Letter from Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP,
former Leader of the House of Commons (P36, 2009-10)
TABLING OF AMENDMENTS BY SELECT COMMITTEES
I am writing in response to the Procedure Committee's
Fifth Report of 2008-09 entitled Tabling of Amendments by Select
Committees (HC 1104), published on 10 November 2009.
I am grateful to the Committee for its Report. However,
there are two areas of the Committee's recommendation where I
believe that further consideration of the detail of the proposal
might assist the House in coming to a decision.
The Committee has rightly acknowledged the need to
protect committee members from being seen to support amendments
which they in fact oppose, by including a requirement that amendments
may be tabled in the name of a committee only if they are agreed
to unanimously at a quorate meeting. This is an issue that Chris
Bryant as Deputy Leader of the House raised in his letter to the
Committee of 2 June 2009.
However, this still places Members who were not present
at the meeting in a potentially difficult position, as they will
no doubt be assumed to support amendments tabled on behalf of
the committee and the onus will be on them to explain the situation
if they do not. This is of course equally true of recommendations
contained in reports, but they are accompanied by formal minutes
which record attendance and voting which go a long way to mitigating
this problem.
As you know, a select committee of 11 can be quorate
with only three Members present, including the chair who has only
a casting vote. There is a risk that decisions could be reached
which are contrary to the views of the majority of a committee's
members. I think some additional safeguards are needed in this
area. They might include, for example, a minimum notice period
or some kind of qualified quorum. I would welcome the Committee's
views.
Secondly, I believe that the Committee's recommendation
that, where orderly, amendments on behalf of select committees
should be accorded priority in terms of selection for decision
under programming, does not give sufficient guidance to the Chair.
It is not clear, for example, whether the Committee believes that
such amendments should be selected for separate decision even
if they were not reached for debate. I am concerned that a maximal
interpretation of the Committee's words might undermine the long-established
practice of the House in this regard. There is also a risk that
it could significantly increase the number of divisions when internal
knives fall, taking up time that might more usefully be spent
debating the next group of amendments.
I would be grateful if the Procedure Committee—or
the Liaison Committee if you felt it were more appropriate—could
give further consideration to these issues with a view to producing
more detailed proposals to be put to the House early in the next
Parliament.
I am copying this letter to the Chair of the Liaison
Committee and to the clerks of the Procedure Committee and the
Liaison Committee.
January 2010
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