Select Committee on Procedure Minutes of Evidence


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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