5 Private Members' bills
Problems with private Members'
bill procedure
55. Dissatisfaction with the arrangements for the
consideration of private Members' business is longstanding. Our
predecessors considered the matter in 1995,[48]
and again in 2003,[49]
and the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons
also looked at private Members' bills during its consideration
of sitting hours in 2005.[50]
None of those reports resulted in any significant change to the
arrangements. Pressure for change has, however, continued to grow,
and a considerable number of Members urged us to take the opportunity
of this present inquiry to look at the issue again. Responding
to our consultation paper, Chris Bryant summed up the problems
with private Members' bills as follows:
The present system of private Members' bills is fundamentally
flawed. It is capricious in that it relies on a ballot for the
top places on Fridays and is dependent on Friday attendance. It
is whimsical as bills can fall simply because they have been talked
out on a Friday morning or because the bill before them in the
queue was talked out. It leaves too much control in the hands
of the government and the whips who decide both whether to allow
a committee stage for a bill that has passed through second reading
and who gets a ten minute rule bill slot. It is also nearly always
a nugatory exercise as out of the hundred or so bills commenced
every year barely a handful make it onto the statute book and
the vast majority lapse at the end of the parliamentary session.
Hours are wasted and resources are devoted to drafting and printing
bills that everyone knows are going nowhere.[51]
56. Dissatisfaction is based on the problem that
it is, critics say, too easy for a private Members' bill which
enjoys majority support in the House to be stymied by a very small
number of opponents. There are two, interlinked, reasons why that
is that case: first, the time allocated for private Members' business
is limited; second, by long practice enshrined in the standing
orders of the House, that time is given on a Friday, a day which
is generally devoted by Members to constituency business. What
this means in practice is that supporters of a particular private
Members' bill need to secure the attendance of at least 100 of
their colleagues in the House on a Friday to enable passage of
a "closure" motion to bring a debate to an end. Furthermore,
as was recently demonstrated in the case of the Daylight Saving
Bill, even this may not be sufficient to secure the passage of
a bill at later stages of scrutiny.
57. We have some sympathy with those who argue that
the public cannot understand how a small handful of Members can
frustrate the will of the majority in such a manner (although
it is worth noting that the Government whips sometimes orchestrate
the opposition to private Members' bills). After careful consideration,
however, we have concluded that this present report is not the
right place in which to make detailed recommendations about private
Members' bill procedure. The rules and practices affecting how
private Members' bills are considered are not straightforward
and are closely interlinked. The Leader of the House was right
to suggest that, as the Modernisation Committee's inquiry concluded,
it would be wrong for private Members' bill procedure to be altered
as by-product of recommendations on sitting hours.[52]
A comprehensive overhaul of the rules and procedures for private
Members' bills requires, in our opinion, a full dedicated inquiry.
We intend to carry out that
work shortly, with a view to making recommendations which could
be implemented from the 2013-14 session.
Moving consideration of private
Members' bills to an earlier weekday evening
58. There is nevertheless one important respect
in which reform of the way in which the House considers private
Members' bills is not merely a potential side effect of sitting
hours reform, but is crucially dependent upon it, and that is
the day of the Parliamentary week on which private Members' bills
are considered. The problems regarding private Members' bills
which Members have complained to us about are, as we have seen,
intimately bound up with the question of sitting hours, because
they are so closely connected with the ability and willingness
of Members to attend debates and votes in the House on the day
they are taken.
59. We have therefore given careful consideration
to the proposition of moving consideration of private Members'
bills from their current Friday slot in the parliamentary week
to a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evening. This option found
much support amongst Members who regard Fridays as an important
day on which to undertake constituency work, and who are reluctant
(or recognise the reluctance of colleagues) to forgo a day with
their constituents to secure the passage of a Bill which, because
of the nature of the rest of proceedings on private Members' bills,
is unlikely ever to become law.
60. There are two main arguments against this reform.
The first is that increased attendance of Members for votes on
private Members' bills would cut both ways.[53]
Whilst under current procedures the difficulty of ensuring attendance
enables a small number of Members to block passage of a Bill,
at the same time it also shields bills—at least those for
which debating time is available—from too much attention
from the whips. Whilst it is true that no private Members' bill
is likely to become law without at least tacit support from Government,
a determined and well-supported Member can pilot a piece of legislation
through the House by the private Members' route under current
procedures where, if it were whipped business, it would be likely
to be crushed by a Government majority at an early stage. A move
to an earlier weekday evening would, we foresee, be likely to
cause a substantial change in the whole nature of private Members'
business, taking control largely out of the hands of private Members
and into those of the whips. We note that our predecessors on
the Modernisation Committee, considering this issue in 2005, reached
a similar conclusion.[54]
61. The second argument made against a change to
a weekday evening for private Members' bills is that it would
run counter to the whole thrust of recent sitting hours reforms,
which has been to reduce late-night sittings. Especially when
considered alongside the reason adduced above—that private
Members' bills taken at a time when all Members could expect to
be present would thereby be likely to become whipped business—it
is apparent that the House would be creating a day of business
in the Chamber lasting some eleven hours, potentially finishing
at 10.30 pm or later. As both the House's trade unions and the
Clerk as Chief Executive of the House Service told us, such a
change would also have adverse consequences for the staffing of
the House (where many of those involved in the later sitting would
also be required early the next day, breaking legal working time
limits) and probably additional expenditure.[55]
In particular, a move to a Tuesday or Wednesday evening would
have knock-on effects affecting earlier sittings on the following
day. It is not apparent to us that such reform would be conducive
to the effective working either of the House or of individual
Members.
62. These arguments
apply with less force to a move to Thursday evenings than to a
move to Tuesday or Wednesday, particularly if the House were to
accept our proposition that it meet an hour earlier on Thursdays.
A three-hour sitting on Thursday evenings, following the conclusion
of the main business at around 5.30 pm, would allow Members to
attend debates on private Members' bills without having to forgo
vital time in their constituencies on a Friday; the business would
normally be completed by around 8.30 pm, without resulting in
a late-night sitting, and without requiring House staff to return
the following day after a long Chamber sitting. Since those who
do not have a direct interest in the business being considered
on any particular private Member's bill debate would be likely
to return to their constituencies following the end of the main
business on a Thursday, the arguments concerning the transfer
of control to the whips would be less likely to apply.
PROCEDURAL CONSEQUENCES
63. The practical consequences of a move away from
Fridays which we have set out above are perhaps the paramount
consideration for Members; but in coming to a decision about whether
private Members' bills should be moved away from Fridays the House
should be aware that there would also be procedural consequences.
The most important and most evident of those is that on a Friday,
debate on private Members' bills continues for five hours. A five-hour
debate following the end of main business on a Tuesday, Wednesday
or Thursday would be impractical. Three hours is the longest that
we consider could reasonably be allocated to debate starting at
that time. This has significant consequences for the allocation
of time for debate. For example, under current arrangements experience
has shown that a closure motion is likely to be accepted by the
Chair after around four to four and a half hours on second reading
of a private Members' bill, i.e. a full, or near a full, day's
debate. Would a three-hour sitting be adequate time to complete
a debate on second reading of a private Member's bill? If it was
not, would it be appropriate for a bill which does not clear its
second reading in three hours to go to the "back of the queue"
for debate on a future day, as at present? Similarly, would it
be right for a bill which does not clear a later stage of scrutiny—consideration
or third reading—in one three-hour sitting to go to the
back of the queue?
64. Consideration also needs to be given to what
total amount of time to allocate to debate on private Members'
bills. At present, PMBs are considered for around five hours on
thirteen Fridays each session, giving a total of around 65 hours'
consideration. That would translate to 22 three-hour sittings
on an earlier weekday evening, per session. We would not expect
any less time than at present to be allocated to consideration
of private Members' bills, but should there in fact be more? Should
PMBs be considered only at 22 evening sittings per session, giving
roughly the same amount of time as at present, or at a three-hour
evening sitting every sitting week?
65. These questions need careful consideration which
we have not been able to give them in this inquiry. Indeed we
have not considered it appropriate to do so in the absence of
a clear indication from the House itself of whether it would be
willing to contemplate a move away from Fridays on to an earlier
weekday evening for the consideration of private Members' bills.
For that reason, our recommendation
is that the House be invited to consider whether, subject to further
inquiry by this Committee into the procedural and other consequences,
it would prefer to leave consideration of private Members' bills
on a Friday or to move them to an earlier weekday evening.
We propose that the House be invited to indicate its preference
by voting on a motion on the following lines:
That this House believes that the option of moving
debate on private Members' bills from Fridays to a Tuesday, Wednesday
or Thursday evening merits further consideration; and invites
the Procedure Committee to examine and report further on the consequences
of such a move as part of its forthcoming inquiry into private
Members' bills.
Our proposal of this motion does not indicate that
we are expressing a preference either for or against such a move,
merely that we wish to proceed on the basis of a clear steer from
the House itself on whether that is the direction in which it
wishes to go.
48 Fifth Report of Session 1994-95, Private Members'
Bills, HC 38. Back
49
Fourth Report of Session 2002-03, Procedures for Debates, Private
Members' Bills and the Powers of the Speaker, HC 333. Back
50
First Report of the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House
of Commons, Session 2004-05, Sitting Hours, HC 88. Back
51
Ev w61-2 Back
52
Ev w58 , referring to HC (2004-05) 88, para 12. Back
53
Ev w58, Q 286 Back
54
HC (2004-05) 88 , para 15 Back
55
Q 156, Q 197, Q 212, Ev w54-55 Back
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