SUBSTANTIVE
RESPONSES FROM
MEMBERS
Rt Hon Sir Gerald Kaufman MP
My answer to the first question is no, so there
are no consequential points I need to make except that eternal
warning to politicians: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
February 2010
Rob Marris MP
1. Yes, all ministers in the Lords (ie not
just Secretaries of State) but see 2 (infra).
2. Westminster Hall.
3. Questions and debates.
February 2010
Dr Phyllis Starkey MP
1. Yes, they should be directly answerable
in the same way as other Secretaries of State.
2. I would want them to be part of the ministerial
team at the normal Oral Questions sessions and presenting statements.
So in the Chamber.
3. Not sure about debates but definitely
statements and questions.
February 2010
Mr Brian H Donohoe MP
1. Yes and they are willing. As Parliamentary
Private Secretary to Lord Adonis I know he is.
2. In the Chamber.
3. Both
February 2010
Nick Harvey MP
Ministers in either House should answer questions
and make statements in the other—in the Chambers in both
cases.
This could be extended to cover debates but
it would be preferable for that to be conducted exclusively by
the Members of the House in question.
February 2010
Adam Afriyie MP
The following response is made in a personal
capacity as food for thought:
— Do you think that Secretaries of State
in the House of Lords should be more directly accountable to the
House of Commons?
— If so, do you think that such scrutiny
should take place in the Chamber, Westminster Hall or another
forum?
Other forum. In my personal view, without a great
deal of debate and consideration by Parliament, it would be unwise
to "confuse" the separation and delineation of the Lords
and Commons and their functions for a quick fix of this nature.
Indeed, I would argue strongly that it's perfectly acceptable
for ministers and Secretaries of State in the Lords to be answerable
through the Prime Minister, in the Commons, who is ultimately
accountable for the decisions of the unelected representatives
he appoints. It'd give the PM a lot more work to do, but that
would be the consequence of making an appointment in the Lords.
Clearly there is a strong argument for more/very regular select
committee appearances by ministers in the Lords—perhaps
long sessions on weekly/biweekly basis; and there might be a case
for a "special" committee solely for that purpose.
— Should such scrutiny take the form
of questions or also include debates?
My personal view it that it would work better
if it were restricted to questions, with perhaps a little more
latitude for follow-up questions for closer examination of answers.
Ideally the session would be a long one. But I am yet to be convinced
that we should seek to treat Lord's ministers in the same manner
as Commons ministers.
One final suggestion would be to "limit"
the number of Lords ministers, given the number of recent appointments.
Maybe a maximum of two Secretary's of State and three ministers—but
clearly the precise limit would need to be debated.
February 2010
Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP
I would like to see Lords Secretaries of State
more accountable.
Questions and debates in Westminster Hall should
be the usual forum. I would not exclude a Secretary of State in
the Lords being invited by the Commons to speak from the despatch
box in the Commons chamber on an exceptional occasion. For example
Lord Carrington could have been invited to speak in the debate
on the Falklands in the immediate aftermath of the Argentine invasion.
February 2010
Steve McCabe MP
I am in favour of Lords ministers being more
accountable but I think they shouldn't speak in the Chamber of
the House. I am also slightly doubtful about using Westminster
Hall. I think we should organise question sessions in a committee
room.
Mr Graham Brady MP
— Do you think that Secretaries of State
in the House of Lords should be more directly accountable to the
House of Commons?
Yes. (In fact I would go further and suggest
that Secretaries of State need not be members of either House.)
— If so, do you think that such scrutiny
should take place in the Chamber, Westminster Hall or another
forum?
Perhaps we could find a way of bringing them
to the bar of the House. This would help to emphasise the fact
that both sides of the House are meant to scrutinise Government.
— Should such scrutiny take the form
of questions or also include debates?
Questions are most important, but there is no
reason why they shouldn't also open debates too.
February 2010
Ms Gisela Stuart MP
Ministers should be held to account in the House
in which they sit. Blurring lines simply undermines the institutions
and the role they are supposed to have under the British Constitution.
We already allow Prime Ministers to chose their
Ministers by appointing them to the Lords without them having
to seek an electoral mandate—and rewarding them with life
peerages for sometimes very short periods of service. By bringing
them into the Commons, we blur lines even more.
If we do want to move to a Presidential system
where ministers are drawn from outside Parliament, then let's
have proper separation of power.
I do think it is worth asking why this question
arises in the first place. It used to be accepted that a government
had to have ministers in the Lords to get it's business through.
The current question arises because it is perceived that some
of the politically more powerful ministers are in the Lords and
not the Commons. Maybe we should ask ourselves why have the elected
Commons been so weakened over the years that a Prime Minister
feels the need to draw on appointed members of the other place.
February 2010
Sir Patrick Cormack MP
I would favour a session in Westminster Hall,
or in Committee Room 14 once every parliamentary "term"
in other words three times a year when Cabinet Ministers in the
Lords could answer questions from colleagues in the Commons. In
my view it would not be appropriate for Ministers in the Lords
to appear in the Chamber of the Commons.
Each Cabinet Minister should be subject to up
to an hour's questioning and questions should be tabled in advance.
I do not see the need for non Cabinet Ministers in the Lords to
take part in this exercise.
February 2010
Rt Hon Denis MacShane MP
I do not welcome a return to the era of Trollope.
I think the norm should be that Secretaries of State should be
in the Commons. If we move to eliding the two Houses we will lose
the twentieth century concept that ministers are accountable to
elected MPs not just at question times or debates but because
they share the same rights, responsibilities, duties and connection
to the electorate that all MPs have. If this change is implemented
nothing can stop a future PM stuffing his government with cronies
he can appoint to the Lords as the argument will be advanced they
can answer questions from the Commons and therefore are the same
as MP Ministers.
If we want to move to a new constitutional settlement
with a full separation of powers and the Commons becoming just
a legislature and no longer where the executive comes from then
so be it. But that will mean either the Commons becomes relatively
powerless like the French National Assembly or it has to have
real powers of initiating legislation like the US Congress. I
fear these ideas which originate from the Executive are more likely
to lead to the Commons becoming increasingly like the National
Assembly in France and other relatively impotent parliaments.
The proposal to allow Lords ministers to be
questioned in Westminster Hall or wherever is purely tokenistic.
But it will further weaken the status of the Commons if there
are more and more members of the executive who are appointed not
elected with the cover that they can be questioned by MPs. Select
Committees can call Lords ministers to give evidence and hold
them to account.
Most of the external Lords appointments under
successive governments have been unhappy with ex-MPs usually being
the more competent Lords ministers.
It was different in Trollope's era as being
a Lords politician was full-time and for much of the nineteenth
century the Lords was the house of parliament which held the executive
to account, especially on foreign policy (Castlereagh, Derby,
Aberdeen. Palmerston, Salisbury etc). But in the twentieth century
this changed. Mr Churchill remained a Mr not a Lord. I am worried
that under the heading of seeking more accountability we can,
if these proposals are advanced, accelerate the process of reducing
the centrality of the elected Commons at the expense of the unelected
and appointed Lords. If that constitutional change is desirable
then it should be openly debated and decided upon not quietly
introduced by the back-door as your three proposals suggest.
February 2010
Dr Brian Iddon MP
In answer to your question as to whether Secretaries
of State who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to
the House of Commons the answer is yes, I believe that they should.
However, if accountability is to be in the House
of Commons Chamber it should be outside the present sitting hours.
Alternatively, I would accept that Westminster Hall would be a
suitable venue.
Putting questions to the relevant Secretary
of State would be acceptable to me.
February 2010
Rt Hon George Howarth MP
I am of the opinion that scrutiny and accountability
should be carried out through Select Committees and, rather than
revising the procedures for the Chamber of Westminster Hall, Select
Committee practices should be modified so that those who are not
actually members of the relevant Select Committees, can take part
in a section of the proceedings.
February 2010
Lindsay Roy MP
As a relative newcomer to the House of Commons,
I believe that the current system of accountability is "fit
for purpose" in that a Minister of State represents the Secretary
of State (if in the Lords) in the House of Commons.
Teamwork is vital in any department and it is
appropriate in my view that a Minister of State, (a senior position)
carriers out this function. There is ample opportunity for scrutiny.
February 2010
Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP
I am not in favour of Ministers in the Lords
being more accountable to the House of Commons.
I believe that Ministers should principally
be drawn from the Commons, with the exception in general of one
junior Minister per department, to handle Lords business. I regard
the recent expansion of Ministerial appointments in the Lords
as bad for Government and bad for democracy. I see little or no
evidence that the appointment of so many Ministers of All Talents
since 2007 has improved the quality of Ministers and the
quality of Ministerial decisions. This is not a comment on the
talents of some of the individuals but, on balance, I think that
the overall contribution is negative, particularly from the large
number of new junior ministers in the Lords.
The democratic benefit of Ministers being Members
of the Commons is that they are not only directly accountable
to Parliament in a much wider way than just the set-piece occasions,
such as Questions, but that they are accountable as legislation
is considered and as other debates take place. Moreover they are
accountable on a regular and continuous basis to their constituents,
which Lords are not. The higher the number of Ministers in the
Lords, the lower the power and influence of backbench MPs, and
their constituents.
I am therefore not in favour of encouraging
more Ministerial appointments in the Lords. I believe that the
legitimation of accountability to the Commons would encourage
this and so I oppose more accountability.
I hope that if there were to be any proposals
for change they would be presented to the Commons for formal debate
and agreement, on a free vote.
February 2010
Rt Hon Sir Alan Beith MP
My view is that Secretaries of State in the
Lords should be required to answer to the Commons in the Chamber;
my priority would be to provide for questions, but I see no reason
why debate opportunities should not also be created.
February 2010
Hugh Bayley MP
1. Secretaries of State in the House of
Lords should come to the bar of the House of Commons when their
department is answering oral questions and should be able to respond
to questions from one of the cross-benches behind the bar.
2. I do not think they should be able to
take part in debates in the House of Commons.
3. I believe we should legislate to limit
the number of Cabinet ministers drawn from the House of Lords—say
to two: the Leader of the House of Lords and one other.
February 2010
Rt Hon David Heathcoat-Amory MP
I do not believe that Secretaries of State in
the House of Lords should be directly accountable to the House
of Commons, beyond the existing opportunities for committees of
the House to question Lords' ministers. To do so would legitimise
and encourage the appointment of more ministers in the Lords.
There is already a regrettable tendency for
Prime Ministers to appoint increasing numbers of outsiders to
senior government positions without them having to undertake the
fatigue of getting elected. This expands the "quango state"
in which more and more decisions are taken by unelected people.
This also expands the size of the upper, unelected
House at a time when the lower, elected House is likely to be
reduced in size (this being a probable Conservative Party election
promise).
The two Houses should remain separate, and ministers
should remain primarily accountable to the House in which they
sit. There should be a strong presumption that Secretaries of
State should be in the House of Commons. A move to give Lords'
ministers audience rights in the House of Commons will undermine
this.
February 2010
Rt Hon Sir George Young MP, Shadow Leader of the
House
Background
1. The Conservative Party believes that
there are arguments for strengthening the lines of accountability
for ministers who serve in the Lords to the House of Commons.
2. This follows a growing trend in recent
years to appoint ministers from outside the elected legislature.
Since July 2007, ten individuals have been awarded peerages so
that they can function as ministers, including two secretaries
of state: Lord Mandelson and Lord Adonis.
3. While there is nothing new in secretaries
of state sitting in the Upper House (there have now been nine
in total since 1979), it is unusual for departments to be accountable
to Members only through junior ministers. Under Conservative governments,
there has typically been another minister of Cabinet rank who
handles departmental business in the Commons. For example, during
Margaret Thatcher's Government, Ian Gilmour covered for Lord Carrington
as Foreign Secretary; when Lord Young was secretary of state for
Trade and Industry, there were two subsequent Ministers of Cabinet
rank in the Commons (Kenneth Clarke and Tony Newton).
4. Conservatives first raised concerns about
this potential accountability gap to the Business Select Committee
when Lord Mandelson was brought back into Government in October
2008. In their 14th Report of Session 2007-08, the Committee noted
that, "a mechanism for parliamentary questions to the Secretary
of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform [would
be] best taken forward by the Procedure Committee".[1]
Our view
5. We are pleased that this inquiry is now
underway, regardless of the procedure that has recently been introduced
in the House of Lords to allow for oral questions to departmental
ministers.
6. We note that there is a growing demand
that Lords ministers ought to be more accountable to the Commons.
This has been publicly supported on several occasions by Lord
Mandelson and Lord Adonis and has been reportedly backed by the
Prime Minister, as well as Mr Speaker.
7. My view is that Westminster Hall is the
best place to experiment with new procedures of this sort. Where
responsibility for a particular issue—for example the Child
Support Agency—rests with a Departmental minister in the
Lords (as was the case with Baroness Hollis), that minister should
reply to the debate.
8. This would ensure that the debate was
better informed than if another Minister, not as familiar with
the subject, replied. In the light of this experience, the House
should then decide whether further integration should take place.
9. At this stage, I would not advocate appearances
in the Chamber of Lords Ministers. As the shadow Business Secretary
Kenneth Clarke has said: "Only a Commons minister should
have the privilege of being able to take part in the proceedings
of the House of Commons".[2]
February 2010
Mr Andrew Tyrie MP
The accountability of Secretaries of State in
the House of Lords should be restricted to cross-examination by
Select Committees.
The appointment of Ministers who have not been
elected should be heavily curtailed in the absence of democratic
reform of the second chamber. After democratic reform the complete
removal of the Executive from the second chamber should be considered,
leaving elected Commons' ministers with responsibility for accounting
for the Executive in the second chamber.
February 2010
Office of Rt Hon Dr Gavin Strang MP
Gavin Strang has asked me to write and thank
you for the email of 9 February—he would have liked
to have replied sooner. He is strongly opposed to the proposition
behind the three points raised, and answers as follows:
"Lords Secretaries of State" are regularly
summoned before the appropriate departmental Select Committees.
This is a very important forum for interrogating Ministers on
Government policy. If they are not regularly called, then that
is a reflection of the fact that the Committee in question sees
no need to do so because of other priorities. This procedure does
provide full accountability.
Gavin Strang finds it remarkable that the Speaker
and the Committee should be considering the admission of Peers
(whether appointed or hereditary) to the floor of the House of
Commons, since the most important democratic feature of the House
of Commons is the fact that all its Members, including the Speaker
himself, are democratically elected by the people of the UK. As
far as Westminster Hall is concerned, he suggests that this, if
granted, would be suspected by some as being a first step in the
process of introducing Ministerial Peers to the floor of the House
of Commons.
On the question of scrutiny by questions or debate,
questions from members of a Select Committee are more meaningful
and effective as a general rule. If something is worthy of debate,
then the Upper House can be relied on to have the debate—in
which, of course, the Lords Secretary of State would be expected
to speak.
February 2010
Mr Bernard Jenkin MP
— Do you think that Secretaries of State
in the House of Lords should be more directly accountable to the
House of Commons?
Yes: they should answer questions from the Bar
of the House.
— If so, do you think that such scrutiny
should take place in the Chamber, Westminster Hall or another
forum?
See above: and from similar position in Westminster
Hall.
— Should such scrutiny take the form
of questions or also include debates?
February 2010
Glenda Jackson MP
1. Yes.
2. Westminster Hall or one of the large
rooms in Portcullis House, not the Chamber.
3. Questions and statements. Debates if
major Government proposals are being launched, Green and White
papers etc... the Commons should be capable of responding to noble
Secretaries of State, as we now do to the merely elected.
March 2010
1 Departmental Annual Report and Scrutiny of the
Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform:
Fourteenth Report of Session, 2007-08, HC 1116 Back
2
As reported in The Times, 11 November 2009 Back
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