Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
19 MAY 2004
RT HON
PETER HAIN
AND MR
PHIL WOOLAS
Q280 Chairman: It could come, Leader
of the House, from the Chairman of the Committee, the senior Chairman:
"I report to the House that clauses A to B or A to D, and
Schedules 1, 2, 3 and 4 were not debated and new clauses 1, 2,
3 and 4 were also not debated". If it were factual would
you have the same opposition as you expressed to Rosemary McKenna's
question?
Mr Hain: I am not in favour of
that. I think what that does is it then transports on to the Floor
of the House, in a staccato form, that kind of information which
does not take into account the real situation in the Committee—why
certain things occurred and why they did not—and it enables
mischief to be made in a way that I do not think—
Q281 Chairman: Will you give an assurance
to this Committee, Leader of the House, that the Government in
dealing with Opposition parties would take fully and properly
into account the fact that certain clauses and schedules and new
clauses had not been debated at the Standing Committee stage,
for whatever reason, in the allocation of time if that were necessary
in a Report Stage?
Mr Hain: Of course. I also just
add two other points. It is a matter of public record what was
not debated in a Standing Committee; it is not as if it is secret
information. Anybody can go to the record and make what use of
it they wish in subsequent proceedings. I would also make this,
I think, quite important point: whether an issue is being debated
in a Standing Committee, as you will be aware, is also an issue
the Speaker takes into account when selecting amendments.
Chairman: Thank you. It is good to have
that on the record.
Mr McWalter: One of the things I find
most infuriating about the current structure is that if, say,
clauses 22 to 72 have not been taken, then we are told "That
is fine because they will be taken in the House of Lords".
So we can have an arrangement where those who are elected, who
have constituencies and who have, presumably, weekly surgeries
and are inundated with correspondence and e-mails, and so on—so
might have a fair chance of being in touch with the issues—are
marginalized and those who are not elected but appointed are then
given the guts of the bill, often, to deal with. I must say that
while, historically, that is the way these things have been done,
it seems to me an appalling way to manage things, and if we can
organise things so more things are dealt with competently, by
those who are elected, that would be, surely, a real improvement.
Q282 Chairman: I think that is an observation
to which no reply is necessary.
Mr Hain: If I may, except in this
respect, that I dispute the fact that the House of Lords does
a better scrutiny job than the House of Commons. I think the record
shows otherwise.
Q283 Mr McWalter: But they are asked
to do so because we have not actually debated the thing because
of these crazy timetables.
Mr Woolas: We miss out clauses
not because of programming; we have always missed out clauses.
Mr McWalter: But we have also always
kicked them over to the House of Lords when we do not need to
be doing that.
Q284 Chairman: There are occasions when
clauses are not debated at Standing Committee stage and, also,
sadly, because of programming, are not debated at the remaining
stages of the Report Stage as well. If that is the case, clearly,
the House of Lords believes that they have a duty, perhaps, to
look particularly closely at them. We have covered a lot of this
already and I think the Leader of the House and his Deputy have
really made their point extremely well. Can I put a further question
relating to Third Reading? Your standard allocation, Leader of
the House, for Third Readings is an hour, although this is sometimes
eaten into by divisions at the end of the Report Stage. What considerations
affect how long you, in fact, do allow for a Third Reading, and
given that the only decision for the House at Third Reading is
saying "Yes" or "No" to a bill as a whole,
is in your view the Third Reading Debate actually necessary?
Mr Hain: There is a series of
issues here. I do think Third Reading is necessary but often it
is very short. I think there is an issue about the length of summing-up
speeches, which is a factor here—on which, again, your observations
would be interesting.
Q285 Chairman: So you are saying it is
necessary. What considerations do you take into account as to
how long to allow for a Third Reading Debate?
Mr Hain: I think I had better
ask somebody who has done it to respond on this.
Mr Woolas: What happens is that
you look at the Second Reading, look at how many people are trying
to get in and you look at the balance between the controversy
around the bill—as to whether that controversy is in its
clauses or in its general principles. One does try to give more
than an hour for Third Reading. Tomorrow, I think I am right in
saying, the Pensions Bill is a three-hour Third Reading, and there
have been other examples where we have had two hours. So it is
a balance, as I say, Chairman between whether the controversy
around a bill is on a clause or a particular aspect—on the
Higher Education Bill the controversy was around variable fees
not around the general principles of the Bill.
Q286 Chairman: Thank you very much. Can
we now pass to draft bills, and from the Chair can I put this
question to you? The Shadow Leader of the House, Mr Heald, has
called for the Government to publish full lists of its bills and
the intended draft bills at the beginning of the year. Can I put
the question to you: why do you not do this? It certainly superficially
appears to be a very rational and construction request to make.
Mr Hain: It has been a tradition
that not everything that subsequently appears in the legislative
programme appears in the Queen's Speech. I discovered this, much
to my surprise, last year.
Q287 Chairman: And other measures?
Mr Hain: Which obviously takes
into account that life changes and events occur. I think, myself,
that there is a great deal to be said for publishing a list of
draft bills at the beginning. Indeed, I, at the request of the
Liaison Committee, met their request in a way which had not been
achieved before, of giving the Liaison Committee an advance plan
of when the draft bills were likely to be ready for introduction
and, therefore, they could plan their Select Committee hearings
in advance, as it were, and they were very grateful for that.
I do think, since we have mentioned draft bills and pre-legislative
scrutiny, we do need to take that into account together with carry-over.
I think it indicates a greater propensity for scrutiny on behalf
of the Government and a willingness to encourage scrutiny and
to improve legislation, so that it does improve legislation, than
has occurred before. So when we consider the issues of programming
and knives and so forth we ought to look at it in the round—pre-legislative
scrutiny as well.
Q288 Mr McWalter: On pre-legislative
scrutiny, I think one of the things the Committee would like to
know is whether you have a perception that pre-legislative scrutiny
has actually changed the way a bill goes through the House; whether
the amendments are more rational and whether the apportionment
of time is more felicitous and so on. What is your opinion about
that?
Mr Hain: I do not think it encourages
bills—that is to say pre-legislative scrutiny—to go
through more quickly.
Q289 Mr McWalter: I am not worried about
that, I am worried whether the bill ends up better.
Mr Hain: In some ways I actually
think it encourages greater expertise and, therefore, greater
difficulty for the Government in terms of answering difficult
questions. I do not think that is a bad thing at all but it makes
it inconvenient for business managers. I think it is a good thing
and I do think it has improved Bills as a result. I have experienced
this as Secretary of State for Wales, where we pre-leg every Bill
and that has actually improved the Bill, so I have seen that at
first hand. I think it is true in other areas as well.
Q290 Mr McWalter: Is there any evidence
it has lowered the number of rather panic-stricken last-minute
Government amendments we sometimes witness as part of the process,
or do you think it is not going to make much difference?
Mr Woolas: No, because the Government
never introduces panic-stricken amendments.
Q291 Mr McWalter: I am sorry, I thought
I just saw a dodo fly into the room!
Mr Woolas: One sometimes has to
react to real world events.
Mr Hain: Indeed. I do think pre-legislative
scrutiny means legislation is in better shape when it is introduced
and that the scrutiny is better informed, and that must mean better
legislation at the end of the day. That is why we have been keen
to encourage more draft Bills. In 1997-98 there were just three
draft Bills, there were nine last session, this session there
have been five so far and ten to 13 draft Bills are expected,
so we are on an upward curve, which I very much support and have
encouraged.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Could
we now pass to the subject under the general heading "The
Annual Programme", and I would like Sir Robert to come in.
Q292 Sir Robert Smith: You touched on
this right at the beginning in terms of the role of the Business
Committee and in terms of the annual programme of legislation.
The Government has not taken up previous proposals, for example
in Making the Law, for a committee to oversee the annual
legislative programme, and in this respect Mr Heald appears to
agree with you. Was not an annual programme part of the whole
package which was originally sold to the House, that as well as
programming individual Bills the idea was we would have a programme
for the year as well?
Mr Hain: It is very difficult
for me to envisage how you could have an annual programme in the
sense of exactly what happens when. You have a myriad of different
factors as business manager, you have when parliamentary counsel
time and resources allow a Bill to be drafted, when instructions
are received from government departments, and getting those two
in sequence properly, and then when it goes into the House, either
House, it has all to do with a set of factors to do with how other
Bills are operating. So I think if we were to publish an annual
programme it would be a formidable exercise. I am not saying it
cannot be done, but it would be very difficult.
Q293 Sir Robert Smith: In the Scottish
Parliament, the Parliamentary Bureau is responsible for the timetabling
of all Bills and is independent of the Scottish Executive.
Mr Hain: Yes.
Q294 Sir Robert Smith: Have you looked
at that, and do you see any way that you would want to import
that?
Mr Hain: I do not, to be honest.
It is interesting. The Scottish Parliament obviously is a new
body. I think it would always be the case that the governing party
or parties will want to control the management of business and
I am not in the market for sub-contracting that, if I can put
it that way.
Q295 Sir Robert Smith: How do we get
round this perception, and probably experience, of the Government
trying to get too much legislation through and not setting hard
enough priorities on itself as to what its key targets are for
the year? Obviously the amount of scrutiny of individual legislation
and the quality of the Bill which appears at the beginning is
affected by the whole year's programme and the panic in departments,
"We had better get in the queue quickly even if the Bill
is only half-baked, get in the queue, bag the time from the Government's
business managers and somehow cobble something together".
This may be a bit unfair.
Mr Hain: I will be very frank
about this, I do think there is a tendency in government departments
to want their place in the sun of the Queen's Speech, often for
very necessary and excellent and compelling reasons, others perhaps
less so. I think this also raises the issue of how we deal with
the session and how we deal with the Parliament, and through carry-over
we have as it were broken down the knife, if I could use that
term, on legislation, enabling us to look at a full Parliament
rather than a session as a discrete legislative programme which
has to be at all costs seen in its own box. I am encouraging a
much more strategic approach to legislation by my colleagues and
by the Cabinet as a whole, which does see it as part of the Parliament
and looks ahead rather than a desperate rush to squeeze everything
into one particular legislative programme. I do not think that
means you do not have a Queen's Speech, I think that is important.
I do not think that means you do not have sessions, I think they
will remain, and you would seek to manage your business within
a session, but having an artificial cut-off point at the end of
the first, second or third sessions, seems to me to be the wrong
way to go about it.
Q296 Sir Robert Smith: Do you think that
can be achieved by maintaining the Government control over the
agenda rather than trying to create more concessions across parties
about the use of parliamentary time?
Mr Hain: I dispute the fact that
there is not a consensus in programming. This is the nub of the
issue.
Q297 Sir Robert Smith: More the programming
year.
Mr Hain: I cannot see, Chairman,
how Government would sub-contract that, I really do not, in the
way it works. I think a combination of carry-over and more draft
Bills, these two things, allow us to have a more consensual basis
to the introduction and progress of legislation which achieves
that outcome without, as it were, the Government losing control
of the business. It may sound attractive in Opposition, and is
attractive in Opposition, I have played the same game myself as
a back-bencher, but actually it is very unattractive in Government.
Q298 Chairman: Leader of the House, you
have a very important job in not only representing the House but
in getting the Government's legislative programme through. If
I can ask you to be, as you have been in most of your answers
to us this afternoon, transparently honest and forthcoming—
Mr Hain: "Most"!
Q299 Chairman: Do you feel successive
Governments, and that is Governments of both major parties, have
tried in recent times to get too much legislation through in a
session of Parliament, so that Parliament and Members have become
heavily legislatively constipated, and that this has not necessarily
led to good or, what I would call, excellent scrutiny of legislation
and good legislation at the end of the day?
Mr Hain: You would not expect
me to accept that description, of this current Government at any
rate. Let me put it this way: there is a sense of a legislative
sausage machine, and you do feel this as Leader of the House when
you look at the great list of bids and you ask, "Is that
really necessary?". I can think of an occasion in this past
session where an absolutely emphatic case was made to me why a
Bill should be in the programme—and I will not finger the
department concerned—and I said, "Is this really necessary
or can we achieve this objective by non-legislative means?"
and we accepted it in the programme after a lot of force majeure
being exerted, and then a month or so later we discovered they
did find another way of doing it and it was quietly withdrawn
in a dignified fashion. So there is that sense that whatever party
is in power there is a kind of sausage machine at work. On the
other hand, it is important for us as Government to get through
the key reforms necessary which we think are important, whether
in the field of law or order or health or education or many others.
Chairman: Thank you. I pass the final
question to David Hamilton.
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