Examination of Witnesses (Questions 183-199)
RT HON
SIR ALAN
HASELHURST MP AND
MR DAVID
DOIG
18 APRIL 2007
Q183 Chairman: Sir Alan, Mr Doig, thank
you very much for your attendance, and particularly, Sir Alan,
thank you for the memorandum that you submitted. We have forty
minutes. If it is satisfactory to you, since you have presented
such a comprehensive memorandum, can we follow the order of the
topics that you raise in your memorandum? Is there anything you
wanted to say by way of introduction?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: Perhaps more
at the end. If we have not had time to cover the points in sequence,
I would rather hear the questions and then try and satisfy those
before making any additional remarks.
Chairman: The first substantive item
you dealt with in your evidence is induction of new Members. I
think it is pretty uncontroversial, but although things have greatly
improved we have to do a lot more and not overload the process
right at the beginning of a parliament, and try to bring a better
connection between what Parliament is doing and what the parties
are doing.
Q184 Sir Peter Soulsby: In your very
helpful memorandum you talk about having been introduced by the
Conservative Chief Whip, when you first arrived, and the role
that the party took. Can we reflect on the balance between the
responsibilities of the parties and the Whips in particular, and
the House authorities in this respect? Who should do what?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I think that
the party Whips can help Members in terms of procedure and getting
to know the place, centred on the Chamber and the committee work
that they might do, and give them some sense of how to do the
basics, as it were. We were told: How to write to a minister.
Not everyone who comes here knows exactly what the procedures
will be and the ways in which they will make their representations
on behalf of constituents. It was material of this kind that was
conveyed in a one-off session, which, I have to say, made a big
impression on me and has stayed with me throughout my time. All
the other features of the House, for example how you book a room
or organise tours, and the rights and wrongs in terms of Members'
interests, needs to be given to Members, perhaps not all at once
in a type of freshers' week approach. I think it is too much to
digest. If I may add, having read some of the evidence that you
have already received on this, I rather revised my view, in a
sense. I think a very good point is made about the gap between
the general election and the summoning of Parliament. In 1970,
which was my first experience, it was eleven days. I think that
that ought to be the kind of period at least, if not even more
generous than that, because a new government, even if it is of
the same party, may equally value a little bit of time for ministers
to settle in and make their plans. That is particularly true if
there is a change of government. It seems to me that the most
important thing that could happen in that time is settling accommodation.
It is absolutely ridiculous that Members should be wandering around
like refugees in this building for weeks afterwards. The most
essential thing they need is an office and a phone so that they
can start to get to work in appointing a secretary and staff.
If they have that comfort, they are then in a position to learn
a little more about some of the situations that they will encounter.
Sir Peter Soulsby: I would just comment
that I think while many Members have agreed that some things have
improved over the years, the experience of a new Member in this
particular respect has not.
Chairman: You make reference on induction
to using the Chamber as a means of inducting people. I think that
we do things far too quickly in this country, and taking a breath
is not a bad idea sometimes; and a longer period between the general
election and when Parliament meets would enable that to happen.
Q185 Mrs May: Can I pursue beyond
induction, Sir Alan, to the question of continuous professional
development because as MPs we come here and try to learn the practices
of the House, and then we have very little opportunity for further
professional development in any sense. Would you like to comment
on whether you feel there is a need for top-up sessions carrying
on into MPs' careers about the House but also possible development
in other areas for them so that they can make their representations
in the best way and have a greater knowledge of certain topics?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I think the
thing to remember is that there is no stereotype for a Member
of Parliament; we are all extremely different animals, and we
pursue different interests in different ways. We will always have
a different formula for the way in which we spend our week or
our year, according to our interests and what we believe are the
right things we should be doing. I think that in so far as the
facilities of the House are concerned, it might be helpful if
there were periodic opportunities to refresh. The Library does
send out reminders from time to time, and I think that other departments
could do that, to say, "there will be a session"—at
six-monthly intervals or whatever is appropriate, and if a Member
needed to know more about something, they could go and enlist
for it. In terms of trying to develop one's other strengths, let
us say developing a specialism in housing, I am not sure. I looked
at the evidence that has been presented, and I am not sure that
one needs special arrangements whether through the IPT or anything
of that kind. Surely, we are all sensible people, and if we say
we want to know more about housing, then we could ring up the
chairman of the Housing Corporation, for example, or talk to one
of our local authorities and say, "Brief me more on this;
I want to spend some time with you", and fit it into our
own weekly schedule.
Q186 Mrs May: I was talking about
general overall professional development like time management
skills. Is there any scope for those being put on; or do you think
it is for individual Members, if they feel the need, to find a
course somewhere?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I am not
sure I would put House resources behind that particular aspect
of development. If someone feels that they have got such a large
staff, for example, that they need help in dealing with it, then
they ought to go to a specialist that they could know or call
upon to say, "How can I handle this; I am in a situation
I am not used to?" I have never quite been in the situation
myself that my staff has been so large that I have struggled to
manage it. I notice that some colleagues now have quite a long
staff list and that may give rise to that kind of problem. There
are lots of people around that one could consult individually
over things like time management, to say, "I am struggling
here". I am not sure that the House has to provide it on
a corporate basis.
Q187 Chairman: You cover a great
deal in your memorandum, so can we move on to this business of
the week's predictability and topicality of business? You comment
that Thursdays have become a virtual non-day; and that is a point
that Sir George Young has also made in his memorandum. I think
we need to look at that, and you may have some thoughts about
how we make it into more of a day. Sir George Young has suggested
that PMQs are moved to Thursday. The other issue is speakers'
lists. You say there are reasons for not having those. I have
been in the very fortunate position over almost all my career
of being on the frontbench rather than the backbenches; but I
remember, even in the days when, to pick up Peter Riddell's point,
one was used to long sermons rather than short sermons, spending
six hours in the Chamber and then not getting called was pretty
irritating. That was in the days when there were no other draws
on a backbencher's time because there were no select committees.
You will remember those times. It seems to me that today there
has been a huge increase in constituency pressures. Bearing in
mind the demands of what you would refer to as 24/7 news services
and much else besides, to expect a Member to sit there, not knowing
whether they are going to get called, is worse than the disadvantages
of the speakers' list, which is that it may become rather mechanical.
My own sense is that if you had speakers' lists, but also the
Chair was rigid in saying, "If you want to be on the list,
you have got to be there at the beginning of the debate; you have
to stay after you have spoken; and you have to be there for the
wind-ups; and, by the way, if you are not, do not expect to get
called again for a very long time"—if you do that and
allow injury time on interventions, so that it is not like the
House of Lords where people are reading speeches, and the dynamic
of debate continues, surely speakers' lists would work?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I think it
is important to separate myth and reality here. I read with increasing
disbelief some of the evidence you have already heard from colleagues
as to the days on days where they have sat for six hours, frustrated.
I do not remember what these days were. The occasions when there
are too many people to get into the time available are increasingly
sparse, even on such easy occasions, if I may say so from the
point of view of making a speech, as the Queen's Speech Debate,
where the House has been packing up early for lack of speakers.
I think it is only on very few occasions now that the debate is
seriously over-subscribed to the extent that people have no chance
of being called. The Chair is very different in its approach to
Members from when I first came here. It was very difficult to
approach the Chair, as a young Member in those days; now the Chair
is much more benevolent and recognises that Members have all these
pressures, and it does attempt to be helpful. We do not take any
kind of pleasure from letting someone stew there, hour after hour,
knowing jolly well that the chances of their being called are
remote. We try to be helpful. People come up to the Chair and
ask what is their chance, and we try and guide them and say that
they could have a cup of tea and it will be later on. If you have
heard the opening speeches and stay for at least one speech after
you have spoken and you are in for the wind-ups, you will be keeping
your nose clean as far as the Chair is concerned. There will be
occasions when we even allow flexibility around that, according
to circumstance. I do not think that there is quite the pressure
every day, and more often than not in recent times one has seen
the Whips busying around, trying to find people to come in to
fill up the time. That is the very opposite to the impression
that some people have given. The Chair does try to help. I would
like to say very strongly to the Committee that it should advise
the House to trust the Speaker. There is no parliament in the
world that puts the Speaker on the pedestal that we do, by saying,
"You have to be absolutely impartial; you can never return
to party politics" et cetera. We see that person as
defending the interests of the House and backbenchers and so on.
If that is so, as I believe, then we should give flexibility to
the Chair. It will try to be helpful, mindful of the interests
of backbenchers and how life has changed for them. If you create
lists, it brings a rigidity into it that will have some uncomfortable
consequences. It is very difficult sometimes to discipline Members
to do what one would like them to do ideally, which is to write
in beforehand and then be present and so on. If a senior Member
comes to the Chair and says, "I hope you have got my name
on the list" and one says, "I am afraid I have not"—"Oh,
but I wrote a letter to the Speaker" or "I spoke to
the Speaker's secretary" or "I did this" or "I
did that", it is not easy for the Chair to say, "We
have no record of that; go away". You try to be flexible.
If someone comes in and says: "I have now got a delegation
from a constituency that has come to see me and I am down on the
list to speak at 2.30 approximately, but can I alter it?"
the Chair is trying informally to do that. Members do play fast
and loose with the Chair, and this is one of the difficulties
about putting time limits on. We make an honest attempt at the
Speaker's conference to try and share out the time. That is why
I very strongly feel, as I put in my evidence, that one should
give the Speaker flexibility to judge the situation as it develops.
Q188 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Can
I say I share the view that Sir Alan has just expressed in a very
clear and transparent way. With your permission, Chairman, can
I introduce the subject of short speeches, which comes later in
Sir Alan's paper, because I think it dovetails in with this matter?
Can I ask Sir Alan whether he believes that the new Standing Order
relating to short speeches being a minimum of three minutes—and
you mention this in your paper, and I have a vested interest because
it was a recommendation of the Procedure Committee a year or two
ago—has ever been used. I think it has been tried about
once or twice. Do you, Sir Alan, believe that somebody being able
to speak for three or four minutes at the end of a debate—perhaps
the last hour in a full day's debate, or in the last half hour
before wind-ups in a half-day debate—would give people the
incentive to be there and listen to their colleagues? This is
one thing that worries me, having been here for a number of years:
increasingly, Members come in and out of the Chamber and do not
sit for a major proportion of the debate in order to listen to
what colleagues have to say from their own side and from the other
side of the House. A use of the Standing Order more frequently
to enable many more people—it could be, if it were three
minutes in the last hour of a major debate— twenty additional
speakers getting in, making one or two very critical points. You
have said to me privately, Sir Alan, that very often the short
speech is the better speech. Do you believe that this would help
Members and reduce the frustration felt particularly by new Members
of this House?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I know that
the recommendation, which bears your fingerprints, Sir Nicholas,
about the short speech rule, was well intended. I am not sure
that it has worked as well in practice; and if it has not been
used as often, it is partly on the grounds of the reticence of
the Chair as to how fairly to introduce it in certain situations.
There have been manifestations of annoyance by Members who have
prepared a 10 or 12-minute speech to find that they are being
offered a three-minute speech, which they do not feel they can
adjust to and have then gone out of the Chamber. Therefore, while
the calculations you have used say that for the last hour so many
people are going to be there, who will have three minutes each,
suddenly you find that that number has halved. It is quite difficult.
That is the experience we have had with it, of changes taking
place between the Speaker's conference when these things are decided,
so that Members are given sufficient advance notice of what the
time limit is going to be, if there is one for backbench speeches
in today's debate. Circumstances alter either because a significant
number of Members have withdrawn from speaking, or because a significant
number of Members have put in a late plea to speak; and the time
limit one has put on is no longer relevant to the situation with
which you are faced. I plead for this Committee to look at giving
total flexibility almost to the Speaker to be able to adjust.
If he has started off by saying it is 12 minutes, then he may
decide he can reduce that to 10 or eight, which would make less
of a severe difference between those who come in early in the
debate, and those in the last hour who find that all they are
going to get is a gabbled three minutes.
Q189 Chairman: I think we are all
attracted to the flexibility you are proposing but are there flexibilities
above the announced maximum? For example, if you announced a 10-minute
limit but then the demand to speak fell away, could you then say
Members could speak for fifteen minutes?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I personally
would. Again I say: trust the Chair. If you had a situation, which
I have to say one had as recently as yesterday, where there was
anxiety on both sides in relation to a timetable that Members
had; that there was likely to be a vote at 10 o'clock at the conclusion
of the debate and the debate had to go on until that time. In
some cases you might have been struggling to keep it going until
that time. The Chair should have certain flexibility in that sense,
I believe. As I say, if you have confidence in the Speaker and
his assistants to operate the thing in the interests of Members,
which is our tradition, then place that full trust in the Speaker.
Q190 Philip Davies: You have said
a couple of things that I would like to explore further. You mentioned
time limits and commented about having a debate in the proper
sense of the word. Do you think that having shortened time limits
gives Members an excuse not to take interventions and therefore
not to have a proper debate, which does not help in terms of adding
to a debate? The second point is about the speakers' list. It
seems to be either feast or famine; there are either debates in
which everybody wants to speak or debates where nobody wants to
speak. Is the problem not at the very start of a new parliament,
when new Members are very enthusiastic and keen and want to throw
themselves in? That is when they all experience not getting called.
It happens once or twice at the start of their time in Parliament
and at that time they decide, "This is a waste of time; I
am not going to bother", and from that moment on they make
a decision not to contribute to debates and not to put in to speak,
even though later on in the Parliament they probably could get
in. Do you not feel that it is their early experiences that shape
the way they act in Parliament?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: The Speaker's
Office maintains very comprehensive records, and this has been
a great insight for me in the last 10 years. It is surprising
how well new Members do in terms of the number of occasions on
which they speak. Sir Nicholas, in a previous session of the Committee,
referred to the possibility of them making only two speeches in
major debates. If you get an Iraq type debate, where probably
sixty Members want to speak, and realistically only about thirty
are going to do so because only one day has been devoted to it,
there are problems of allocation. Across the board, in debates,
on second-reading debates, on Opposition days and so on, or debates
on adjournments of certain topics, the new Members are achieving
quite good scoring rates, if I may say so; their average is not
at all bad. There will always be pressure when it comes to very,
very high-profile debates. You then have to ask yourself: "What
are debates about?" If the House of Commons is a debating
Chamber, it is only one aspect of what we do as members of the
legislature. That is an occasion for challenge, probing debate,
putting a matter on the record, trying to persuade either your
party or the other party of a particular point of view to indicate
the pressures on the country that you feel are important; and
you must express yourself. On those occasions, you cannot completely
exclude some of the major players from the debate. I know that
this irks some newer Members, but, again, the Speaker is trying
to leaven the wisdom and experience of some of the senior Members
with the fresh intake. I am not sure it is quite accurate to say
that every Member's constituency has a right to be heard in every
debate, because patently that cannot be the case in the timetable
we run for a debate; and you are only going to get between thirty
and forty speakers, depending on how you operate the time limit.
On the short speeches point, I think that to go down to three
minutes and no interruptions is a corruption of the thing; and
I believe you would be better off with a variable limit so that
you can get a decent bite at the cherry.
Q191 Mr Shepherd: There are three
points to this question, and it is about the allocation of time.
We have all witnessed days when business seems to have petered
out at about seven o'clock. How would that time be filled and
at whose discretion? The other question, which follows on from
Philip's question, concerns where you have considerable interest
by Members in participating in what is perhaps a nationally important
debate. I will cite the Iraq debate for one day, when clearly
many people could not get to speak; and yet in the House of Lords
on this important issue, through the Leader of the House we had
two days to consider the proposals in front of the House. Is it
practical that the Speaker could actually say that because of
the number of requests coming in, this requires two days? Historically
of course we sometimes go for three days to second-readings if
there is an important matter before Parliament, and there are
a couple of instances of that; and in important second-readings
there are also instances of two days being given over, because
that is the point where the principle is being discussed. Can
you give us your views on these issues?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I think it
would be quite a serious step, on the latter point, to suggest
that the powers of the Speaker to determine the business of the
House and the length of time available for it should be extended
in the way you are hinting.
Q192 Mr Shepherd: It is not hinting,
in all fairness. I am just seeing it as a proposition. This does
not occur very often in truth, does it?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: No. I am
not directly privy to this because, obviously, there are certain
things that the Speaker does which only the Speaker can do, and
it is not a corporate or collective decision; but the Speaker
meets the Chief Whips of the parties on a regular basis and I
think it is through that means that he would attempt to influence
the situation; but it would be a very big step indeed to move
away from the role of the usual channels to determine what should
be the length of time available for a debate. On some occasions
it ought to be as plain as a pikestaff that there would be—and
probably only two or three times a year—such a demand generated
for a debate; so let us be adult about this and allow a sufficient
amount of time for it. There are two contradictions, I think,
going through the whole of this debate. There is the topicality
versus predictability point, which I do make some comments about;
and also there is a clash between those Members who say, "There
is too little time for us to be doing these things" and at
the same time saying, "Can we leave at five o'clock?"
We have got to get this right. It is a certain sort of job, this;
and there are lots of people across the country in different jobs
who will have to work all sorts of hours, according to the demands
of that job. I do not see that this job is so out of line with
what a whole section of the population knows, be they in the public
services or wherever, that sometimes there are funny hours. One
of the things I worry about, where there is a squeeze on backbench
Members, is when ministerial statements are made with permission—would
it ever be denied?—of course it would not be—and an
urgent question is raised. This is where the Speaker can exercise
some influence on topicality, but has to take account not just
of that issue but what it is going to do to the timetable for
the day. If he knows he has a list of Members wanting to speak
on the named business, he has to agonise—"can I let
these things go and add to the agenda without there being injury
time at the end?" That is the dilemma, and I do not think
the Speaker should be put in that position where his unfettered
decision is in fact fettered in his mind by the realisation that
there is a point of interruption which he cannot effect. The debates
petering out is again a matter of management for the usual channels,
and it comes up against this predictability point. If Members
have been told by their various Whips' offices that they should
be here at 10 o'clock or seven o'clock for a vote and it looks
as though the debate does not have the natural steam in it to
last that long, what happens? That is the problem. It seems to
me, never having been part of the usual channels, that there ought
to be rather better man management between them to be realistic
about the fact that the debate is not likely to last; and therefore
they either seek to put in two debates in the time available or
determine whether it is a matter that can be remitted elsewhere.
I suggest that Westminster Hall might be a place where various
things might be tried which have not so far been tried.
Chairman: We only have another twelve
minutes, and I want to ask Sir Alan to make some general remarks
at the end so if everybody could bear that in mind...
Q193 Mr Sanders: If a debate does
run out, what is there to stop you suspending that until the 10
o'clock vote, rather than forcing people to, in a sense, lower
the quality of the debate by trying to keep it going? Is there
any reason why you cannot just suspend and then stick to a timetable
of when there was going to be a vote?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I do not
think so. There is no actual procedure for it, and it certainly
could be done; but it would be an extraordinary commentary, would
it not, on what this place is about if apparently the country
has elected 646 people and there are not enough of us to keep
a debate going on a certain subject?
Q194 Mr Sanders: It would be honest,
would it not?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: It might
be honest, but it might be too honest for our own good, I would
have thought.
Q195 Mr Burstow: It does bring a
different meaning to the term "spontaneity of debate"
when the Whips are bringing everyone in to make speeches that
they may not have planned to make in any way, shape or form until
the piece of paper was given to them. There are some interesting
proposals in your paper about Westminster Hall that I wanted to
tease out a bit further. I was particularly interested in the
idea that you suggest around raising topical issues in this 30-minute
slot and the opportunity for 10 Members to make three-minute contributions
and so on. Can you elaborate on how the mechanics of that might
work and how frequently during the course of a week it might be
used? It sounds to me to be quite a useful device to allow Members
to raise topical issues that they want to draw to the attention
of the House.
Sir Alan Haselhurst: I cannot
see anything wrong with an experiment. Some of the proposals that
have come out of this Committee during its lifetime have been
on the basis of persuading the House to try something for an experimental
period. It seems to me that some of the more innovative ideas
could be given a test run in Westminster Hall. There is scope
for using Westminster Hall either differently from the three days
that is used at the moment, or even by extending on to a Monday.
I cannot see any difficulty about that. I would suggest that one
might have a half-hour topicality slot, which certain legislatures
in the world already have, on a weekly basis, and see how it goes.
If it proves to be valuable and allows certain issues to be aired,
be they of national or constituency importance, and got on the
record; depending on how Members react to it, it could be something
that is extended or even transferred to the Chamber.
Chairman: Mark wants to come in on this,
and so does Theresa. Can we concentrate on statements and the
important section on programming that Sir Alan raised in the remaining
time?
Q196 Mark Lazarowicz: I can see the
argument about allowing some injury time at report stage, but
presumably there is an argument for some limit to the injury time
allowed at report stage because you could have a situation where
it could run into a considerable amount of time beyond the expected
end of the day. I would be interested in your views on that. Can
I briefly go back to the point that Paul Burstow made on Westminster
Hall debates. I was interested in your reference to proposals
regarding select committee reports. I think that is a good idea,
and I wonder if you have any indication of why that proposal never
saw the light of day, in terms of actual business in Westminster
Hall, as a result?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: On the last
point, I do not know why it did not see the light of day, but
I am inviting the Committee to look at this again and see whether
it might be tried. On injury time, there are two situations. One
is the report stage where, if you are allowing under the programme
one hour supposedly for a third reading debate, and when the closure
comes on the report stage one hour before the final point of interruption,
there could then be a series of votes; and that can often tear
to ribbons the time available for third reading. Third reading
in those circumstances has lost all meaning as a debate. It is
absurd that one gets a quarter of an hour of congratulation, back-slapping
and so on, and the only person never mentioned is the Chair. The
thing does not end on the highest note. It seems to me that the
Committee might consider whether third reading has a purpose—which
I am inclined to think it has, but maybe times have moved on.
If there is a purpose to third reading, let it be a protected
hour—that is all I am saying. The other injury time is because
of the topicalities. If the Committee decided to suggest that
the criterion that the Speaker is expected to work within for
determining urgent questions, might be relaxed slightly in order
to promote topicality, there are consequences of that. Similarly,
what I said about statements was with the aim of cutting down
the total amount of time that is spent on a Government statement,
and yet benefiting backbenchers disproportionately. If you could
get statements over more quickly as a result of people being better
informed about what was in a statement half an hour beforehand,
again we would be saving time to some extent. It is not totally
infrequent to have two government statements in a day, plus there
is a good urgent question that ought to be taken: it seems to
me that you cannot just slash the time available for what might
be a second-reading debate or any other kind of debate, when you
know a lot of Members wish to take part in that; and therefore
you have to add on some injury time. There could be a formula
for it so that there is some limit to it. I am not suggesting
that we get into a situation of going through the night or this
kind of nonsense; but we have to get the balance right between
the ability to function, as one is sent here by one's constituents
to do, and at the same time being able to get away at a reasonable
hour. It is extraordinary that we should pack up when so many
Members are frustrated at not being able to speak because of a
general desire not to be here beyond a certain time.
Q197 Mrs May: I want to pick up particularly
the issue of statements. Many people will have a certain sympathy
for your proposal that everybody should get a copy of the statement
in advance, particularly when things have been announced in the
press beforehand anyway. People will have a rough idea of what
is happening. I would like to tease out what you meant by saying
there is further scope for injecting crispness and more discipline
into the statement procedure, and whether it was about further
reducing the length of time frontbenchers have to speak to give
more opportunity for questions; and do you think there should
be general guidance on the minimum period that a statement is
available in advance to frontbenchers and backbenchers? The worst
occasion I experienced was when shadowing Stephen Byers and a
particularly important statement came out 10 minutes before he
stood up.
Chairman: To you?
Mrs May: To me—which meant that
there was very little time to look at it. Ministers obviously
vary on this. In terms of statements and urgent questions, and
that topicality issue, you have not made any reference to SO No.
24 and the use of that procedure, and whether there is more scope
for that.
Q198 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Before
you answer Theresa's question, there was a very important statement
on Monday relating to Iraq on the abduction of the 15 service
personnel and selling stories to the media. The Speaker, for probably
very good reason, terminated that statement and supplementaries
from backbenchers after an hour, albeit there were a lot of Members
still wanting to speak. Do you think that in a case like that,
when there is such an important statement being made, and a lot
of people are interested, there could be injury time granted that
could change the time of the point of interruption so that in
fact more people could participate in what is a critical issue
and a very important statement?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: That is the
whole point I am making. On that occasion, the Speaker knew he
had another ministerial statement that followed that one, and
he could have had a request for an urgent question. I do not think
he did have, or I was not aware of that. The fact is that the
whole question of injury time has to be considered because we
are being squeezed, and that does not sit well with Members then
saying they have not got the opportunity to take part in debates.
My own thoughts on the statement, which are for your consideration—and
I have not pre-discussed it with Mr Speaker—are that if
it were practical for all Members to be able to pick up the statement
from the Vote Office half an hour beforehand, I think you could
then say to a minister, "You do not then make your statement
by reading the whole thing out but you speak to your statement
for, say, five minutes"; and then the principal opposition
and the third party perhaps have three minutes; and then the rest
of the time that is available is for backbenchers. I think that
the questions that might be asked in those circumstances would
be more to the point. When you are listening to something for
the first time you do not always digest it and you may therefore
ask what I call a "damn fool" question because you didn't
quite catch it, and sometimes you do miss the point; or you can
ask a more incisive question because you have seen what is in
the statement and mentally have it bedded down in your mind. I
think that would lead to crispness and so on. At the same time,
the Chair would then batten down hard on long preambles from Members
rather than asking a question; so the whole thing could be more
tightly managed. As to the courtesies given to the principal shadow
spokesman, that works generally speaking. It occasionally goes
wrong and sometimes there will be frantic efforts to alter a statement
at the last minute and so on. I think the normal courtesies work.
I did not mention SO No. 24 specifically in my submission, but
I would say that that is another opportunity where the criteria
governing Mr Speaker could be relaxed again. In my early days
in this place you were getting SO No. 24s every day, and the House
got tired of this, because of the ritualistic response by the
Speaker; but you also got the occasions when they were accepted.
There was huge dislocation then for everybody because the Speaker
announced there would be a three-hour debate on that matter the
following day, and suddenly people were looking at their train
timetables and so on. Again, this is the clash between topicality
and Members' predictability. We have to accept there is some inconvenience
in this work if we really want to be on the button on a particular
matter.
Q199 Chairman: Thank you very much,
Sir Alan. Time, sadly, has run out, even here! Is there anything
you wanted to say by way of summary?
Sir Alan Haselhurst: There are
just two other points that we have not covered. I simply stress
that we have to be adult about this business of topicality and
predictability, and see what the job is that we are trying to
do. Trust the Speaker, is my other great theme, because the Speaker
will try to be helpful and not be seen as distant, as is implied
in some ways by the evidence given, by people feeling that they
were just wasting their time in the Chamber. Private Members'
motions I would commend. I think they were almost abolished by
accident, but if Members want to put forward a subject that will
have a vote at the end, you might seriously give consideration
to the restoration of that. I would commend again— because
I tried to make it work from the Chair, but it was not all down
to me—the cross-cutting questions idea in Westminster Hall.
Again, let us experiment in Westminster Hall and see whether some
of these ways of helping Members and making Parliament more effective
can be developed there.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed
for your memorandum and for this evidence session.
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