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“The following members were also members of the committee during the inquiry:
Mr. John Denham MP (Labour, Southampton, Itchen) (former Chairman)
Mr. Richard Spring MP (Conservative, West Suffolk)”.
The implication is that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen gave up being Chairman, as we had widely and generally understood, and as would usually have been expected. The implication is also that he has given up serving on the Committee. He may not have been formally discharged, but he has certainly ceased to serve.
The Committee, however, has carried on its work. The hon. Member for Walsall, North, who has long had a reputation for an interest in home affairs matters, has been elected as its acting Chairman. Twelve other colleagues, of whom seven are Labour colleagues from the party that, as agreed through the usual channels, produces the Chairman, would be available and able to serve were the hon. Member for Walsall, North unable to do so. They, too, have long had reputations for interest in and commitment to the subject. There are four Conservative colleagues with such an interest and long service and two of my colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who is a long-serving member of the Committee. There is no reason in the world why it has to have another member in order to do any work between now and
October. At the moment, it has not even fixed a programme of meetings for the recess. It has one meeting fixed, for tomorrow, to elect a Chairman, but no others.
We are being asked to nominate somebody in place of somebody who has left for a meeting to elect a Chairman and nothing else. That is complete nonsense. It is an abuse of the system and of the processes of the House, and it would be so even were the nomination not controversial—which it is, as it happens. People can take different views about the merits of the nomination of the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). That makes it important for the House to have an opportunity to reflect on the matter. I have had representations to the effect that it is an inappropriate choice, although that is not a view that I had formed personally. I was asked to ask the Leader of the House whether it was being done so that the right hon. Gentleman could be the new Chairman. Is that the Government’s plan? [Hon. Members: “It is.”] Implicitly, that is what was said, and my understanding is that that is precisely the plan. The Leader of the House said that Select Committee business is not for her, but she needs to be honest with us as to whether the Government’s plan—not hers—is that the new nominee should be the Chairman.
In any case, we have plenty of opportunity to debate whether the right hon. Gentleman should be a member on the first day back in October, or any other day. I hope that the Leader of the House realises that it would seriously undermine the authority, competence and service of colleagues on the Committee were she to tell the House to say that the hon. Member for Walsall, North and the other hon. Ladies and Gentlemen from various parties were not competent to carry on the business of the Home Affairs Committee between now and October. That is not an acceptable proposition. They have served on the Committee, they have produced very good reports, and they were well served as Chairman by the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen, who gave it a very good reputation and profile and whom I commend and thank for his service. He is widely admired and respected. However, it is nonsense to argue that nobody else in the list of current members, including the hon. Member for Walsall, North, is competent or capable to carry out its business, whatever it may be—at the moment, there is none—over the next two and half months.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): Can my hon. Friend conceive of any business that the Committee might wish to conduct between now and October that would be more serious than the first opportunity to hear from the new Home Secretary, as it did yesterday, and to quiz her on the work of the Home Office over the next year? That is clearly a serious bit of business, not a trivial matter, yet it was perfectly competently handled by the Committee as it stands.
Simon Hughes:
My hon. Friend makes that point well and strongly. The Committee is served by very good officers, who are well established in their posts. It clearly decided that it did not need to wait for a change
of personnel to get on with its work after the change of Government. It clearly decided that it wanted to address the major issues on its agenda, and it did so. It has not been prevented from doing so, and I am sure that it can do so during the first week back or the recess. It has the power to decide to meet in the recess, and to call people in front of it at that time. It is perfectly competent as a Select Committee, and it is able to continue.
I hope that the Leader of the House understands that if she is to go on as she started—she has done extremely well in all her appearances so far—she has to win the confidence of the House by seeking to reflect its will. To depart from that style and decide to impose by a whipped vote a change from Standing Orders in two major respects, on the last but one day of the summer term, in order to force through a controversial change of personnel in one of the most important Select Committees, will do great discredit to the prospective, positive reforming work that she and her right hon. Friend the Prime Minister have begun.
I would like to make two last points. The Select Committee has been put in a very difficult position, as has the hon. Member for Walsall, North. I am sorry that he is in that position; it is not his fault at all. I am sure that if people had thought about the matter and been asked about it, they would have realised that there was another way forward, which was to delay matters.
Lastly, there has been no answer to this question. If the Government say that it is a matter of timing, why did they not manage the process in such a way that the Committee of Selection could have met to conduct its business last week? It could have met last week, Monday, yesterday, or this morning. It did not meet at any of those times. It was standing by, ready to meet, and willing and able to assist.
The Government have made a mess of this. It is their mistake, their maladministration and their incompetence. On behalf of all of us—party Members and independent colleagues—I say that we cannot let the House be steamrollered by a completely inappropriate motion on the last but one day of term. I hope that the right hon. and learned Lady realises that it will be in everyone’s interests if she accepts that the motion can be withdrawn. Let the Home Affairs Committee do its work, and we can come back to the matter after the summer break, when we are all fresh and, if I may say so, not driven to be so bad tempered.
5.32 pm
Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire) (Con):
The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) made a powerful speech, to which I want to add a relatively brief footnote. What the Leader of the House is doing is unprecedented and unnecessary. The Committee of Selection was established at the beginning of this Parliament and its job is to meet every week, to nominate people to Public Bill Committees, Select Committees, Committees on statutory instruments and Committees on private Bills. At the beginning of the Parliament, we nominated members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and a motion was approved by the House. Since then, we have met weekly under the impartial and efficient chairmanship of the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna).
Of course, there are occasions when we have to make changes to Select Committees. People get promoted, become Ministers or their preferences may change. When that happens, we meet on a Wednesday, and the changes are proposed in the name of the hon. Lady. They appear on the Order Paper, the House has an opportunity to reflect on them, and if it wishes, to object. We have met every Wednesday since the last reshuffle. As has been said during the debate, we were provisionally scheduled to meet this Monday, when we could have approved any changes to Select Committees. The names would then have appeared in the hon. Lady’s name on the Order Paper today, in the normal way, and we would not have this problem. We were informed on Monday that the Government had no business, and the meeting was cancelled. We could have met today; we normally meet at 4.45 pm on a Wednesday, but there was no business scheduled for the Committee of Selection today, so we did not meet.
The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey correctly read out the Standing Order which protects the House. A motion has to have at least two sitting days’ notice and it has to be made on behalf of the Committee of Selection by the Chairman, or another member of the Committee. Suspending Standing Orders requires a much better reason than anything that we have heard so far in the debate. The Home Affairs Committee has been meeting under the chairmanship of a senior and experienced Member. I doubt whether it planned to do much during the summer recess. If it had planned any work, it could have continued to meet under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick).
Why does it matter? It matters because it is up to the House of Commons, not the Executive, to nominate Members to serve on Select Committees. The Prime Minister has spoken of his wish to empower the House of Commons and enable us better to hold the Government to account. Yet one of his first acts is to use a procedure, for which no precedent has been found, to appoint a nominee of the Executive to a Select Committee instead of a nominee of a Select Committee. Let me make it clear that my comments are in no way motivated by disapproval of either the right hon. Member who is leaving the Select Committee or the right hon. Member who is nominated. My objections are principled ones to the procedure that is being used.
Our Standing Orders provide an acceptable route that should be used to move people from and on to Select Committees. No real reason has been given for not using that procedure in the case that we are considering. The best thing that the Leader of the House can do is stand up when I sit down and say that she plans to withdraw the motion to allow the Committee of Selection to meet on 8 or 9 October and the names to go through in the normal way. If she does not do that, I fear that the debate will continue for some time and, unless we get far better reasons than I have heard so far, I am minded to advise the House to reject the motion.
5.36 pm
Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con):
I am pleased to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is
greatly respected in the House for his position as Chairman of an important disciplinary Committee and for his experience as a distinguished Back Bencher and a former Minister. The Leader of the House should listen when someone such as my right hon. Friend raises considerable concerns about the procedure that the Government are adopting.
During the former Prime Minister’s final Question Time, which was a memorable occasion, he said, in reply to my question:
“I like the hon. Gentleman.”—[ Official Report, 27 June 2007; Vol. 462, c. 331.]
I say that with some pride—some people may ask why, but I took the comment with pride. He then went on to say other things— [Interruption.] They were all quite complimentary. I hope that it does not embarrass the right hon. and learned Lady when I say that I like her. We have held several discussions since she became Leader of the House and I have greatly appreciated those conversations. I know that she intends to be committed to the House, its independence and its integrity. However, by pressing the motion, she somewhat undermines the credibility of the assurances that she has given me.
I speak as someone who now takes a huge interest in the procedures of the House. I am prepared to admit from the Back Benches that one of my raisons d’être in the House is not only to continue to represent my constituency of Macclesfield and the interests of the country, but to stand up for the integrity and independence of the House of Commons in trying to hold the Government of the day to account. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire made an excellent speech, and from the Conservative Benches I congratulate the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) on the clarity of the case that he advanced in advising the right hon. and learned Lady to withdraw the motion.
May I sincerely ask the right hon. and learned Lady a question that I put in an intervention, but to which she did not respond? In moving the motion to put the right hon. Member for Leicester, East on the Home Affairs Committee, is it not the Government’s intention that he should be the Chairman of that Committee? She did not answer that question earlier, perhaps because in a way she did not want to. She is quite right: it is not for the House of Commons as a whole to dictate who should be the Chairman of that Committee. That is the responsibility of the Home Affairs Committee. In an earlier intervention I made certain observations about the individual being put forward. I was not making any—how shall I put it?—subjective judgments on the matter, but the right hon. Gentleman had featured in a report by an important Committee of the House. Therefore, it ill behoves the Leader of the House to bring forward an exceptional motion, for which, as I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire has established, there is no precedent.
The Chairman of the Committee of Selection chairs that Committee ably and with distinction. I have considerable respect for her as a representative of a constituency in Scotland—I am not going to say her constituency, as I fear that I would not get my tongue round all the names in it. I know her well. She served as a positive and involved member of the Select
Committee on Procedure, and I respect her view and the role that she plays in the House. I hope that the Chairman of the Committee of Selection will seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I find it interesting that she is not involved in the motion. I accept that the motion is unique, in so far as an important Standing Order that provides safeguards for the House is being ignored.
John Bercow: Given that we have been advised by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) that the Committee of Selection was told on Monday that there was no business for it to consider, does my hon. Friend think that the Government always intended to circumvent that Committee, or is it his supposition that the idea of proposing the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) as a member of the Home Affairs Committee has occurred to them only since Monday?
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I suppose that we have to accept at face value what the Leader of House has told us—that on Monday, and apparently on Tuesday, the Government had no business to put to the Committee. Bearing in mind the fact that, as we have heard from a number of contributors to this debate, the Prime Minister formed his Government by appointing Cabinet Ministers, Ministers of State and Under-Secretaries some time ago, it seems strange that the Leader of the House, for whom—I repeat—I have considerable affection and regard, should not have put the motion to the House until the penultimate day before we break for the summer recess and that the Government should be ignoring the provisions of Standing Order No. 121 on the nomination of Select Committees.
It has been made clear, not least by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey, that there is no reason why the Select Committee should not continue under the very positive and able acting chairmanship of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). Nobody has a better reputation for outspokenness and integrity than he does. I would have thought that the Home Affairs Committee could continue its work under his chairmanship, but no contributor to the debate has told the House what work the Committee is to undertake between now and 8 October when the House meets again following the summer recess. I am going to throw in the following, as it has not been mentioned so far: if the House wants value for money, it appears strange to appoint a Chairman who will be paid the full rate as a Select Committee Chairman when he and his Committee are to do very little, if anything, on behalf of the House or the people of this country for the next two and a half months.
I feel very deeply about this matter, because the Standing Orders of the House are a safeguard for the House in standing up to the power and influence of the Executive. We are being asked to suspend Standing Orders, and that is an abuse of the House, as I said to the Leader of the House in a point of order before the debate began. May I make a plea, to add to the requests made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire and the hon. Member for
North Southwark and Bermondsey? If the right hon. and learned Lady is serious about being even-handed in her role as Leader of the House and about representing the interests of all Members of the House and not just her own political party, she will take our request to withdraw the motion very seriously indeed. I hope that she will accede to that request.
I am not going to refer to the right hon. and learned Lady’s attainment in due course of the chairmanship of the Modernisation Committee, but I look forward to working with her—I say that with total commitment and sincerity and sometimes against the wishes of some of my colleagues—because I fervently believe in the integrity and sovereignty of the House of Commons in dealing with the Executive. Will she therefore represent the interests of the House by withdrawing the motion?
5.48 pm
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con): When the Leader of the House reads her speech on this matter, I think that she will find it rather distressing. It contained a number of contentions, some of which seemed straightforwardly contradictory. I do not wish to beat her around the head with a broom, but one of her propositions was that it was inappropriate to have a Cabinet Minister on a Select Committee, yet she herself is now going to be nominated by a member of the Executive to sit on a Select Committee. The sheer inconsistency of that is remarkable. It leaps out at us: Home Affairs, Ms Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House. A member of the Executive—a member of the Cabinet—is directing to the House’s attention a particular Member who they wish to become a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Indeed, most of us suppose that it is the intention that the nominee should become Chairman of that Committee. I do not think for one moment that the matter was allowed to go to the Committee of Selection. We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and we have also heard and read out the Standing Orders. No one in the House can be unaware of the Standing Orders; they are quite clear. Yet the proper process by which we arrive at such decisions has been bypassed and neutered.
I know that there is often a guiding hand behind what we do, but this is not a guiding hand out of sight. This has been brought right into the Chamber and it amounts to an assertion of Executive power over us. In fact, it means setting aside the very position of the Committee of Selection. This has been exhaustively argued and pointed out by a member of that Committee. Indeed, the Chairman of the Committee of Selection is in her place.
Like many others, I am puzzled about the “urgent work” that requires the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) to be appointed in this way on this day. It is simply an assertion. There is no evidence of a programme in position; the Committee is functioning properly; a report is demonstrably coming up.
Let me give a cheer for my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). I have noted the work that he has done over many years. His assiduity and commitment to the Home Affairs Committee is phenomenal. He is probably the most
regular attender of Home Affairs questions in the whole House—dismissed. But that is not good enough for the Executive. Just in case the Committee of Selection were to override all the Whips on it and choose another Member—that, too, would be inappropriate. That is why we find this name on the Order Paper. It is not right; we all know it is not right.
The absurdity of placing the Leader of the House in the position of arguing an unarguable case with contradictory reasoning actually diminishes her in carrying out her vital role. We who believe in the House of Commons know full well that the role of Leader of the House is a difficult one. The occupier of the position is not only the representative of the Government, but the representative of the House of Commons to the Government. That is the classic definition, and we shall return to this issue later today when we debate another motion on the Floor of the House. That will also be contested.
What I am saying is that we all know that this is wrong. It will not do. Furthermore, the arguments adduced for this proposition are demonstrably contradictory. I think that this House should confidently ask—and expect to be heard by the Leader of the House—for this motion to be withdrawn. That is what I ask of the Leader of the House. The credibility of our system of managing this House is at stake. There is a balance between ordinary Members and the Executive, but this is a manifestation of total Executive dominance. That is what sticks in the craw of many of us.
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