more time, the conflicting sides of the Northern
Ireland dispute might actually have been able to have made their
way through it, but the knife fell, bitterness ensued and they
all just went into separate lobbies and we lost the opportunity.
I do think it is a hugely serious matter, and that, perhaps, sitting
back and saying "We only had one Bill that had 7" is
actually a little bit laid back in terms of the gravity of what
happens when a knife falls.
Mr Hain: I understand the point
that you are making. May I just offer these observations? First
of all, that always happened anyway, before programming. I remember
it myself in Opposition. I make no particular complaint about
the then Conservative Government; that was the way things went.
Q270 Chairman: Are you saying there,
Leader of the House, that it happened on every bill or it only
happened where the government of the day introduced what was then
a guillotine motion? Clearly, if there was not a guillotine motion
everything was debated. It was only when a guillotine motion was
introduced that there could be a number of clauses and schedules
or even new clauses which were not debated, because without a
guillotine motion the bill would go through in Standing Committee
from one clause to the next, one clause to schedule, schedule
to clause and so on, through to the end of the bill.
Mr Hain: As I recall, and I will
ask Mr Woolas to come in, if I may, you would sometimes just go
shooting past a whole series of clauses. I remember it well on
Standing Committees; you may not actually have had a knife, as
it were, to stop you debating because of the management of the
business which created the circumstances that are being described,
but you actually did, for the usual channels reasons, make progress.
Can I make another point, which I think also answers the point
that has been raised. Knives can be reviewed, and are. The Programming
Sub-Committee can meet and change knives, if that is desired,
and they do. The Programming Sub-Committee do that, often prodded
by the Chairman, and that is good—that is the very flexibility
we are talking about. The obverse of knives is having chaotic
business where outsiders cannot be there to see the things that
really matter to them, on the one hand, and actually sometimes
Members find that they do not reach the business that really matters
to them.
Q271 Mr McWalter: You are emphasising,
and this is very welcome, the powers of the Chair. My experience
is that very often the Chair will say "Sorry, this is it;
the finished clauses 22-79 are not going to be further taken".
If, in fact, what you are saying is that the Chair does have those
powers, would you support formal provision in the calling of a
knife, possibly, for instance, because a division in the House
causes a Committee to be suspended (which currently does not happen,
at the moment) or, again, if the Chair thinks that a short extension
will be desirable for some other reason, those reasons possibly
to be articulated more closely?
Mr Hain: It is quite a complex
matter, on which I would welcome the views of the Committee. I
am aware of injury time for divisions and that suspensions for
divisions in the House can cause difficulties. I have experienced
that, myself, on Select Committees, for example, particularly
when they occur shortly before knives fall, although the reduction
in the number of internal knives that we have seen over this past
session should significantly ease those difficulties. I know that
some Members of the Chairmen's Panel have argued we should allow
injury time in the same way as we allow for Westminster Hall.
I have got some concern that that would lead to uncertain timetables
in the Standing Committee and, perhaps, to perverse incentives
to press multiple divisions in the House. So I think that we have
got to look at this extremely carefully. Perhaps, when you do—or
if you do—you might consider all those points as well.
Q272 Chairman: Would you look at it seriously,
Leader of the House? I think Mr McWalter has raised a very important
matter. I am not sure that it would be easy for the Opposition
to stage multi-votes in the House. It is possible and it is feasible
but I think it is unlikely. However, if there is a loss of time
due to divisions, and it has come at a critical time for a bill
in Standing Committee, does it not seem rational and reasonable
to you, Leader of the House that extra time should be provided
for, particularly, divisions in the House?
Mr Hain: I am certainly willing
to consider these options. I think it is a case that has been
made and I am willing to look at it. I would be very open-minded
about any recommendation that you make. The only thing I would
be a little worried about—and you may have a view on this—is
that any changes are added to the pressure on Standing Committee
Chairmen to take a particular role as between Government and Opposition
or any other Members involved. I do think there are great advantages
to Members to having clear end-points to Committees, so Chairmen
can plan their diaries. I think your own observations on all the
complexities on this would be valuable.
Chairman: I will only comment from the
Chair, and as a Member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen, that
we take our role as Chairman of a Standing Committee very seriously
and if that, from time to time, means that there will be a clash
with other engagements and commitments, I have to say to you,
as a long-standing Member of the Speaker's Panel, that the role
and responsibilities of the Speaker's Panel come first, and a
dinner or other things would come second. I do not envisage it
happening very often because I think the number of times there
would be divisions in the House—for which I think, personally,
extra time should be provided—would be relatively limited.
Q273 Mr McWalter: Chair, I was about
to welcome the general way in which the Leader of the House was
responding to my observations and I am grateful for that because
I think it should be on the record that the business of having
knives is something you view with concern and you want to do everything
you can to limit them. I think that that is very welcome. The
last remark you made about asking the Chair of a Committee to
take what you call "a particular role" worries me a
little bit, because in the end the Chair is in a situation where,
for instance, if somebody is filibustering, if they are repeating
themselves or if they are otherwise behaving unreasonably, it
is the job of the Chair to pull the person up and to try and expedite
the business appropriately. There are certainly quite a lot of
occasions when Chairs do not do that because they are worrying—if
it is a Conservative Chair and a Labour Member blathering on,
or vice-versa—because they do not want to be seen to be
political, but I think the House should have greater confidence
in the capacity of its Members to take that fair-minded, impartial
approach when they are asked to perform these roles. I think that
is a great strength of the House and I would hope that we would
be willing to put greater weight on that expertise and that capacity
than, perhaps, we currently do. In that connection, I wonder whether
(I think I know what you are going to say but I have to ask it
formally anyway) the Chair sometimes could take the initiative
in representing the interests of backbenchers or others in calling
meetings of Programming Sub-Committees; whether actually, in the
end, it would be a sensible thing to have Chairs that are sometimes
proactive when it looks like the train is coming off the rails?
Mr Hain: First of all, I agree
with you about the political and, in a sense, constitutional importance
of the Chairs of Committees in this context, but I do not see
any reason, if that is what is being suggested, to give Chairmen
an express power to do this, as, say, in Standing Orders. I do
not see any case for that. In my experience, Chairmen are not
usually very nervous about making their views on these matters
clear to the Government's Whips. I think it would be unlikely
that anybody would ignore the Chairman, but perhaps Phil Woolas
could give his own experience on it. I also think that Standing
Committee Chairmen could play an invaluable role in encouraging
a consensual role in the Standing Committee. Of course, since
the Government can count on the majority of the Programming Sub-Committee
it is hardly necessary for us to resist calls for it to meet in
a way which would incur the wrath of a Member of the Chairmen's
Panel.
Mr McWalter: Is your answer saying that
the Chair does have the capacity to call a meeting? Suppose a
knife has fallen really inappropriately. Would a Chair regard
themselves as having the power to convene a Programming Sub-Committee
after that knife had fallen in order to deal with some of the
clauses which had been victims of the knife?
Q274 Chairman: Can I come in, perhaps,
quickly from the Chair? I appreciate the point that Tony McWalter
is making but I have to say—and my Clerk has whispered in
my ear something I was going to say anyway—it is a bit late
to do it after the knife has fallen. It could be that the Chairman
might intervene in the debate anticipating that the knife was
going to fall to suggest that there is a short suspension of the
Committee to enable the business Sub-Committee to meet to reallocate
the time at which a knife should fall.
Mr Hain: Of course, that can happen.
I will ask Phil Woolas to give some examples that help us in this
respect. Can I just distinguish between the Chairman being given
a formal power and the present reality where a suggestion by the
Chairman is never ignored—at least in my experience—and
counts for a great deal? Perhaps you could confirm this.
Mr Woolas: My experience is that
the Chairmen of the Standing Committees are extremely good at
doing their jobs. If they believe that a knife is going to cause
a problem they do approach both sides informally. Sometimes they
do it with a raised eyebrow and sometimes they do it with a note—although
they rarely write it down because they are very wise in that regard.
Sometimes if the relationship has broken down between the two
front benches the Chairmen do act as ACAS, and they have lots
of devices they can do that with: long coffee breaks, ruling people
in and out of order. If the Chairmen thinks that one side or the
other is not behaving reasonably vis-a"-vis a knife they
can impose their will. It happened to me once where I was crashing
against a knife at 5 o'clock, my Minister wanted to get to it
because he needed to get away, the Chairman was not happy with
that because, in fact, a Conservative backbencher had an amendment
down and the Chairman made it clear that when we came back from
the vote downstairs he was going to have several coffee breaks,
which he had the power to do, unless we reached a new agreement
to put the knife back to Thursday lunchtime. So I did because
I had no choice. I am not going to say which Chairman it was,
but it was on my side of the House and she has a strong interest
in railways!
Mr McWalter: You met your Waterloo there
then?
Chairman: It was not Agincourt, it was
Waterloo. We now pass to, again, north of Hadrian's Wall. Rosemary
McKenna.
Q275 Rosemary McKenna: Can I move on
to Report Stage and Third Reading. There has been very little
programming in recent years on Report Stage. What is the reason
for this? Is it a lack of time? Would it help to establish an
earlier deadline for tabling amendments so that a selection could
be available earlier?
Mr Hain: We have tended not to
use Programming Committees for Report Stage because we have been
able to get agreement through the usual channels. It is open to
Programming Sub-Committees to make recommendations in respect
of the remaining stages, including Report, but they do not often
do so. I understand that in the current session Programming Sub-Committees
have not made recommendations concerning Report. Examples from
the last session were that the Programming Sub-Committee recommended
that, for the Criminal Justice Bill on 4 March 2003, "the
proceedings on consideration of the report should be concluded
within three days", but that was a specific recommendation.
This resolution was subsequently put to the House as a further
Programme motion and agreed the next day. So that is an example
where—
Q276 Rosemary McKenna: It was by consent?
Mr Hain: It was by consent, yes.
On the Communications Bill, which had its own problems, as you
recall, the Programming Sub-Committee recommended that on 6 February
last year "the proceedings on consideration of report should
be concluded within two days". Again, that resolution was
subsequently put to the House as a further Programme Motion and
agreed. So what I am saying is when you need to do it you can.
Q277 Rosemary McKenna: But if you can
do it without it, then—
Mr Hain: Then there is an advantage
in doing that.
Rosemary McKenna: You would not refuse,
if someone asked?
Q278 Chairman: Again, as an evergreen
backbencher, it is a fact that the Report Stage of a bill is the
only stage of a bill in which some Members can participate, because
if they are not selected to speak in the Second Reading and they
are not selected to serve on the Standing Committee, the Report
or remaining stage of a bill is the only occasion in which, historically,
they have an opportunity of participating. It could be that they
have an important constituency interest or there may only be a
personal interest in a bill. Therefore, would you accept that
the programming of Report Stages is an undesirable development
and should be avoided whenever possible?
Mr Hain: I think that is a very
fair point, but perhaps Phil Woolas could give his own experience
of this.
Mr Woolas: There are two issues
to bear in mind, in answer to your question. One is that the advantage
that that gives to external bodies at Committee stage does not
apply at Report Stage because they are here anyway. The second
point is that, of course, it is the selection of amendments that,
in practice, determines the structure of a debate. When we put
knives in on Report Stage—I would say the main criteria
for the selection of a knife is not its controversy because, by
and large, force majeure means one has to provide a reasonable
time (the Opposition will never be satisfied, in public)—it
is actually where the subject area is different. Because the selection
of amendments determines the structure of the debate in practice,
and because one cannot give certainty to Members as to when one
will reach that amendment, if you have got a group of amendments,
you will notice sometimes there will be a knife at 5.00 and you
vote at 4.45, so the knife does not actually help the Members
in the way it does in Standing Committee. That also bears upon
the Chairman's point, which is, as the Leader says, extremely
important; if one plays politics with the knives of a Report Stage
one can squeeze out Members who have got a legitimate point of
view and, of course, that Member can be squeezed out by the political
use of amendments, which happens not just between the two front
benches but on the back benches as well. So for those reasons
the main advantages of knives, which are for external bodies,
are the ability to plan and do not apply, on the whole, at Report
Stage.
Q279 Rosemary McKenna: One of the witnesses
suggested that the Standing Committee should make a report about
which parts of the bill had not been discussed in order to help
the House apportion its time during the remaining stages. What
would you think about that?
Mr Woolas: I think it is a good
idea but I think it would not work. I think the road to hell is
paved with good intentions. What would happen is that that document
would become a politicised document and it would inevitably be
picked up. We would do it if we were in Opposition and the Opposition
do it now. The Liberal Democrats would do it under all circumstances
because they always make those points at the beginning of debates.
That would force the Government to use its majority at the Programming
Sub-Committee to change the nature of the Report. What I would
say is very important is that the usual channels pay a lot of
attention to the way in which the Standing Committee has gone,
and you will normally find that under both governments (and I
believe this has happened for 40 or 50 years) the Whip on the
Report Stage will be the same Whip as at Standing Committee. That
is the normal convention and that is the reason why. So I think
it is superficially a good idea but I fear it would not work.
Rosemary McKenna: I think that is a very
good answer. I remember sitting on the Finance and Pensions Bill
before programming came in, when the Opposition made great play
about issues that had not been debated during the Committee stage,
but in actual fact they had prevented them being debated, or they
had chosen to debate an issue which was really insignificant over
a great length of time, so that they could not debate that very
important issue and then raise it at that stage. So I think you
are right, Mr Woolas, that it would become politicised.
Chairman: As the Deputy Leader did make
a direct reference to the Liberal Democrats I will allow a Liberal
Democrat Member of my Committee to intervene.
Sir Robert Smith: I would just like to
understand Rosemary's experience, because if there was not programming
how could any length of time talk anything out, because if there
is no programming—
Rosemary McKenna: There was not programming,
they chose the amendments that they put forward to debate another
issue rather than—
Chairman: We are supposed to be questioning
our witnesses, not each other!
Sir Robert Smith: It would not be a politicised
report, though, would it, because the report is a factual record
of what had happened in the Committee?
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