Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
SIR ROGER
SANDS KCB AND
DR MALCOLM
JACK
5 JULY 2006
Q240 Mr Knight: But the programme
could be made more subtle, could it not?
Sir Roger Sands: Yes, I agree.
Q241 Sir Nicholas Winterton: And
more responsive not only to the usual channels, Sir Roger, but
actually to the genuine interests of backbenchers. Where do they
come in? You keep talking about "usual channels" but
they are not representative of the backbenchers, they are the
Whips. Where does the House as a whole come into this in respect
of programming, particularly, as my colleague Greg Knight has
said, at the Report stage, which is the only stage of the bill
when any Member of Parliament can actually seek to represent matters
of interest to them or to their constituents?
Sir Roger Sands: It is quite a
number of summers ago since I drafted the Sessional Orders which
eventually became the programming Standing Orders, but my recollection
is that there is a provision there for a programming committee
to sit for the Report stage—not just a programming sub-committee
for the standing committee stage, which does still happen, but
also a programming committee for Report stage—and that is
routinely disapplied.
Mr Shepherd: By the Government.
Q242 Sir Nicholas Winterton: If you
drew up these Standing Orders, Sir Roger, seeking to get some
input from backbenchers, why is it disapplied on a regular basis
for the only stage of a bill when backbenchers can actually have
a say?
Sir Roger Sands: I think I am
right about this.
Mr Shepherd: You are.
Q243 Sir Nicholas Winterton: 83B,
I am advised.
Sir Roger Sands: I think the reason
it was found to be difficult to do at Report stage is simply the
question of timing, that it is quite difficult to set up the paraphernalia
of one of these programming committees, have it meet and very
often then simply just agree to something which has already been
negotiated behind the scenes by the Whips. But there is sometimes
a really genuine problem because occasionally there is a big backbench
issue which neither of the front benches want to be involved with.
It happens particularly when there is a possibility of a backbench
revolt on the Government's own side and it is possible, I fear,
to manipulate programming in such a way that a debate on such
an issue can be squeezed out.
Q244 Mr Knight: But at a time when
Report stages are routinely cut short, what benefit do you think
the hour on third reading brings to our process when it invariably
turns out to be 60 minutes of nauseating back-slapping with every
Member who takes part thanking someone else?
Dr Jack: I hate to sound like
a spoilsport and stop people back-slapping, but I am rather inclined
to agree that some of the third reading debates which I have heard
recently have not added a great deal to the scrutiny of the bill.
The other point I was just going to make, Sir Nicholas, was on
the Report stage. I think also, as the Clerk says in his memorandum,
there is a general problem about time anyway and I think Mr Knight
just referred to that. There is a shortage of time for Report
stage, whether programmed or not programmed, in certain cases.
Q245 Mr Knight: Just one final question.
Am I right in my belief that we are the only Parliament, certainly
in the Western world, where backbench Members do not have an opportunity
to raise an issue for debate on a substantive motion?
Sir Roger Sands: I would be very
surprised if that were the case because in general parliaments
on the continent of Europe are much more heavily managed than
ours is even. You may find that hard to believe, but if you go
to the German Bundestag everything is controlled by the parties,
absolutely everything, including, may I say, who speaks in the
debate.
Q246 Mr Knight: I may write to you
further in this regard.
Sir Roger Sands: I suspect that
this is not the case.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Before
1 September you will have to write!
Q247 Ann Coffey: At the end of a
sitting on a second reading of a bill, often we are faced with
a number of votes which are consequential on the first vote—the
amendment of the bill, the programming motion and the money resolutions—which
means you could be going through the Lobby up to five times in
the worst possible scenario. Do you think it would make a huge
amount of difference in terms of scrutiny of legislation or outcome
if there was a device found whereby you would go through the Lobby
at 10 o'clock and be able to register votes in the same way we
do with deferred divisions for the second reading or the money
resolution, or things like that?
Sir Roger Sands: I think we partially
touched on this earlier when Dawn Butler was asking about this
and I was saying that I saw no reason in principle why the votes
on the money and ways and means resolutions, which tend to go
with bills, should not be deferred because as long as they are
agreed to before the standing committee sits, that is procedurally
okay. But in practice I cannot remember the last occasion when
anybody has voted against a money or ways and means resolution.
Q248 Mr Shepherd: It used to be debatable,
the money resolution, for instance, and it was a genuine opportunity
for backbenchers to come in and make their point because they
had been squeezed out of the principal debate.
Sir Roger Sands: Yes.
Q249 Sir Nicholas Winterton: You
will remember, Sir Roger, Mr Cryer who made his reputation by
speaking on the money resolution.
Sir Roger Sands: Yes, but on the
programme motion—I was not quite certain whether you were
suggesting that the programme motion might be wrapped up with
the decision on the second reading—I do not think that would
be fair on people because they may agree with the bill but object
to the programme. They may have no views at all about the programme
but object strongly to the bill and want to register that decision.
My impression is that recently there has not been a great accumulation
of votes after second reading. Occasionally there have been two.
If you get a reasoned amendment, which the Speaker selects and
people want to vote on that, and then some other people want to
vote against the bill, you can get two votes. As to whether those
could be deferred, yes, in principle they could because nothing
procedurally hangs on it in the way that things hang one on another
during a committee or Report stage; but I do not think your Whips
would be very enthusiastic about that idea because it would delay
the point in time at which the committee could be selected and
start to meet.
Q250 Ms Butler: If we had maybe remote
electronic voting so that you could vote and you do not all have
to be seated at a desk somewhere. You are saying if we reduced
the number to 400, but if we had remote electronic voting, a device
or on a computer, that might help with that question in rolling
up the vote.
Sir Roger Sands: Various possibilities
have been considered by previous committees. It is a long time
since I read the reports, but one of the obvious problems is how
do you guard against people handing their remote devices in a
big sack to the Whips and then going home for the week.
Ms Butler: That would just be
dishonest!
Q251 Ann Coffey: No Member of Parliament
would do that, Sir Roger!
Sir Roger Sands: Even in parliaments
with the press button system which I was describing earlier, which
many parliaments have, it has been known that people have been
seen with walking sticks pressing another button!
Mr Shepherd: We used to joke that
the Whips wanted, the day after we were elected to this case,
a power of attorney to exercise our votes through the whole Parliament!
We almost got there.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: That was
a comment, not a question.
Q252 Ann Coffey: The way I was going
to see it work was that you would go into the Lobby, you would
have a piece of paper and you could register you are for the programme
motion, you are for the second reading, et cetera. Obviously that
would mean that information would have to be collated, so you
could not have the result of each of them as you went through
the Lobbies, but presumably you could have a system where the
vote could be read out at the end of the adjournment debate so
that, in fact, it did not delay government business.
Sir Roger Sands: Yes, vote not
knowing whether the motion is going to be opposed or not. I must
admit that is a variant which I had not thought about.
Ann Coffey: Could I ask you something
else just to push it a bit further? In terms of bundling up votes
could this also be done on a Report stage? We talk about time,
but obviously one of the things which takes time out of the Report
stage are the votes themselves. Again, at the end of a sitting
or something like that, would there be a way of bundling up votes
which had occurred, that needed to be taken during the Report
stage?
Q253 Sir Nicholas Winterton: I think
we have dealt in part with this earlier, but could I perhaps ask
Sir Roger just to summarise what Malcolm's and Roger's answers
was to the earlier question on this matter.
Sir Roger Sands: It is basically
that the process of dealing with the text of a bill at committee
stage or Report stage is a logical process where one decision
very often hangs on another. That is the argument we have always
put when this issue has been raised. I entirely understand what
you are saying, that our method of voting, being relatively cumbersome
as it is, does take time out of precious debating time; but that
is a technical issue separate, I think, from the idea of bundling
votes, which I think is very difficult when it comes to a Report
stage in particular.
Q254 Paddy Tipping: Just to support
Greg Knight's view that the Prime Minister was New Labour before
he was Prime Minister before his time, not only did he know what
he wanted to debate, when he wanted to debate it, but he also
had the press release drawn up at the time! One of the issues
around programming is the Opposition using their time politically
and sensibly and taking the opportunity in the programme motion,
but just two small points and a slightly larger one. When we take
the programme motion, we take it straight after second reading.
There has been talk about being more subtle and more sophisticated.
A longer period of time before the programme motion would give
ostensibly business managers and others more time to reflect on
how much time was needed in the standing committee. You acknowledge
that in the paper. What are your views on that? Secondly, as somebody
who is regularly on standing committees, certainly when you are
in Opposition in a sense you are a bit of a hostage of the interest
groups. They supply you with lots of amendments and lots of ideas.
Dr Jack very helpfully sorted an amendment out for me the other
day. Is there a case for offering more support to backbench Members
during the standing committee stage? Finally, and this is a wider
point, the paper is very good on pre-legislative scrutiny and
I think, Sir Roger, you said that it had become part of the norm.
When you look at the figures, the number of draft bills are going
down.
Sir Roger Sands: It has gone down,
yes.
Q255 Paddy Tipping: Why is that and
what is happening around that?
Sir Roger Sands: I do not know
in detail, but I suspect it may have something to do with the
fact that we had an Election in 2005 and the system has taken
time to crank back up again and for the parliamentary draftsmen
to get ahead of the wave in the way they need to be for pre-legislative
scrutiny to operate. Your remark about support for backbenchers,
which I will ask Malcolm to deal with in a moment, reminds me
that there was a point which Mr Vaizey made about support for
Opposition frontbenchers, as I understood him. That should be
something which comes out of the famous Short money, which I now
sign off to the tune of well over £5 million a year, a large
part of which goes to the official Opposition, and it is precisely
intended to provide the research assistance which Opposition frontbenchers
need to carry out jobs like that.
Dr Jack: Just on the point of
support, with our desperately thin resources the Public Bill Office,
as Mr Tipping knows, is more than willing to help backbench Members,
and Sir Nicholas knows that as well. During the course of any
bill there is a single clerk in charge of it and he or she will
certainly try to help any backbench Member who comes up and wants
to table amendments. That is rather different, I understand, from
the point you are making about the pressure groups. Some of that
again would depend on how controversial a bill was, what the political
content was, and so on, which would mean we might not be the best
people to forge amendments of that sort. But certainly the Public
Bill Office is always open for backbench Members. I would like
to make that point very strongly.
Sir Roger Sands: The Chairman
indicated earlier on his interest in the idea that special standing
committees should become a more routine feature of our proceedings,
and of course they are slightly more lavishly supported, but not
much more lavishly supported, because they operate initially as
a select committee and they have to have a clerk operating in
that role and other support as well to deal with the evidence
that comes in, and so on, and to process it for Members. So if
the special standing committees were to become a more routine
part of our procedures, I think your point would in large measure
be met.
Ms Butler: Just a quick question.
It is not in relation to standing committees, to be honest, but
because I know we are running out of time I just want to know
your views on speakers lists just before you go. I have to put
that in before you disappear.
Q256 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Only
if our witnesses wish to comment on this because it is not strictly,
I think, part of the legislative process, but if, now that he
has announced his retirement, Sir Roger feels free to give guidance
to this Committee, I would be delighted to hear his views.
Sir Roger Sands: The Speaker has
very strong views!
Q257 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Exactly!
Sir Roger Sands: And I understand
why he has them, but there is no more that I wish to say about
that.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I will
say from the Chair to Dawn that the Speaker is strongly opposed
to speakers lists, which he thinks would impair his discretion
as Mr Speaker. Ann Coffey, and then I have a question which I
must put to our witnesses.
Ann Coffey: Do you think over
the years there is any evidence that maintaining a speakers list
has helped populate the Chamber with MPs?
Mr Vaizey: That is a comment more
than a question!
Sir Nicholas Winterton: It was
certainly posed as a question. It might have been rhetorical.
Q258 Ann Coffey: It was certainly
a question, just evidence-based.
Sir Roger Sands: Certainly the
general tendency of attendance in the Chamber to go down has been
very marked during my 41 years and I suspect it would take a constitutional
crisis to change that!
Q259 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Sir
Roger, could we deal with one or two other very relevant matters
to this Committee. Could I just refer to standing committee papers.
In your view, and that of Dr Malcolm Jack, who is responsible
for legislation as the Clerk of Legislation, would any changes,
such as increasing the notice period for amendments, be necessary
to produce more elaborate standing committee papers, and would
that be helpful to the debate in standing committee?
Dr Jack: This may sound slightly
evasive, Sir Nicholas, but I think it depends what sort of elaboration
of the papers you meant. I think there is a number of different
aspects to this business. One of them is the possible provision
of amendments. Is that what you are thinking of, papers which
marshal the amendments to the bill?
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