Conclusions and recommendations
A House protocol
1. We
do not believe that it is practical or desirable to produce a
detailed protocol that would cover all possible situations in
which a Minister should make a statement. We recommend instead
that the House agrees a resolution in which it sets out in broad
terms the behaviour expected of Ministers. We propose the following:
That this House expects Ministers to make all important
announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before
they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting
and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements
not to be released to the press before such a statement is made
to Parliament. (Paragraph 17)
Enforcing the protocol
2. We
recommend that allegations by Members that the House protocol
has been breached be made first to the Speaker for his judgment.
If he determined that the complaint was without basis or trivial,
it would be open to him to dismiss it. In cases where it was clear
that a minor breach had occurred, he could take appropriate steps,
such as allowing an Urgent Question on the subject or making a
statement on his findings. In more serious or more complex cases,
he would refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges
for further investigation. We would hope that the Committee would
choose to take evidence in public as part of its inquiries into
such cases. (Paragraph 30)
Sanctions
3.
We believe that a recommendation from a Committee of the House
that a Minister should make a formal apology on the Floor of the
House is a serious and effective penalty. It would, of course,
also be open to the Committee to recommend that such an apology
should be made at a time when the House would be well-attended;
for example, after Questions on a Wednesday. In particularly
serious cases, the moving of a motion of censure on the Floor
of the House would be an even more severe sanction. We feel that
these options are appropriate and likely to be sufficient by way
of both penalty and deterrent.
(Paragraph 34)
Changes to Urgent Questions
4.
Urgent Questions clearly have a role to play in encouraging Ministers
to provide information to the House. We believe that this role
could be enhanced still further. We recommend that, in certain
limited circumstances, Members should have a second opportunity
during the sitting day to apply to ask an Urgent Question, but
only where information becomes known during the day that was not
available before the initial deadline. This deadline should fall
at 7 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, 4 pm on Wednesdays, 3 pm on Thursdays
and 12 noon on sitting Fridays. The Urgent Question—if granted—should
be asked at the moment of interruption. In cases where an Urgent
Question to be asked at the moment of interruption has been granted
but the House rises early, the Question should stand over until
the following sitting day. We would expect this measure to be
used only in exceptional cases.
(Paragraph 39)
Length of time spent on statements
5.
It is our view that the Chair is best placed to determine the
appropriate length of time to be spent on a statement. We therefore
reject the Government's proposals for time limits on almost all
statements and for a category of time-limited statements for "less
significant issues". We do, however, reiterate the proposal
made by the Modernisation Committee and endorsed by the House
that the opening ministerial statement and subsequent Opposition
frontbench contribution should, in most cases, not exceed ten
and five minutes respectively.
(Paragraph 50)
Notice of oral statements
6.
We recognise that notice is routinely given on the order paper
of predictable statements, such as reports from international
conferences. We accept that some statements relate to unpredictable
events, and that little notice can be given in such circumstances.
In other cases, however, we believe that the Government could
greatly assist Members by giving much greater notice of forthcoming
statements than it does at present. We urge the Government to
make every effort to give notice as early as possible of any oral
statement it intends to make to Parliament. (Paragraph 62)
Written ministerial statements
7.
It is for the Government to decide whether a particular announcement
is to be made by means of a written or an oral statement, but,
in some cases, an announcement made by means of a written ministerial
statement is significant enough to deserve parliamentary scrutiny.
In such cases, there should be a mechanism for backbenchers to
question a Minister on the statement. We recommend that the half
hour between 11 am and 11.30 am on a Wednesday in Westminster
Hall should be available for oral questions without notice on
a written statement made in the previous week. We would not expect
the Minister to read out the text of the statement. Applications
for this time should be made to the Speaker in the same way as
applications for adjournment debates and, where the Speaker and
the Chairman of Ways and Means judge that a case has been made,
the Chairman of Ways and Means should appoint oral questions on
that statement as the business for the specified time. We recommend
that this procedure be introduced on a experimental basis until
the end of the Session. We will conduct a review of its effectiveness
at that time.
(Paragraph 68)
8. We believe that
neither the removal of the requirement to give notice of written
ministerial statements nor the making of such statements at 7
am would be in the interests of the House and its backbenchers.
We therefore recommend that the earliest time at which written
ministerial statements are released remain 9.30 am and that the
requirement to give notice of such statements be retained. We
accept that there is a difficulty on non-sitting Fridays and we
recommend that the Government be able to give notice on a non-sitting
Friday, between the hours of 11 am and 3 pm, of its intention
to make a written statement on the following sitting day. We urge
the Government to make every effort to give notice as early as
possible of its intention to make a written statement. (Paragraph
73)
9. It is sometimes
difficult for Members to know that a written ministerial statement
has been made. We recommend that written ministerial statements
be published on the Parliamentary website and that an RSS feed
be provided so that Members who so choose can be alerted to their
publication.
(Paragraph 77)
| 
