Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-271)
SIR ROGER
SANDS KCB AND
DR MALCOLM
JACK
5 JULY 2006
Q260 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Yes,
that is part of the question.
Dr Jack: Obviously, I think slightly
more time, three days, for example, for minimum notice of amendments
instead of two would certainly help the administrative marshalling,
but on the other hand, of course, it would involve a loss of flexibility
for individual Members and I think that a lot of Members, for
very good reasons, tend to table their amendments at the very
last minute, so they would have to work a day ahead. We find certainly
most backbench Members will table their amendments at the very
last minute on the last available day for the minimum notice.
The other thing is that I think the business of explaining amendments,
which I think was the other strand of your question, a paper which
showed how amendments related to bills, I think you have had evidence
from the Library, a very useful paper, on how Members might be
helped in that respect by receiving that support and I think that
sounds like a very good project, particularly if it is done by
the Library.
Q261 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Can
I then follow this up. Government bill teams usually prepare for
ministers a paper showing how the text of a bill would look if
certain amendments or groups of amendments were agreed to. Would
there, could there, be any drawback in circulating this particular
paper produced by the government bill teams to standing committee
Members on both sides of a committee?
Dr Jack: No, I do not think there
would be any drawback. The only thing which would have to be made
quite clear—and I am sure if you were in the chair, Sir
Nicholas, you would make that quite clear—is that that was
not the bill before the committee, lest there was any confusion
about what text was before the committee, but as an adjunct and
as a help to Members, I see no reason why not.
Q262 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Following
that up, it has been suggested in evidence given to us that Members
tabling amendments to a bill might be allowed to table a brief
explanatory statement, as of course the Government does, to be
printed alongside amendments on the notice paper. What would the
benefits on the one hand and the drawbacks on the other be to
this proposal?
Dr Jack: I think the benefits
are that there are often complaints that it is difficult to understand
what the intention of amendments are and therefore some explanation,
perhaps, at the bottom of the page of an amendment sheet, or next
to the amendment, explaining that would help everyone to understand—including
the public, of course—what was going on when the Member
was proposing the amendment. The disadvantages are the questions
of cost and possible bulk. There is a figure which I have been
advised is fairly reliable, that there is a marginal cost of £70
per page for additional pages of amendments, so the costs of increasing
the size of amendment papers could be considerable if they became
long.
Q263 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Have
you worked that out on an annual basis as an estimate?
Dr Jack: No, I think that is just
a ballpark figure for a page.
Q264 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Can
I move on again. I am not sure whether this is Sir Roger or Dr
Jack, but how common is it—and we have not talked about
the Lords in this evidence session—for the Commons to be
kept sitting late into the night waiting for Lords messages?
Dr Jack: I am very happy to say
that it is really quite a rare occurrence. I did have a sheet
of paper with me showing exactly how often it has happened.
Q265 Sir Nicholas Winterton: It certainly
has not happened very often recently, although it has happened
that the House has been kept waiting for Lords messages?
Dr Jack: Yes. It has happened
once a session, usually, in the last few sessions. It is really
quite rare.
Q266 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Is there
any way, in your view—and this is very much, I suppose,
for you, Dr Malcolm Jack—that papers relating to the exchange
of messages could be made for Members of the House of Commons
rather easier to follow?
Dr Jack: I think they could be,
with the proviso that there was a little bit more time to prepare
them. One of the things which the Clerk mentions in his memorandum
is that it has become the habit almost invariably to take Lords
amendments forthwith, ie without any notice at all, and, of course,
if you are in that sort of game, if I can put it that way, then
there is much less time to prepare papers. For example, with the
papers which we colloquially call "A" and "B",
which are the Lords amendments and the Commons amendments and
propositions, I think there could be a way, perhaps, of amalgamating
those papers so that you would at least lose one of the papers.
We could possibly run an experiment on that line, if you wanted,
in the Public Bill Office.
Sir Roger Sands: Parliamentary
Counsel has put to this Committee a very elaborate paper,[24]
which I have to say we struggled to understand in part, making
various proposals for changing the way we handle exchanges between
the Lords and Commons when we get into them. I would not suggest
you immediately recommend any of the solutions which are there,
but we would be happy to conduct some pilots behind the scenes
to see if there is any merit in any of them.
Q267 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Before I
bring in Greg Knight, could I just ask you in this area what would
be the benefits, Sir Roger, or the disadvantages of abolishing
the Reasons Committee, which most people in the House have not
got any idea about whatsoever? Do you think there would be advantages,
and what would be the disadvantages?
Sir Roger Sands: I think there
is a distinction to be made between abolishing reasons and abolishing
the committee which produces them. The House could produce reasons
in another way without having the little committee which convenes
in the Reasons Room behind the Chair and we could certainly devise
an alternative way of generating reasons. Abolishing them altogether
is slightly more problematic and I think you would need to enter
into discussions with the Lords about that. The Reason often has
no real substance—
Q268 Paddy Tipping: No, because we
disagree!
Sir Roger Sands:— but it
is a symbolic sort of handing of the baton from the Commons to
the Lords.
Q269 Ann Coffey: So you are saying
it is a positive thing, the baton?
Sir Roger Sands: We do that already.
Abolishing the Reasons altogether and just sending saying, "We
disagree," is possible, but—
Q270 Sir Nicholas Winterton: The
Committee could go, but the Reasons should remain?
Sir Roger Sands: Indeed. That
is my view.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Thank
you.
Q271 Mr Knight: Could I just take
you back to the comments about giving an explanation as to the
scope of an amendment or new clause, because it seems to me there
are negative aspects to this as well. If it was an optional scheme,
many backbenchers and Opposition spokesmen might decide they would
prefer to keep their powder dry, particularly on a probing amendment,
and therefore the innovation, if it was introduced, would not
be as valuable as some Members might think. Secondly, if it was
a compulsory requirement that when you tabled an amendment or
a new clause you had to provide an explanatory memorandum, this
could greatly increase the workload on backbench Members and Opposition
Members because they would have to do far more work at that stage,
not knowing that their new clause or amendment was ever going
to see the light of day because it might not be selected. So these
are real and serious negatives, particularly in a system where
the official Opposition, all the Short money they have, is usually
taken up by either the party leader or the Shadow Secretary of
State and other Shadow ministers have to do all this research
on their own. So there are downsides to this suggestion.
Dr Jack: Yes, I do agree with
those comments about the downsides. There is another complication.
I think there would have to be some limit or other on the words
of the explanation for the amendment, otherwise we are back in
the situation of the amendment sheets getting inordinately long.
That is the first thing. The second thing is that it might be
a bit difficult for the Public Bill Office to vet these explanations
because the argument that this was an argument, of course, or
argumentative would be ridiculous in this situation because of
course it would be argumentative if it was supporting an argument,
so there are some curious aspects to this.
Sir Roger Sands: I think my general
message to the Committee on this issue of papers, which is a very
significant one because I know that Members find the papers difficult,
is that you have to look for solutions which are going to work
in all conceivable circumstances. You cannot invent a system which
would work fine on one particular clause of one particular bill
and then find that it would be a mess when you got to another
one. That is my slight worry about the idea of circulating the
Government's pages showing the bill as amended. I guess that they
only do that on a very selective basis and provided that is understood,
that is fine; but if you were to imagine doing that for the whole
of today's amendment paper on the Finance Bill, for example, it
would be just another load of paper which I do not think people
would find very helpful.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Can I say to
colleagues on the Committee, I think we have reached the end of
our questioning. It has been a pretty hell for leather session
and all Members of the Committee have had a good innings. Can
I thank Sir Roger, and in doing so wish him every happiness and
the best of good fortune in his retirement, and also thank Dr
Malcolm Jack, the Clerk of Legislation, both of them for the very
valuable evidence which they have given to us. We are most grateful.
Thank you very much indeed. There being no further business, the
Committee can adjourn.
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