Tim
Loughton: This is the first Committee that I have been
involved in under the new public Bill procedures, so some brief
comments might be useful so that we all know where we are coming
from.
Tim
Loughton: We are all on a fast learning curve here,
Mr. Cook, and I wrote to the Minister before Easter to get
some elaboration on how she thought this process might work. My
concern, not least in light of my previous reference to the publication
of the report on community treatment orders after the House of Lords
had finished its deliberations, was that further scrutiny of new
evidence would be beneficial to the Committee. I therefore asked the
Minister whether the full rigours of the Public Bill Committee could be
brought to bear, so that we could have an oral witness session,
particularly on community treatment orders, to examine that important
evidence, which could then feed through to the Committee’s
deliberations, as well as the normal written submissions that have been
mentioned. The Minister suggested that further oral witness sessions
were not necessary, in her view, and that the procedure would be to
invite written submissions that would be then be made available to the
Committee. I also thank you, Mr. Cook, forthe speed
with which you have made those initial38
submissions—
Tim
Loughton: Yes, it is now up to 46. For those of us who
took them away, those initial 38 ruined our weekends but enabled us to
have some time to look at them properly before the Committee started.
Very interesting submissions they are too, and I am gladthat
that invitation was taken up seriously by the organisations and
individuals who have responded.
I understand that written
submissions can continue to be made and will therefore be made
available to the Committee, subject to your discretion, Mr.
Cook, until the final day of its proceedings, and that those written
submissions approved by you will also be published as part of the
written Hansard record of this Committee . May I
take your nod as to whether I am getting it right so
far? The
Chairman: I think that I had better provide some
clarification. Some submissions have been presented with the proviso
that they will not be published on the internet. That being the case,
the submissions will not be preserved there but in the
archives.
Tim
Loughton: Thank you for that clarification, Mr.
Cook. I am sure that the Committee will be more than happy to rely on
your discretion as to what finally gets published; as we have seen,
what has been made available so far certainly seems to be fairly
extensive. My point
here is that the Minister suggested that we did not need to have
further scrutiny of this Bill, and while those of us involved with it
over several years might be inclined to agree, new things have come
out. The Bill that we are scrutinising is now fundamentally different
from that which started its scrutiny process in December in the House
of Lords. On that basis, we thought that further scrutiny would be
beneficial to the Committee, and as I have mentioned to you,
Mr. Cook, several members of the Committee decided to set up
a witness session yesterday afternoon in Committee Room 16. There, for
a marathon three and a half hours, 11 members of the House of Lords and
the House of Commons, from the Conservative, Lib Dem and Welsh
nationalist parties, and Cross Benchers—unfortunately no Labour
Members were available to attend—scrutinised no fewer than 25
witnesses from an enormous range of organisations and individuals. The
vast majority of them are familiar with the Bill, whether in submitting
evidence, appearing as witnesses before the pre-legislative scrutiny
Committee or making other representations all along. For three and a
half hours we took some fairly extensive evidence, most pointedly on
the community treatment orders, to which we devoted most of our time
yesterday afternoon. We were able to have the proceedings recorded, and
they will shortly be transcribed by a Hansard reporter in a
written format, which we would then wish to publish and make available
to all Members of Parliament,of both Houses, and certainly to
members of the Committee, as soon as it has
physically been
transcribed. Chris
Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman said that the
session was recorded by Hansard, which would suggest that it was
an official Committee of the House. Is that what he
means?
Tim
Loughton: No, that is not what I said. I said that the
proceedings were recorded by House officers, but the transcription will
be done by a Hansard reporter on a free-lance basis, for which a
fee will be paid. So, the session was not, nor was it ever assumed to
be, an official Committee of the House. At no point wasit
claimed to be an all-party group or an official
Committee. To clarify,
a joint letter was sent by the hon. Member for Romsey and myself,
initially to every member of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee,
whose names—from both Houses—we obviously knew, which
referred
to an impromptu committee being set up that we hoped would have the
involvement of all parties. At no point did we claim that it would be
some sort of official committee. It was made quite clear that because
we felt that further witness sessions were desirable—it is
better to inform the Committee, and I do not see what the downside
could possibly be—we wanted to set up a committee involving as
many interested parties as possible, from all parties as well, to take
expert witness
testimonies. James
Duddridge (Rochford and Southend, East) (Con): It is a
pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Cook.
We are all finding our way on the Public Bill Committee and I
understand one of the reasons that we could not have an evidence
session right at the beginning of proceedings was that the Bill started
out in another place. However, does my hon. Friend agree that it would
be an idea to have such evidence sessions when the Bill starts in the
other place? I certainly found yesterday’s evidence session
rewarding and useful, and would have found it much more so had we been
able to do it formally, on a cross-party basis, so it was much more
similar to a Select
Committee?
Tim
Loughton: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he was
one of the attendees at the session yesterday. He has come to the
legislation relatively late. Clearly, the deliberations and evidence
taken yesterday have better informed his ability to scrutinise the
legislation in Committee. That was the whole point, and it was
unfortunate that the committee could notbe conducted on an
official basis. However, at the end of the day, the result is to
achieve a written record of25 witnesses, including some who
agreed with the changes proposed in the amendments,
and some previously pleaded in aid by the Government and some
not.
Chris
Bryant: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not want
to sour the beginning of the debate, because I hope that we can reach a
Bill that commands the respect and support of as many Members of the
House as possible. However, I think that he has inadvertently misled
the Committee, because his e-mail to the Minister, which was widely
circulated by his office to others, said quite specifically the
opposite of what he just told us, namely, that the Minister was invited
to speak at a special all-party
committee.
Tim
Loughton: I have not misled the Committee in any way. I
will hoy out the letter. On Second Reading, I said that we were setting
up the committee and would invite the Minister to attend. At no point
was it challenged as claiming to be anything other than what the
letter—a copy of which was also sent to the hon.
Gentleman—referred to, which was an impromptu committee. On
Thursday, the Whip in charge of the Bill gave me a list of all the
Labour members of the Bill Committee. Afterwards, I think at 11.22 am,
the letter went out as an e-mail, inviting the hon. Member for Rhondda
and other members of the Committee to the impromptu
committee. Curiously, at business questions, which started some eight
minutes later, I gather that the hon. Gentleman mentioned that he had
received the letter and referred to me by name. When the hon.
Gentleman was challenged by the Speaker about whether he had mentioned
to me that I would be named, he said that he had been trying to get
hold of my office all
morning.
Ms
Winterton: Will the hon. Gentleman give
way?
Tim
Loughton: I will in a
minute. That was
rather strange, given that the letter arrived by e-mail only some eight
minutes before business questions and my office had no record of
receiving any calls from the hon. Gentleman, having been manned since
7.30 that
morning. Dr.
Ian Gibson (Norwich, North) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman
give
way?
Tim
Loughton: I will give way to all hon. Members in a tick. I
do not understand why there seems to be a fuss about a committee that
was set up informally on an impromptu basis for the purpose of better
informing everyone involved with the Mental Health Bill about our
proceedings. I think that the Minister wanted to intervene first. I
shall then give way to the hon. Member for Norwich,
North.
The
Chairman: Order. I am anxious to ensure that our
deliberations take place with an attitude of tolerance and free
exchange. At the moment, we are discussing a motion on written evidence
that may be submitted before the last sitting of the Committee. I do
not want to become bogged down at this stage in the finer detail of how
and why the event under discussion has happened. The hon. Member for
East Worthing and Shoreham has given what seemed a fairly clear
explanation of how, why and who was involved in the matter, and related
it to a statement made on Second Reading. I do not want to spend undue
time going through the detail now. If such questions are essential, I
shall go along with them for the moment, but we are absorbing an undue
amount of time in what is a tight programme; 12 sittings have been
allocated, and we shall have a lot to
accommodate.
Ms
Winterton: Bearing in mind absolutely what you have just
said, Mr. Cook, I wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for
East Worthing and Shoreham to say that written evidence is extremely
important, but that I was a little concerned about the impressions
given to organisations because of his letter inviting me to
“be the first witness at the
special all-party committee we have
convened”. I did not want
organisations to feel that I had not gone to a formal Committee of the
House, which was the impression that had been
given.
The
Chairman: That is a fair
point.
Tim
Loughton: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Norwich,
North.
Dr.
Gibson: My concern is not about whether we hear the best
evidence and all the evidence that is available, but that we must
contain that evidence within
a room such as this where we can discuss it openly with each other. To
set up another committee or all-party mental health group seems to
undermine the work of this Committee. I feel that deeply. If we want to
play at silliness, we can start taking trips around every mental health
hospital in this country, Russia and the rest of the world. We do not
want to get into that. If we can get evidence from other places, fine.
We do not need to set up other committees that seem to undermine the
work of this Committee. Bring the evidence to us; we shall look at it
and argue about it. If we, as a Committee, think that we need to have
someone to inform us about matters because we do not understand issues
or argue about them, I accept that. What the hon. Gentleman has been
talking about smacks of undermining the work of this
Committee.
The
Chairman: Mr. Loughton, you have made your
point clearly. Can we move on with the
motion?
Tim
Loughton: May I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for
Tiverton and Honiton?
Angela
Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): As a member of the
scrutiny Committee, I should like to mention one of the useful things
about yesterday’s meeting. The scrutiny Committee made a great
many recommendations to Government in response to the draft Bill, Just
about every salient recommendation was rejected by the Government, but
they have now been reinstated in the Bill in another place.
Revisitingthe evidence base in the light of those changed
circumstances was therefore extremely constructiveand
helpful. 11
am Dr.
Doug Naysmith (Bristol, North-West) (Lab/Co-op): It is a
great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more,
Mr. Cook. I understand that you want to move on, but I would
grateful if you would let me say a word or two, because of the
reference to the scrutiny Committee. I think that I am the only
Government Committee member who was also a member of the scrutiny
Committee. I received two invitations to the meeting yesterday: as a
former member of the scrutiny Committee and as a member of this
Committee. It is
disingenuous, to say the least, to suggest that Committee members
missed a huge amount by not attending the meeting yesterday. Setting up
the meeting struck me almost as a political game to try to trip up
Labour Committee members. I understand, Mr. Cook, that you
do not want remarks like that to be made. I shall try to restrain
myself. However, I have never, ever—I am not allowed to mention
people in the audience, so I apologise—had more information
supplied for a Bill than we have been supplied with over the past few
months by the organisations that have been sending it in, since before
Second Reading. The pile of papers is so high. I have read much of that
evidence carefully. In fact, I read most of it when I was a member of
the scrutiny Committee. There is no lack of evidence for Committee
members to read. I am
not saying that it is a bad thing for people to talkto
Conservative Members. However, it is clear thatwe have plenty
of stuff to go on. There is loads of
information. The
Chairman: Order. You have repeated those words three
times.
Dr.
Naysmith: I do not think that that is
true.
The
Chairman: Order. Please resume your seat while I am on my
feet. You have had far too long for an intervention and have been very
repetitive.
Tim
Loughton: Perhaps I can rise to speak without any hon.
Member trying to intervene on
me. I shall bring my
comments to a close by saying that at no juncture was there any
intention to mislead the Minister, Committee members or the House about
the nature of what was happening yesterday. The letter that went out to
the hon. Member for Rhondda and all other Committee members
said: “It is
our intention to make this impromptu committee cross-party and involve
Members of both
Houses.” Invitations went
out on that basis to all the people I have mentioned and to others who
had been involved in the House of Lords—small parties as
well—who we thought could contribute. We would have welcomed
greatly the input of Labour Members with relevant expertise. There was
never any intention to mislead. I cannot see what the problem is with
an extra piece of research being discussed, particularly on the subject
of community treatment orders, by the authors of the report. They took
questions and debated with another witness who took issue with some of
their findings. That was exceedingly helpful. That facility was not
available to any Members of the House of Lords at any point during
their deliberations on the Bill. Therefore, hon. Members being part of
the deliberations yesterday could surely only improve the
process. I should like
to make it clear that we will make the transcript of yesterday’s
proceedings, which those who attended seemed to think was
useful—all the witnesses were grateful for the opportunity to
put their case, wherever it came from—available to all Committee
members as soon as it is prepared. I hope that we can submit it
formally to the Committee to be included in the Hansard
evidence, along with the other witness
memorandums. Mr.
Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree
that perhaps the most important thing is not who did or did not attend
the committee in the afternoon, but the attention paid to the points
made in it and elsewhere in the extensive evidence that we have
received from the Minister and other Committee members on this
legislation?
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