Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
20-39)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP
28 FEBRUARY 2007
Q20 Mr Chope: How would that work?
Mr Straw: There would be a final
date. I am trying to remember. The current target for Departments
to answer ordinary questions is five working days, but you might
want to consider ten. Do you see what I mean?
Q21 Mr Chope: Yes, but at the moment
some questions are not being answered for months?
Mr Straw: I know. Tell me about
it. My colleagues hear from me in those circumstances, and it
is obviously not satisfactory, and then it generates more PQs.
Q22 Mr Chope: If you had a longstop,
the questions would be deemed to be answered or they would have
to be answered?
Mr Straw: They would have to be
answered. It is like you have got to turn up on time if you are
minister. It is career stopping if you are not in the Chamber
when your business comes up. You get your P45 as you turn up because
you are late, and people never do it. It is very interesting.
Q23 Ms Barlow: You spoke of the ballooning
of written questions, being up some 30% in the last session. You
mentioned that there is a league table of MPs, that some table
more than others. Has the increase been across the board? Is everyone
tabling more, or is it the responsibility really of a minority
of MPs?
Mr Straw: I do not know. I have
not seen the full statistical analysis of this and what the distribution
curve looks like. What I do know from earlier data I saw in my
brief is that the top 20 account for 30%. It would follow from
that that a very significant part of the increase is accounted
for by the questioning of a relatively small proportion of Members,
but we must let you have the data. I will see if we can do a proper
distribution curve.
Q24 Ms Barlow: You have obviously
got some ideas of how to deal with this. You mentioned weak authentication.
Do you think that any answer perhaps should be aimed at, say,
the top 20 or the top 25, if they are really producing 30% of
the whole total, or would you feel that any solution should apply
across the board?
Mr Straw: Celia, the problem is
that, unless you have an upper limit, which for reasons I have
talked about I am reluctant to propose, you are going to get a
kind of normal distribution curve of Members. With a bit of luck
it is what you are going to get now. Like that. It is going to
be a bell curve, and some will be down here and some will be up
there and most will be around the middle. There you are; different
Members do the job differently. When I first came in as a young
Member anxious to make a name for himself, I put down lots of
PQs—I wrote them all myself—and I was very pleased
with myself on one occasion when I put down 20 questions to the
then Department of the Environment and thought I had caught the
Minister out, and then I put down 20 more over another week, did
catch the Minister out, and they got the answer wrong, and then
I was able to embarrass the Minister; so much so, I got a nice
story on the front page of the Guardian within a year of
coming in. Anyway, the Government deserved to be pulled up on
this, and that is making proper use of the system. I would not
have wished to have been constrained from doing my job. The interesting
thing is, if you look at the top 20, these are people who you
would put in the top 20 anyway for activity. They are not people
you have never heard of, except that they are putting in loads
of questions; they are busy, active Members; but I do think there
needs to be some constraint on them. One of the people I spoke
to yesterday admitted that they had gone in for industrial production
because they wanted to make—their words, not mine—a
point in respect of two departments, and they admitted that they
had told their researcher broadly the area of questions. They
had not signed the lot, each one of them, and that cannot be on.
Q25 Ms Barlow: You also mentioned
there was new and anecdotal evidence of the effects of websites
on this. Have you got any hard evidence?
Mr Straw: No, and it does not
affect me, because my tabling of Parliamentary questions is zero,
it has been for ten years, ditto EDMs. The evening paper that
circulates in my constituency circulates in six other constituencies,
and all the other colleagues are back benchers on both sides,
and you can see that some of them are sensitive on this sometimes.
Actually our local paper is pretty responsible, but people get
sensitive about this and, as you get up to an election and, opposite
candidates are selected, there will be people trying to attack
them. I would rather have information on their work from `theyworkforyou.com'
about people's activity levels than not, because there used to
be people in the House when I came in who were unbelievably slothful.
A busy constituency Member was one who went to their constituency
for one day a month. Plenty went to their constituencies every
six months and thought they were lucky to see them. There is a
famous story about Sir Hubert Ashton, the Member for Chelmsford,
who, when asked why they did not see him very often in Chelmsford
(it is not very far), said at an election meeting, "Sir,
I was elected to represent Chelmsford in Westminster, not Westminster
in Chelmsford." But he was busy on other things, and that
is how it was.
Q26 Sir Robert Smith: I think that
website, though, has made things maybe slightly less target-chasing
by removing numbers and putting in below average, average and
above average groupings, which may have altered people's perceptions?
Mr Straw: Yes.
Q27 Sir Robert Smith: We have touched
quite heavily on e-tabling and it is interesting how governments
change their views on new technology over time. In 2002 the Government's
submission to this Committee was quite enthusiastic about e-tabling
to the point of finding out how it would actually speed up the
whole process and improve answers because of the way there would
not have to be transposing of bits of paper, and it said, "The
benefit for parliamentary clerks and indeed Members would be great.
Draft replies could be commissioned more speedily, potentially
allowing a higher number of questions to be answered on time."
I am going to just touch again on authentication with another
question, but in that aspect, if you could get the hard authentication
sorted out, does the Government still support electronic tabling?
Mr Straw: I think it is going
to try and fulfil that expectation. As far as I know, but you
need to ask the officials, say in the Foreign Office, the questions
came across electronically and they sometimes went round to the
departments for draft answers, but they came to ministers in a
paper file. How else could one deal with it if you are around
the world; but even if you were in the Home Office and they came
to you on a paper file, you are doing them on the bench, you are
doing them in the car, you are doing them on the train, and so
on, so you had to have them in a paper file and, in any case,
just as everybody here finds that paper files are a lot easier
to handle, IT has actually generated more paper rather than less.
It is wonderful, but it is a supplement, and they are going to
be handled on paper. I perceive no difference in process at my
end, I still do not, between ten years ago when it was all paper
based and more recently when it is supposed to be IT.
Q28 Sir Robert Smith: The original
vision of the Government's submission was that a more expensive
system would be introduced, where the electronically tabled ones
would stay in an electronic format through the process.
Mr Straw: It will not work. Governments
rarely get things wrong, but they got that bit wrong.
Q29 Andrew Gwynne: The system for
e-tabling questions in theory, as we have already discussed, relies
on Members ensuring that their accounts are not used by unauthorised
people on their behalf, but (and I think you alluded to it in
your opening comments) there is evidence that e-tabling has made
abuse of the system easier. Do you believe, or have you got any
evidence, that a significant number of questions are not properly
authorised by a Member, and is this particularly true of e-tabling?
Mr Straw: You need to ask the
clerks that, because they are the people who receive questions,
not me. My understanding is that it is a mixed picture. As I say,
in some cases—. One of the people I spoke to, who had been
a very high tabler, told me (the Member concerned told me) that
they check every single question even though they put in many
hundreds, and I believed him as well. So, as I say, it is a mixed
question. On the unauthorised use of the account, my staff in
Blackburn are authorised to open my e-mails and to deal with them.
They have got their own e-mail accounts, but they can get into
my e-mail account. That is the point of having it. They open my
mail, physical mail, and so they are authorised, but the point
is where a system can distinguish my signature. They are not allowed
to forge my signature, my pen signature, ink signature, so how
does the system distinguish it—it cannot at the moment—were
they to put in a PQ electronically? That is the problem.
Q30 Sir Robert Smith: E-tabling is
what is in your account name with your password. Your office can
have access to your inbox without you giving them your password?
Mr Straw: I understand that.
Q31 Sir Robert Smith: So the authentication
of e-tabling is an electronic password that is only known to the
Member, unless the Member divulges it somehow, in the same way
as a written signature on a piece of paper can be signed before
or after that piece of paper is written?
Mr Straw: I understand that.
Q32 Sir Robert Smith: Many Members
in historic times anecdotally used to sign the whole question
pad and leave it in their office?
Mr Straw: I understand that, and
they did, but it just takes more time. It takes too long physically
to sign. We all know that. I know about these things too, and
there is no perfect system unless you insisted that people turn
up in the Table Office holding it up like going through Passport
Control.
Q33 Sir Robert Smith: It is important
to get on the record that a member has to divulge these things,
because the e-tabling system requires it to be through the Member's
account?
Mr Straw: I know, and that is
what they are doing.
Q34 John Hemming: There is a further
point that relates to these widgets here. RSA (which is Rivest,
Shamir and Adelman) in fact is a system of digital signatures,
and if you are not in the parliamentary network, and, oddly enough,
I am one of the few MPs in the office in the House of Commons
who is not on the parliamentary network, I have to go outside
and come back inside, but it is often more efficient at home if
you are using broadband and do not use the parliamentary network.
Mr Straw: I agree. Do I not know
that!
Q35 John Hemming: Then, when you
are using one of these physical things as well as the password,
you have a much, much stronger system of authentication. There
is a very substantial argument that if you are remote from Parliament,
this system of dual authentication is very strong, and you might
argue a case, if people continue divulging their personal password,
that they should have a system of dual authentication with what
is, in effect, a digital signature, which is what this is.
Mr Straw: John, that may be something
the Committee will wish to look at. I think everybody is agreed:
we need something to stop the abuse.
Q36 John Hemming: If I can agree
to disagree with you on the feasibility of a tracking system for
questions. In Birmingham we have forwarded questions to the council,
we have got tracking systems, and I am sure that Parliament can
follow Birmingham.
Mr Straw: They could do, it is
just that—
Q37 Andrew Gwynne: In your opening
comments, you made it very clear. You used the term, "It
is not acceptable for researchers and staff to table parliamentary
questions". I would agree with that, but let me play devil's
advocate for a short moment. How would you respond to the argument
that if a Member has confidence, like you mentioned about yours
in Blackburn opening your e-mails, there is no reason why Members
should not equally delegate, not just the writing on the parliamentary
questions but also tabling them?
Mr Straw: I would answer the question
by saying this is a personal responsibility and, therefore, personal
privilege of Members of Parliament. I would add, Andrew, however
good your researcher is, they cannot go into the Chamber in your
place, as has happened in some systems, let me tell you, and turn
up and vote or speak for you. This is a fundamental right and,
let me say, it is a really important right and means by which
Members hold ministers to account, and by God it works. If you
are a minister, you would make damn sure that difficult questions
are answered accurately and on time, for very obvious reasons.
In the Foreign Office, more so than in the Home Office, I got
lots of difficult questions on things like Iraq and rendition,
and I was extremely anxious that there was not a dot or a comma
that was inaccurate and to provide as much information as possible.
That was my responsibility, but, frankly, the whole system would
break down if you moved to the way in which some continental systems
operate where it has become a kind of pantomime. It needs to be
borne in mind that if you look at how other parts operate, if
you look how the European Parliament operates, they do not treat
PQs seriously. I have not changed my mind at all about the importance
of PQs in the ten years I have been a minister, except to regard
them as even more important in opposition, but if the system is
abused too much it will tip over.
Q38 John Hemming: So you are happy
to delegate the job of formally tabling to the Royal Mail but
not a researcher?
Mr Straw: John, if you stick it
in the post, on the whole, it has been authenticated by an ink
signature.
Q39 John Hemming: What you are saying
is that there should be an ink signature, which is fair enough.
The actual process of wandering around the building is a separate
thing.
Mr Straw: I am sure. I think getting
tabling personally would be a bit over the top. I want to see
just authentication. I think since the tabling has to be by the
Member, we need an assurance that the tabling is by the Member
and they have applied their brain to it. If you can achieve the
same with one of those little gadgets ... you cannot achieve it
just with the passwords because they get passed on.
Sir Robert Smith: Yes, but the Member
maybe should sign an undertaking in very clear terms that their
access to their electronic question account is on the basis that
they, and only they, will make that tabling?
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