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7.1 pm
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD): I do not want to repeat many of the comments that were made earlier, so I shall try to be as brief as possible. I start on a positive note. One of the science community’s major concerns has arisen because the Government have been so supportive of science. It is important to put it on the record that the resources going into science, particularly since 1999, have been a huge success story, and include £3.4 billion to research councils. That has fuelled high expectations of the Government’s involvement in science. It is important to start with that positive comment, rather than with some of the negative ones.
I should like to continue in the tenor of the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), who calmly and temperately explained many of the reasons for concern about the loss of the Science and Technology Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) echoed those reasons.
I support the establishment of the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Bringing together the university sector, which delivers so much of our research, and the research councils, which pay for much of it, is long overdue and will mean that we are able to plan much more effectively. The whole House agrees with the need for a departmental Committee to scrutinise the new Department, as the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) made clear. That must be right. Also, certain aspects of the Science and Technology Committee’s current role, particularly its scrutiny of the office of science and innovation and the office of the Government’s chief scientific adviser, have moved to the Department, so I accept, too, that it is quite logical for those aspects to be scrutinised by the new Committee.
However, the main concern for the science community, for business and for members of the Committee—I pay tribute to all its members, who serve it extraordinarily well and put in an enormous amount of time—is about cross-governmental scrutiny of science. I know that other Committees scrutinise across Government—the Public Accounts Committee is obviously the most notable one—but the Science and Technology Committee looks not only at the nooks and crannies, as the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East said, but at science right across Government. Some of the examples of the former Committee’s cross-cutting inquiries include its work on human technologies and the law, which has resulted in a draft Bill being considered by both Houses and a new Bill on embryos and tissues, which will be introduced in the Queen’s Speech in October. All that began with the Committee’s work.
The Committee carried out work on forensic science, and the Leader of the House appeared before the Committee during the follow-up to that inquiry. That work showed that forensic science was covered by various Government Departments, but particularly by various parts of the then Home Office. It also carried out work on identity card technology, on the classification of illegal drugs, on the regulation of hybrids and chimeras, on carbon capture and storage, on space policy and on ocean science. Those are all cross-cutting subjects that involve different Departments in making their contribution to the science agenda.
A big mistake—if I may be so bold—that the Leader of the House and her colleagues made when considering replacing the Science and Technology Select Committee was to believe that it mainly scrutinised the Office of Science and Innovation. In fact, most of the Ministers who appeared before it were from other Departments; they had nothing to do with science and innovation per se. This is the exciting thing about a cross-government scrutiny Committee. For example, when we were considering space policy, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was the lead Department for some of the new space technologies. Similarly, when we were looking at forensic science, we dealt with the Home Office. So such a Committee would not be a case of double jeopardy for Ministers in the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. In fact, the work would be spread quite widely across the arena.
To be frank, the amount of support for the Committee from outside the House took me by surprise. The Leader of the House made clear reference to some of the letters that she had received. Moreover, on 13 July, a letter was published in The Times which had been signed by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the
Institute of Physics, the Institute of Biology, the Campaign for Science and Engineering, and the Geology Society of London. It stated:
“At a time when the Government has brought science and innovation policy centre stage with the welcome creation of the new Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, it would be a tragedy if its immediate parliamentary consequence was the abolition of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology.”
On 20 July, in an open letter to the Leader of the House, Lord Rees at the Royal Society emphasised:
“This Committee does a great deal of vital work scrutinising scientific matters and the use of evidence across government departments”.
When the president of the Royal Society, four Nobel laureates, 30 other distinguished scientists and the organisation Sense About Science say that this is an organisation within Parliament that they want to save, we really should take notice of them.
It was not just the academics who expressed a view. Mark Henderson, the lead science correspondent for The Times said:
“science will never fit into a neat departmental box: it is important to each and every arm of the government.”
I believe that that is readily accepted. The Science Council made it clear that the Committee
“has been able to address issues from the broad perspective and publish reports that required a joined-up Government response”.
Richard Lambert, the general secretary of the CBI, said:
“A particular issue for business is ensuring that DIUS maintains a strong economic focus”.
“a strong S & T committee would be a valuable part of the scrutiny mechanism in this area”.
The breadth of support for the Committee’s cross-cutting role within Parliament is an important factor.
I turn to the solution that the Government are offering. I pay tribute to the Government Chief Whip, who has met me, and other right hon. and hon. Members, on a number of occasions to discuss a way forward. We are pleased that the number of Committee members is to be increased to 14, and that a standing Sub-Committee will be established, but I repeat what I said to the Leader of the House earlier, and what the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East has also said—that unless the new Committee has the resources to carry out the kind of cross-cutting science inquiries that the present Committee undertakes, it will be a Select Committee in name only. That would be a betrayal of the work done before and a betrayal of all those people—the learned professors I mentioned, and indeed people in industry—who are so supportive of the Government’s commitment to, and policy on, science.
Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments and I have no vested interest, as I am no longer a member of the Science and Technology Committee. Aside from resources, what will be the terms of reference of the proposed Sub-Committee? Will it have the remit to look into science across all Departments, not just the main Department?
Mr. Willis: I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention. As I understand it, it will be for the new Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee—not the Government—to establish the Sub-Committee, and it will then be that Committee’s job to establish its terms of reference and agree them with the House. It is important, in my view, that it should be called the Science and Technology Sub-Committee, and it is also important that it have free rein to go wherever it likes across Government wherever science is involved. It should be able to present reports to this House without fear or favour. In order for that to happen, it will need adequate resources.
I believe that there is huge support for cross-cutting science and technology in this House. I hope that the Leader of the House has heard the calls, and that she will respond positively to them.
7.11 pm
Stewart Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP): Motion 6, in part at least, will put in place the departmental Select Committees to mirror the new Departments. That is an eminently sensible and quite necessary process, which ought to be without issue. However, two changes cause my hon. Friends and me some concern.
The first issue concerns the size of the Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, which effectively replaces the Select Committee on Trade and Industry. Innovation has been removed, but it has been replaced with regulatory reform. My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr. Weir), who sat on the old DTI Committee, has looked into the matter and estimated the volume of work. He sees the work load as broadly similar, so it seems odd to us that the size of the Committee should be reduced from 14 members to 11.
Secondly, on a related point, all Select Committees must, so far as possible, reflect opinion throughout the House; they must secure a correct level of departmental scrutiny, with questions from all parties reflecting all opinions within the Chamber. It is likely, however, that if the reduction of the new Committee from 14 members to 11 is allowed to proceed, the Scottish National party would lose its only place on a departmental Select Committee. It would leave the joint SNP-Plaid Cymru group with only one departmental Select Committee place—on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. [Interruption.] Notwithstanding some of the more partisan comments, surely as Leader of the House the right hon. and learned Lady must understand that if we are to have proper scrutiny, particularly of the important role of business, enterprise and regulatory reform in a growing economy, questioning must come from people of all parties expressing all opinions.
It is unlikely that the right hon. and learned Lady will be prepared tonight to overturn the decision to reduce the size of this new Committee. However, we hope that she will be able to give a commitment to review the work load of the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee over the next year or so to determine whether a membership of 11 is appropriate or whether it should be increased. We also recognise that she is not the person to appoint or make recommendations for appointments to any Committee—nor should she be—but we hope that in her summing up she will reflect on the need for Select Committees to reflect accurately and properly the full range of opinions in this House. She should provide us with some comfort on that and she
should understand the necessity for minority party opinion and voices, particularly on the key Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee.
7.14 pm
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con): I shall confine my remarks to a narrow area: motion 7 on the modernisation of the House. The Deputy Chief Whip of the Labour party—a member of the Government, effectively—has tabled the motion:
“That Mr Jack Straw and Paddy Tipping be discharged from the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons and Ms Harriet Harman”—
“and Chris Bryant be added.”
He is, of course, a Parliamentary Private Secretary. There is no doubt that the right hon. and learned Lady is a well-qualified individual. I know that it is not her being an old Pauline that makes her well qualified; it is that she is a Minister, has had experience and has had a connection with civil liberties. All those factors commend themselves to me. However—I guess she expected me to say “however”—the Committee is now merely the mechanism by which the Executive control the House of Commons. All the reports on the workings of the House of Commons have usurped the role of the Procedure Committee. We have reports on the guillotine, or what we grandly call in Standing Orders “Timetables”. In fact, pages 59 to 72 are given over to the way in which the Executive control the detail of the examination of Bills—one of the most important tasks that the House performs.
I shall give the example of what I think a Leader of the House should be. In the years that I have been here, the most remarkable Leader of the House has been the right hon. John Biffen, now Lord Biffen. I say that because the tides of Executive ambition come across the House from time to time. The idea of a business committee and timetabling, which in our experience turned out to be the guillotining of Bills, was on the agenda. On 27 February 1986, when such motions were before the House, the then Leader of the House, Mr. Biffen, said:
“If I were concerned solely with the volume and dispatch of Government business, I would welcome such pervasive timetabling as is now suggested.
The House will be disposed to assume that the proposed arrangements will be operated in good faith and without an eye to party advantage. That may well be so, but I think I am entitled to observe that the”
“Legislative Business Committee would have a Government majority, and that if the Government did not like any proposed timetable, it could be voted down or amended on the Floor of the House.
On balance therefore, I think that the Government”—
this is the Leader of the House speaking as the Leader of the House—
“would be advantaged by the Procedure Committee proposals. All Governments are tomorrow’s possible Opposition, and I think that my right hon. and hon. Friends, in their moments of supreme confidence, should consider, at least theoretically, how these proposals would bear upon the Opposition.
The Westminster political process is oblique and wide-ranging. It is like a seamless robe, which includes Government legislation, and much else. At present, the Opposition have open-ended opportunities for time and debate on legislation. If these are automatically extinguished, the Opposition will be deprived of a pressure point which is often used to secure
accommodation from the Government, not merely on legislation, but on other points in the political process.”—[ Official Report, 27 February 1986; Vol. 92, c. 1088.]
That is why John Biffen was a remarkable Leader of the House.
The House had a genuinely free vote. We have to remember that Mrs. Thatcher was Prime Minister. I think that the current Leader of the House was in the House. Mr. Speaker was in the House. The leader of the Scottish Parliament or Prime Minister of Scotland, the right hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), was in the House, as were some Liberal Members, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton)—who was formerly a distinguished Chairman of the Procedure Committee—and a couple of bonny Members present who represent Glasgow constituencies. What have we reduced ourselves to when we no longer think that this House can aspire to have as its leader someone who realises that there is a delicate balance to strike? That is what this debate is really about.
The proposition before us is that the current Leader of the House should be made a member of a Select Committee. She asserted in an earlier debate that that was a matter of custom, but it is certainly not a matter for Standing Orders. The Modernisation Committee was designed for a purpose, but what I have witnessed over the past 10 years is the almost total seizure of all procedural matters relating to the conduct of business in this House. The Government will always win, because they are a Government by virtue of having a majority; the majoritarian principle prevails, so they will get their way. That is why the Leader of the House is the most important intermediary in terms of the fairness of the balance of debate.
I am anxious about another Parliamentary Private Secretary being placed on the Committee, because it is packed with such Members. Its members include former deputy Chief Whips, a Liberal Democrat Whip and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), who is currently sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. I almost feel that my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield—the former Procedure Committee Chairman—and I are the only Back Benchers serving on it. Few of the new intake have any memory of what the House of Commons should aspire to be. We talk much about returning the balance of power to the House of Commons; the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) mentioned that. However, unless we have a Leader of the House who is prepared to take a bigger view, we will be as we are now: reduced.
I have explained why I oppose the motion, but I wish to ask a further question that it does not address: do we need the Modernisation Committee in its current form? Functions such as what office accommodation we should have and how to achieve proper representation more easily should be separated from procedural matters that inform Standing Orders. We saw what happened today. A Cabinet Minister, with the support of a Government majority, swept aside the proper process for appointing Members to serve on a Select Committee. That was said to be necessary for a variety of reasons. People can read Hansard and decide whether they share my judgment on that or agree with the Leader of the House. It is not right that we have cast into the hands of the Leader of the House,
through the mechanism of a Committee that already has so many Parliamentary Private Secretaries on it— [Interruption.] In answer to that, I say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s PPS is on it, for instance. We are discussing whether the Government control it. Whips are members of it. It is not a Committee of Back Benchers that can look with objective separation at what is appropriate for the House. Let me give an example.
The Leader of the House’s predecessor—who now has another Government job as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor—said when he was Chairman of the Committee, “There is no point in going down that route because the Whips will not accept it.” That is what we who serve on the Modernisation Committee now have to suffer. I know of no other Committee where the Chairman would say, “We can’t say this, because the Whips will not accept it.” Taking that route would kill whatever worth the Select Committee system has. However, it is not only the previous Leader of the House who took that view—it has been characteristic of the whole process and progress of the Committee.
I commend to the House the democracy commission of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). Through it, he proposes that these two Committees—the ancient and important Select Committee on Procedure, and the Modernisation Committee—should be merged and under the chairmanship of an Opposition Member. He does so because there must be a certain detachment in the assessment of what is appropriate for the House.
I know that my objections and arguments will be brushed aside. [Hon. Members: “Ah.”] There you have it, but this House is nothing unless it can control more of its business. The Prime Minister asserts, and I actually believe him, that that is what he wants—that we play a more meaningful role in the dispensation of power within the matters that fall to us. I therefore urge Members, for what it is worth, to think seriously on this, for there is one compelling reason why the present nomination is wrong. Among all the credits to her name, the Leader of the House is also chairman of the Labour party. I cannot think of a more partisan role, of necessity, and of a more blatant example of how the Government control this Chamber.
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