Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-38)
NATASCHA ENGEL,
DAVID HOWARTH
AND MR
DAVID KIDNEY
10 MAY 2006
Q20 Ann Coffey: You cannot
get people into second reading!
David Howarth: I think it is a
factor that, since Natascha and I were elected, there have been
no second readings more than one day. I have read second reading
debates of more than one day; some of them were very useful and
some were not. I think you are right to say that there needs to
be a more detailed analysis and discussion of the regulatory impact
assessment or something like it. Whether the whole House is the
best place to do that is another question. It might well be the
case that, on some very important bills, it is, but I tend towards
the view of the other witnesses that, if you are going to get
more detailed discussion and scrutiny, a Committee is often the
best place to do it and it should be concentrating not just on
the words but also on the policies. The other thing that struck
me is that sometimes second readings are too long. There are some
bills where it seems to be absolutely pointless spending the entire
day doing second readings but we have a convention and that is
what we do. I would like to add one other comment to what you
said right at the start about how Parliament behaves on legislation
in general. One of the things that surprised me about what we
do here is how little we scrutinise and even can suggest changes
to the most important aspect of government policy, which is what
government spend the money on. You were talking about legislative
answers to political problems. Government has two outputs: laws
and money. I think that because we have so little influence over
the money side that we here tend to think too much about the law
as the answer when it probably is not the answer. I have spent
some time in local government and, in local government, of course
it is the other way round. Local government has very little legislative
power at all and therefore all the debates are about the money.
All the motions are to spend more or less on a particular thing.
Local government tends to think that the answer is always money
and we here tend to think the answer is always law. In fact, it
is one or the other or both in most cases. The Standing Orders
which prevent or almost end discussion of government expenditure
or different sorts of patterns of expenditure except on the motion
of a Minister of the Crown strikes me as a big obstacle to our
functioning as a Parliament that can control the Executive.
Q21 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Do
you have any comment, David, on whether you think that maybe use
can be made of second reading Committees to deal with non-controversial
bills?
Mr Kidney: I think David has just
described the Government's roles and we should be talking about
Parliament's roles to make legislation and to hold the Executive
to account. We do have a national leadership role which is often
overlooked. Just to go back to Adrian's point, I thought that
his point was leading towards post-legislative scrutiny; when
you have passed a law, is it any use before you talk about if
you should bring in another law or not? I think we ought to make
it a routine of post-legislative scrutiny. As far as the time
for debate is concerned, I was on this Committee in the last Parliament
when we looked at the way we choose who is going to speak in a
debate and for how long and we hit a rather large obstacle called
Mr Speaker in trying to make changes. In the House of Lords, they
have a sensible system where people put in to speak and then they
divide the time between the people who are going to speak. If
we were given enough information in advance of our second reading
debates, we could allot two days when a number of people want
to speak and we could allot less than one day when there are not
many people who want to speak. I do not mind second reading Committees
being used for the least controversial bills but mostly all of
us want to feel that we had the opportunity to take part in a
second reading debate.
Q22 Ms Butler: I agree
with that last point. I want to talk about two things, the Committee
stage where we talk about making more time to hear oral evidence
and so on and how we need to create more time at Committee stage.
Do you think that there should be a limit on contributions because
often at Committee stage people get up and talk for hours on end
when it is totally unnecessary? I will not embarrass the opposition
doctor by naming him but, I was in a Committee recently when,
every time he got up, there were huge groans and moans and that
was from his side! Do you think there should be some constraints
in contributions when we discuss at Committee stage? Second, technology.
What role do you think technology can play in making Committee
stage easier and simpler? I always mention technology!
Natascha Engel: I would like to
answer that because I think that I was on the same Committee as
you were! It was such a pity; I was really looking forward to
being on the Committee because it was quite a meaty one; I was
quite excited about it. However, as a measly little backbencher,
I knew that I was never really going to have a chance to take
part in it. It was a real pity because it was important but I
came out of it after weeks feeling that it was entirely pointless
because the same points were made over and over and over again
and it often felt like filibustering when that was the Opposition
and I could not understand why on earth ... It was entirely pointless
and it was a real shame because, given the subject of the Committee,
there were a number of people who were expert and who could have
made some really interesting contributions, but that was an entirely
macho Committee. I have been on other Committees where that has
not been the case and the whole mood has been completely different
and it has been very odd to see how committees end up reflecting
the personality of the Minister and whoever is leading the Opposition
debate.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Natascha, I ask
from the Chair whether you would name the Committee on which the
macho behaviour—
Q23 Ann Coffey: Do not
go there, Natascha!
Natascha Engel: I will not. That
would be terrible!
Q24 Sir Nicholas Winterton: We
will not force you!
Natascha Engel: Thank you. It
goes back to the point of saying that there are many Members,
both in the Commons and in the Lords, who have expert knowledge,
understanding, skills and background which is not being used and
it is such a pity. It is such a waste of resource. It is awful
when you know that there are so many other things that you could
be doing and it is worse than watching paint dry! That seems to
be a crime, an absolute crime, and we need to do something that
is better. Very briefly in answer to your point, what you are
describing in terms of the whole of the legislative process from
beginning to end, it is kind of Kafkaesque, you get into a complete
panic about which point where, when actually it is entirely organic.
I thought that a very good example of pre-legislative scrutiny
was the corporate manslaughter legislation that is just beginning
and a very bad example was the Education Bill in terms of the
way that we do things. I think that we can learn from both of
those because there is corporate manslaughter legislation in existence
and there is education legislation in existence and we are building
on them. It is not here is the beginning and here is the end,
the whole thing must be seen organically and, if we see it like
that, I think we can identify for different pieces of legislation
different points at which we need to be improving things.
Q25 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Natascha,
I know that you have to go very shortly but may I put two quick
questions to you. How could proceedings on the Report stage, that
is the remaining stages of the bill, be improved from your point
of view as a new Member and do you see any real purpose in the
third reading of a Bill?
Natascha Engel: I am really stumped!
I have been thinking for days now about exactly these stages of
bills and I think absolutely there does need to be improvement.
With the third reading, I may be missing the point but I just
cannot see the purpose of it at all. That may be because I am
new and I have not grasped it. The later on in the legislative
process you get, the worse it seems to become.
Q26 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Thank
you and, if you do slip away, I am sure the Committee will understand.
I know that you have an important engagement.
Natascha Engel: Thank you very
much and thank you very much for inviting me.
Q27 Graham Stringer: I
have two points to follow on from what Natascha said on the point
of the third reading debate where there is a change which changes
the balance in the House of Commons which may or may not happen
on the Education Bill. Without the third reading, you would lose
the opportunity for the Government to change their mind. The point
that I really want to ask is, we have discussed how we deal with
the macho side of "The Government are always right issue"
when it gets into the legislative process. It seems to me that
a lot of bad legislation actually comes where everybody agrees
and it is the smaller end, the Dangerous Dogs Bill where there
is no real definition of dangerous or dog, so the legislation
did not work. The bigger end, the Child Support Agency, and when
it was set up, as far as I know, the only political party that
was against it was the Revolutionary Communist Group. So, it went
through this place without proper scrutiny and it has been both
in concept and administration pretty disastrous since. How would
you deal with those issues where there is consensus so that they
are flowing through legislation?
Mr Kidney: The answer to that
is, where might you find the dissident voices to remind you that
there is another side to the story? With the increasing use of
pre-legislative scrutiny in draft bills and even the possibility
of online consultations which do happen now from time to time—there
is one now by the Defence Select Committee running at the present
time—I think that you do get the opportunity to get those
views before the politicians complete their deliberations. I think
that is the answer to your question, to make sure that we are
open to other points of view before we get into that intense party-political
bit of second reading, standing committee Report stage and third
reading.
Q28 Sir Nicholas Winterton: David
Howarth, do you want to comment on Graham Stringer's question?
David Howarth: I agree with what
David Kidney has just said. The only thing I would add is that
I think too often we are persuaded that speed is of the essence
when it is not. If we were to add in extra pre-legislative stages,
there would not be the complaining that it slowed the bill down.
The standard argument is that something has to be done now and
I think that was the Dangerous Dogs problem. The only solution
for that is for Members of Parliament to remind themselves that
speed often leads to disaster.
Mr Kidney: May I just point out
that speed is of the essence so long as we have the rule that
a bill must pass all its stages in one Parliament or in one year.
We have started to relax the rules about carry-over and I would
like to see a rule that any bill that has been published in draft
can qualify for carry-over if it needs it to complete all its
stages.
Q29 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Do
you think there should be any limitation on when it has to complete
its stages?
Mr Kidney: I am very happy with
the formulation of this Committee in the last Parliament that
want carry-over from one year to the next.
Q30 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Are
you also in favour of carry-over by consensus or should it be
automatic?
Mr Kidney: I think that it should
be automatic for any bill that has been through publication in
draft and pre-legislative scrutiny.
Q31 Ann Coffey: I was
here when the Child Support Agency Bill was debated and I think
it was probably a collective failure in that we all did not understand
that if you pass a bill that actually affects the individual incomes
of people, then that is very problematic, and I do not think that
was only the failure of Parliament, I think it was probably the
failure of the outside groups as well to bring it to our attention
and maybe it would have benefited from pre-legislative scrutiny,
but I have to say that the Lottery Bill did have pre-legislative
scrutiny and still turned out to be very controversial. What I
want to return to is this idea of saying what a bill was for.
It has been suggested that perhaps third reading should be an
opportunity for the Government to say, "We have put this
bill on the statute book, this is what the bill is designed to
achieve", which should actually be the beginning of that
kind of post-legislative scrutiny process and I wondered what
you thought about that.
David Howarth: I think there has
to be a third reading stage especially when there have been changes.
The Government have to be able to sum up what they think the bill
is doing now and the opposition parties have to be able to say
whether they are in favour or against the bill after it has been
changed and backbench Members of Parliament as well. I think that
third reading is important. In fact, the standard practice where
there is an hour for it and most of that hour is taken up with
thanking people is part of the devaluation of that stage and a
lost opportunity, as you say, to get going with post-legislative
scrutiny.
Mr Kidney: I agree very much with
that. I see the second reading and third reading debates as gates
that legislation passes through. The second reading, principle
of "Okay, this might need amendment but I am prepared to
support this" and third reading, "Well, I now know what
it does look like and I do or I do not support it". Thinking
about your point regarding post-legislative scrutiny, which I
think is a very good one, my view is that we should open the post-legislative
scrutiny at a particular date later on, though I do not know what
it is, and maybe, just as the second reading debate has tacked
on the motion about the outdate for the bill from Committee, the
third reading should have tacked on to it the day when the post-legislative
scrutiny door opens to be the second anniversary of passing or
the third anniversary or whatever is thought to be appropriate,
or no date if it is not regarded as one that needs it.
Q32 Sir Nicholas Winterton: You
have dealt with programming, Mr Kidney. Do you believe that it
is appropriate that the programme motion should take place without
debate immediately after the second reading or would you support
the view that the second reading gives an idea of the areas of
concern and that the usual channels should then take, say, 48
hours or 72 hours to decide how long that bill should be in standing
committee for instance and that then a motion should be tabled
on the programme motion 48 or 72 hours after the second reading?
Mr Kidney: I do not claim to be
the font of all knowledge on when this should happen. My own vision
would be that I think that the programme sub-committee from the
standing committee gets together to sort out things. Actually,
you could usefully do that as well if there was then an appeal
process when there is no agreement, which there probably often
would not be, to something that people trusted and, for me, that
would be the creation of this Business Management Committee which
we do not have in this place and, whilst we do not have that,
I am happy to go along with alternatives like yours.
Q33 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Are
you of the view that there should be a Business Committee of the
House of Commons?
Mr Kidney: Very much so, yes.
Q34 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Do
you have any comment, Mr Howarth?
David Howarth: I agree. It works
very well in the Scottish Parliament. The other point about your
interim suggestion, with which I would agree if we do not have
a Business Committee, is that there are often issues raised in
second reading about the constitutional importance of a bill which
might not have been noticed previously. So, an argument breaks
out about whether part of the bill should be taken on the floor
of the House in Committee and it seems to me that having a programme
done on the spot brings in all the machismo that the Government
are often subject to at the wrong time and some delay would be
very helpful.
Q35 Mr Shepherd: This
is going to be a little controversial but I have to come to it.
We ignore the elephant in the room. I think David was with the
predecessor committee that went to Finland and their European
Committee, which is very important, says that 70% of their legislation
now comes from Europe. Angela Merkel suggests that it is 70% or
slightly over perhaps in Germany, and yesterday Klaus Vaclav in
a lecture in London asserted that 65 to 70% of their legislation
derives from the European Union. That means that what we are actually
talking about over where we have confidence, if it is the same
level in this country, although at the time we were looking at
this with the predecessor committee, the Cabinet website suggested
that it was merely 40% in this country in that we put legislation
on the margin or something. Why would one, when one is talking
about purpose and therefore the subsequent stages of examination
of legislation, feel that we have any role in this then?
David Howarth: These figures often
reflect volume rather than importance. I think they are often
based on the number of pages. So, it is not necessarily the case
that, by importance, 70% of legislation comes from Europe, it
tends to be page after page of detailed stuff about quite minor
issues. However, that is not always the case and I think there
is a problem about the role of National Parliaments in the European
legislative process and the accountability of ministers to Parliament
for what they do. The idea of pre-legislative scrutiny should
apply to what ministers do in our name in Brussels. The Scandinavian
countries have far stronger systems for demanding that ministers
talk to parliamentary committees before they go and legislate
than we do.
Mr Kidney: Richard knows this
because we went to Finland.
Q36 Mr Shepherd: I was
not on that.
Mr Kidney: We reported back in
our report that in Finland they do have a very strong link between
their Parliament and their ministers who are in Europe negotiating
for them; but I think people who are hostile to Europe as a proposition
tend to forget that a lot of the law that they say comes from
Europe is actually implemented in this country by UK law, often
secondary legislation, and we ignore that at our peril. This Committee,
when I was on it, did produce an excellent report, which is awaiting
implementation at the present time, to improve our scrutiny of
EU legislation.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Thank you. Dawn
Butler asked a question on technology which I do not think our
witnesses responded to in any detail at all. Dawn, do you want
to put the question again.
Q37 Ms Butler: In your
view, what role do you feel technology could play in the legislative
process from the beginning to the end, where we can maybe get
rid of some of the paper work at Committee stage and amalgamate
it all? One of the questions that somebody raised was where amendments
are made, how it affects the whole bill. I think if we put those
amendments on our computers, then it could be highlighted throughout
the bill. I was just wondering whether you feel that technology
has a role?
Mr Kidney: I have a feeling that
Michael Jack is still campaigning to be allowed to have a laptop
with him in a standing committee. It seems to me an obvious point
that, if we have everything online, why should not MPs when they
are doing their job have access to it. If we did have witnesses
in standing committees giving evidence, if they had something
to display visually to make their point, we ought to make that
possible. If you go back to the issue about people at home wanting
to study what we are doing and following from home what we do,
it is still the case that many of the committee rooms over in
the palace are not even wired up for television and cameras so
that people could not watch from home even if they wanted to.
There is a lot still to be done to bring us into the twenty-first
century with the technology to enable the possibility of using
it to its best effect, and then we have got to change our rules
to allow us to use it.
David Howarth: The most important
change is the tracking facility that you can use to see what the
bill would look like given various possible changes, in fact,
even colour-code them by party, because a lot of the amendments
come forward just as words referring to lines. What you need to
know is what it would look like in one state or another state,
and that is where technology can help you.
Q38 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Thank
you very much. Do any colleagues on the Committee wish to put
any further questions to our witnesses? I think we have covered
all the ground. Is there any final word that you would like to
leave with the Committee? I can say that your evidence has been
extremely helpful, some of it very sensible, some of it even radical,
but sensible nonetheless.
Mr Kidney: The only other point
that I would want to make is this. You had my paper on the Report
stage, and I was very pleased to hear Theresa say she found it
very helpful, and I hope it does lead to changes in the future.
David Howarth: Thank you for listening
to me. I also support David's idea of a Report stage. It seems
to me we should have a report on at that stage.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: On behalf of
the members of the Committee, can I thank all our witnesses, in
her absence Natascha, David Howarth and David Kidney, for the
very valuable evidence that they have given to us and the very
forthright way in which they have expressed their views in answer
to our questions. Thank you very much indeed.
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