Examination of Witnesses (Questions 152
- 159)
TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2009
SIR JOHN
MAJOR KG, CH, ACIB
Q152 Chairman:
We will make a start and extend a very warm welcome to Sir John
Major. It is very kind of you to come and give evidence to us.
You have on the two previous occasions we have asked you come
and given evidence to us which we appreciate very much indeed.
We particularly wanted you to come for this inquiry because we
have had no one in front of us who has formed a government, although
we have been talking about issues related to that, and I think
we would like the perspective that you bring to it. We were particularly
taken by an article that you and Douglas Hurd wrote in The
Times back in June, where you said some rather exciting things
and called for what you described as a "more adventurous
experiment", so we want to hear about this. I think you are
going to say something by way of introduction?
Sir John Major:
Thank you, Chairman, thank you for inviting me. Very briefly,
I would like to say a few words before answering the Committee's
questions, simply perhaps to put in context what I may say in
answer to your questions later. I spent 22 years in the Commons
and latterly another eight years observing it from outside, and
if I may say so I am pretty dismayed at the disregard in which
politics is held today and the way in which politics often seems
to malfunction. I think this can be put right and I think it needs
to be put right. Part of the remedy is reforms to make the Commons
more efficient and better regarded. I think, for example, it would
benefit from a wider and more experienced membership. I think
we need to make the Commons more attractive by offering an alternative
career structure to simply being a minister. I think for far too
many members at the moment, backbench life, particularly in opposition,
can be fairly fruitless and hardly uses their talents. Our system
also throws up freakish government majorities which bear very
little relationship to the voting pattern of the electorate at
large. I think to address these over-mighty governments, Parliament
needs more weapons to challenge the executive, most obviously
I think through the select committee system. I think there are
other reforms which are needed. In my view, the Commons has too
many members, certainly the Government has too many ministers,
the payroll vote is too dominant and Standing Orders are often
too restrictive. I think this inquiry is very important. Outside
Members are only one part of the kaleidoscope of necessary reform
but I think the right new Members can inject experience and wisdom
to government; but of course if we can widen the experience, quality
and talent of future intakes in the Commons, we of course will
need fewer external ministers of any sort. I think with that very
broad introduction, Chairman, I am more than happy to turn to
the Committee's questions.
Q153 Chairman:
Thank you very much. There is enough there to get our teeth into.
When we had Jonathan Powell in front of us the other day, who
ran of course Number 10 under Tony Blair, he said, "In Europe,
in pretty much all continental Europe, and the US, your gene pool
from which you can choose is the entire country to be ministers,
whereas here we have 300-odd MPs on the government benches from
which you can choose." Everyone who has spoken to us has
spoken of this diminishing gene pool as a constraint in government-forming.
Did you find that when you were making a government?
Sir John Major: I did. I think
it is not just the gene pool in the Commons, but the longer the
government's life exists, the more people have passed through
being a minister, are no longer a minister, are unlikely to come
back and the gene pool correspondingly reduces. When you have
been there for 18 years or perhaps even 13 years, the number of
people in the Commons who have passed through ministerial experience
is significant, and the number of people available for the Prime
Minister to select future ministers is correspondingly reduced.
So I think there are the two aspects. Plainly, it would be desirable
if we had a wider and more experienced intake into Parliament
as a whole and specifically into the Commons, but also there is
the secondary problem that with long-lived governments the gene
pool automatically shrinks.
Q154 Chairman:
So presumably you feel well disposed towards Gordon Brown's experiment
of a government of all the talents?
Sir John Major: I do, yes, I do.
I think the idea of bringing in some people from outside is a
very attractive idea. I do not think it should be over-done, and
plainly some of those brought in are going to be a success, have
been a success I think, and others perhaps less so, but that is
true of all ministers and all political careers. So I have no
objection to it, I think it is the right thing to do and I can
quite see after many years in government why the Prime Minister
is attracted to bringing people in. I think that is the right
thing to do although it does raise some obvious questions of accountability
and other matters which I have no doubt we will come to.
Q155 Chairman:
As Prime Minister, is not your self-interest to get as many people
as possible on the payroll, because that is the basic control
mechanism of government, is it not?
Sir John Major: Well, it ought
not to be. The payroll is too big and ought to be reduced. I think
there are some fairly evident reforms which could be made to Standing
Orders, should be made to Standing Orders, which will enable the
payroll vote to be significantly reduced. Let me offer you several
thoughts about that. Firstly, I see no reason whatsoever why we
should not change Standing Orders in the Lords and Standing Orders
in the Commons so that senior ministers may appear in both Houses,
speak in both Houses, answer questions in both Houses, but only
vote in the House to which they are a member. If you did that
you would automatically diminish the number of duplicated ministers
which are at present necessary to make sure that both Houses have
a proper representation. It is fairly insulting in some ways to
the House of Lords to have a Cabinet minister, or even a minister
of state, in the Commons who actually is responsible for legislation
pass on a second-hand brief to a junior minister in the Lords
who then has to address the Lords, having mugged it up the night
before he makes his speech. I do not think that is good government.
If you made that reform you could significantly reduce the number
of junior ministers, I am not quite sure how much but I think
you could certainly reduce the overall size of government by between
a quarter and a third. The second change I think which is necessary
to diminish the payroll vote, the size of which is a constitutional
outrage, would be to restrict parliamentary private secretaries
to senior ministers and not have a parliamentary private secretary
to every minister, whatever his responsibilities however senior
or however lowly. Personally, I would restrict PPSs to Cabinet
ministers. I think if you did that, you could significantly reduce
the size of the payroll vote. In terms of democratic accountability
in the Commons, I think that would be very attractive. The counterpoint
is, if you are doing that, I do think you have to open alternative
opportunities for Members and an alternative career path for Members,
and I think there are ways in which you can do that.
Q156 Chairman:
Finally on one of those points, if you simply reduce the number
of Members of Parliament, which is what the Conservative proposal
is at the moment, that would make the problem worse rather than
better, would it not, because you would have diminished the gene
pool even further and the balance between the payroll and the
rest of the numbers would be even worse?
Sir John Major: That rather depends
on how much you reduce the payroll. The overall size of the Commons
has drifted upwards over recent years with each successive Boundary
Commission—I think it is too high at the moment—and
if you did reduce the size of the Commons, maybe you would attract
a higher quality of future aspirants to be there. You are quite
right, of course, if you diminish the size of the Commons and
do not reduce the size of the Government, then you alter that
equation. At the moment, in a government party broadly you have
a 1:4 chance of being a minister at any time, and that is much
too high a proportion, I think, not least because it diminishes
the accountability of the Government to the Commons for precisely
the reason you raise, the sheer size of the payroll vote.
Chairman: I am sure we will come back
to that.
Q157 Mr Prentice:
My first question I suppose is, did you always appoint ministers
on merit or were there other considerations?
Sir John Major: There were other
considerations. Of course merit was the first consideration but
there were other considerations as well, and they may vary dependent
upon the size of the majority you have. I had, as you will well
recall, Gordon, a very tiny majority, at times effectively we
were a minority government, and it was necessary to keep a political
balance within the party, so I had to look at a political balance
as well as straightforward merit. To take matters to absurdity,
you might on pure merit have had all the merit on one particular
philosophical part of your party but it would have been absurd
to appoint every minister from that part; you simply could not
have carried on a government that way. So merit is the first point
but I think you need a proper balance in Parliament of ministers
as well.
Q158 Mr Prentice:
But all this talk about appointing on competence is just moonshine,
is it not, because the reality of politics meant that you and
your predecessors would very often appoint `one of us', a political
soul mate rather than a member of the opposition in the party,
one of the "bastards", to quote.
Sir John Major: Hardly a soul
mate.
Q159 Mr Prentice:
I am just wondering if the politics of it all crowds out and makes
redundant this noble idea of bringing into government people who
stand head and shoulders above their colleagues and are super-competent.
Sir John Major: I do not think
it is quite as clear cut as that. Self-evidently, for the reason
you yourself alluded to, I did not appoint solely people who were
entirely philosophically congenial; my life might have been a
good deal easier had I chosen to do so but I chose to strike a
wider balance. I think your point would be absolutely right if
you over-did the number of external appointments, but I think
it is desirable to bring in people who have a particular talent
to government where there is a shortfall in that talent in the
Commons. If you compare the House of Commons today with, say,
30, 40 years ago, where are the businessmen, the farmers, the
soldiers? There is a different structure. Politics has changed,
not just in one party but in all parties, it has changed, and
I do not disparage the role of someone who is a professional politician
at all, it is the question of whether you have the right mixture
in the House of Commons. That is why I am keen to see a wider
and sometimes more experienced spread of intake. Sometimes it
is desirable to bring in people who have a particular gift to
government, either in the Commons, which is much more difficult
to do, or indeed in the Lords in the way the present Prime Minister
has done.
Mr Prentice: The present Prime Minister
brought in Alan Sugar who has huge business experience, and we
read in the Telegraph yesterday, that Alan Sugar might
quit as Enterprise Tsar. He said, "Too much negative stuff
is really unhelpful. I may decide it is simply not worth it when
you are giving your time free of charge for no agenda. What am
I going to get out of it?"
Mr Walker: A peerage.
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