Submission from Rt Hon Michael Jack MP
Thank you for your letter of 8 January 2004.
I will ensure I return the questionnaire by 30 January 2004.
It does however seem to me that there is an
important ingredient missing from the work you are undertaking
that would have been of value to Members in enabling them to determine
how the House of Commons should sit in future. No-one, so far
as I can see, has done any analysis on how the House actually
uses its time. You will, for example, be aware that on occasions
the Whips on both sides of the House pad business out in order
to keep it going so that predetermined times for voting can be
adhered to. However in this day and age of the pager the House
can operate on a more flexible arrangement but in terms of making
best use of the time for debates you do not seem to have explored
the boundaries of flexibility. None of the parties have sat down
and considered that if we have so many hours for Parliamentary
business this year how best can they be deployed to ensure both
that the House has the maximum opportunity for scrutiny of debate
in detail and also that the Government of the day has adequate
time to properly debate and consider business it must see through
Parliament.
Equally the context in which you ask your questions
does not present us with radical alternatives about the way in
which the Parliamentary day is to be arranged. Part of the problem
we have is that traditionally we commence with Question Time.
Members understandably wish to attend, hence the problem of clashes
between Question Time and other activities in the House. Has anyone
evaluated scheduling Second Reading debates for first business?
It is clear that not every Member wants to participate in each
Parliamentary occasion so it might be possible to run work in
Committee in parallel with such Second Reading debates thus giving
new possibilities for the starting time of each day's business.
It might also be interesting to explore the
implications of having Questions at the end of the day. This would
give flexibility to Members who did not wish to participate to
enable them to attend dinners or other business in the House without
missing votes. For those with an enthusiasm to probe and question
the Government these events could take place in the early evening
and provide a further opportunity to extend the Parliamentary
day on a need-to-be-there basis.
I think until all these possibilities can be
thoroughly reviewed it would be difficult to determine by simply
ticking the boxes on the questionnaire whether we had achieved
the best use of Parliamentary time available to us.
Might I also presume to put forward a further
suggestion. It is evident in this media-driven world that the
Government will indicate that major announcements are going to
take place on particular days before Parliament has an opportunity
to hear Ministerial statements in detail. In order for Parliament
to better probe Ministers might I ask the Committee to consider
this proposal: if the Government indicates its wish to make a
statement and release the information to the press early in the
day then the penalty should be that we have a three hour debate
in which the first 40 minutes are allocated to the front benches
to make their points and subsequently Members would be allowed
up to five minutes to make contributions or ask questions to Ministers
about the statement, having had the opportunity to read the documents
before coming to the Chamber. This might enable the Government
to probe more thoroughly on key issues and at the same time recognise
the media-driven world in which we operate.
I am grateful to you and the Committee for taking
the trouble to look at these important matters and I hope we can
ultimately have a good debate about these issues before they are
cast in concrete for the future.
January 2004
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