6 Other opportunities
66. In our consultation document, we raised three
further issues which we said we wanted to consider further in
the course of this inquiry. They were:
- ways to ameliorate the dissatisfaction
with the number of amendments which fail ever to be discussed
as a consequence of programming;
- the use of "injury time" (for example,
when government statements reduce the time available for a subsequent
debate); and
- further use of Westminster Hall for some backbench
business.
Programming
67. The Leader of the House responded concerning
programming as follows:
I would urge the Committee not to treat complaints
about programming and the problems which underlie them as being
consistent through time. Programming has operated with much less
contention during the current Session than in Sessions that preceded
it. To take two pieces of supporting evidence from among many:
the proportion of Programme Motions immediately following Second
Reading that has been the subject of divisions has fallen to 44%
in the current Session (from 89% in 2001-02) and the number of
Public Bill Committees that have finished their work ahead of
the deadline has increased to 81% in the current Session (compared
with 19% in 2001-02).[56]
68. Exchanges in oral evidence with the Leader of
the House and with the Clerk of the House and Clerk Assistant
led us to explore with the Speaker the effect of the selection
and grouping of amendments at report stage of bills.[57]
We noted that the practice whereby amendments concerning issues
which have been fully debated in committee are not selected on
report no longer seemed to be followed, and noted that this affects
the issue of ensuring sufficient time for debate on amendments
inasmuch as if there are fewer amendments to be debated, there
is that much more chance of time being available to debate them.
We asked the Speaker about the extent to which a reversion to
the earlier practice might assist in ensuring time to debate amendments
both on report and in committee, by avoiding repetition.
69. The Speaker replied
It is particularly at Report stage that the tension
between the needs of scrutiny and debate, and the time available,
can be most acute.
When the Clerk of the House appeared before your
Committee recently, he made the point […] that selection
on Report is more generous than it used to be up to 20 years ago.
In your letter you relate this to subjects fully discussed in
Committee, but the picture is more complex than that. Matters
fully ventilated in Committee are often not selected on Report;
the real issue may be one of raising the bar so that selection
concentrates the House's time on relatively few points rather
than a much wider range of sometimes incidental or minor matters.
As Speaker my instinct has perhaps been one of generosity,
but I would be happy to explore how selection could make better
use of the House's time. […] I would certainly be prepared
to see whether revisiting the practices of selection might assist
the House.[58]
70. We do not suggest that non-selection of amendments
concerning issues already debated in committee provides anything
like the whole answer to the issue of the failure to reach amendments
on report. More focussed selection could nevertheless make a small
but worthwhile difference at the margins, and has the advantage
of being not a new practice, but one which used previously to
be the norm. We
welcome the Speaker's indication that he is willing to see whether
revisiting the practices of selection of amendments on report
would assist the House. We
are sure that the Speaker himself will want in due course to assess
the effects of any change in selection practice, and stand ready
to give him whatever assistance he may require in doing so.
71. Thinking more broadly about how to ensure adequate
consideration of amendments on report, it is evident from the
conclusions we have already reached above that this is not a problem
which can be easily solved through reform of sitting hours or
sitting patterns. We do not see scope for extending sitting hours
to provide more time to debate legislation. Furthermore, as the
Speaker's letter concerning selection explains, lack of time is
not the only challenge: there is also a complex interplay between
the number of groups and the use of internal "knives"
in programme motions which affects whether the opportunity arises
to debate any individual amendment—and whether whole sections
of a bill may escape scrutiny by this House.[59]
72. For some, the issue is also linked to the quality
of legislation. We note that our colleagues on the Political and
Constitutional Reform Committee are undertaking an inquiry with
a view to making recommendations about how the legislative process
may be strengthened to improve the quality of legislation before
it reaches this House. That inquiry may provide at least a partial
solution to the problem, by suggesting ways of reducing the necessity
of technical amendments to bills and increasing the opportunity
for debate of policy issues.
73. Although
the Leader's memorandum provides some evidence of an improvement
in the situation concerning sections of bills going unscrutinised
in this House as a result of programming, we are not convinced
that the problem has now gone away. We have not, however, been
able to devote sufficient time to
this complex problem during our inquiry into sitting hours. We
therefore declare our intention to look more closely at the operation
of the programming of legislation in a later inquiry.
'Injury time' and use of Westminster
Hall for Ministerial statements
74. In our report of last year on Ministerial statements,
we said
We are attracted by the idea of the Speaker having
the discretion, in exceptional circumstances, to allow "injury
time" to compensate for time spent on oral statements and
are minded to consider it further. Such a change would have an
effect on the sitting hours of the House. Rather than consider
this issue in isolation, we would prefer to address it in the
wider context of the arrangement of the parliamentary day. We
will, therefore, return to this matter in the course of our inquiry
into the sittings of the House.[60]
75. That report noted that "the Leader of the
House was not in favour of such 'injury time', on the grounds
that '"the House puts a premium on the certainty of knowing
when business will end'."[61]
In oral evidence on this inquiry, he added "if you want certainty
then you can't have things like injury time for statements, and
I come down in favour of certainty rather than injury time on
that particular example."[62]
Instead, he picked up on a suggestion originally made by other
witnesses to our inquiry into Ministerial statements that an experiment
might be undertaken with the use of Westminster Hall for some
such statements.[63]
The Leader elaborated on this suggestion in a supplementary
written memorandum:
[...] I should make it clear that this would provide
a "spill-over" opportunity for ministerial statements
which would not normally otherwise be made on the floor of the
House. I have in mind, for example, certain statements on policy
announcements on Opposition days, on other days when it is recognised
that the time available for the main business before the House
should not be reduced and on days when there is already another
oral statement (or are other oral statements) which must take
priority. The statements in question are generally made in the
form of a written ministerial statement at present.[64]
76. The incursion of time taken for statements into
that available for other business remains a problem, and one which
inhibits the Government from bringing as many of its policy proposals
to the House for scrutiny as might otherwise be the case. In the
light of the evidence received in the course of this inquiry,
on further reflection, and on balance, we tend to agree with the
Leader that rendering uncertain the time of conclusion of debate
in the House, by the introduction of "injury time",
would be undesirable. As we have seen in chapter 4 above, Members
desire certainty about the times they are required in the House,
especially to vote.
77. Nevertheless we are not persuaded that the Leader's
proposal, as it stands, is desirable as a means of securing greater
Ministerial accountability without increasing overall sitting
hours. The initiative on making statements in Westminster Hall
would lie in the hands of the Government, rather than the House.
There would therefore be a danger that the Government would use
the opportunity to make statements in Westminster Hall on, for
example, an Opposition day, arguing that it wished to avoid taking
time from the Opposition, when the statement could have been made
on another day instead. The Leader's undertaking that such statements
"would not normally otherwise be made on the floor of the
House" is welcome, but unverifiable and unenforceable.
78. Instead, we return to a recommendation made in
our report on Ministerial statements. We said:
[...] 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.[65]
In this way, Ministerial statements which have not—for
whatever reason, whether it be through lack of time or merely
by Government preference—been made on the floor of the House
may be made subject to oral questioning by backbenchers and by
the official Opposition.
79. The Government's response to that proposal was
as follows:
It is already open to Members to seek a debate in
Westminster Hall on any subject. Restricting the half-hour slot
on Wednesday morning to questions on a matter which was the subject
of a WMS in the previous week would significantly restrict Members'
discretion to seek a debate on any subject of their choosing.
There are also other mechanisms for backbenchers to question ministers
on the subject of Written Ministerial Statements, including urgent
questions and topical questions, backbench debates, select committee
evidence sessions and adjournment debates in the House.
The Committee's proposal would not work well in the
context of the current arrangements for determining the subjects
to be taken in Westminster Hall, nor in the context of the departmental
rota for responding to business in Westminster Hall.
The Government therefore does not agree with this
recommendation, which would add little or nothing to Ministerial
accountability to Parliament for the content of WMSs.[66]
80. This response is not persuasive as a case against
the change we have proposed. The loss of one half-hour slot would
not significantly restrict Members' discretion to seek a debate
on any subject of their choosing. The small loss to that discretion
would be amply compensated for by the opportunity to question
Ministers orally on matters which might not otherwise be brought
to the floor either of the House or of Westminster Hall. The references
to the context of the current arrangements for determining the
subjects to be taken in Westminster Hall and the departmental
rota for responding to business in Westminster Hall are a red
herring: neither is a significant obstacle to the introduction
of the procedure we have proposed. And the proposal which the
Leader has now made to our inquiry into sitting hours is a welcome
rowing-back on the suggestion that the opportunity to question
Ministers in Westminster Hall on the content of statements "would
add little or nothing to Ministerial accountability to Parliament".
81. We are pleased
to see that the Government has moved in the direction of our previous
recommendation concerning opportunity for backbenchers to question
Ministers on the content of a written statement. We renew the
recommendation which we made in our report on Ministerial statements,
and trust that the Government is now willing to go that step further
and accept, on a pilot basis, arrangements for the half hour between
11.00 am and 11.30 am on a Wednesday in Westminster Hall to be
available for oral questions without notice on a written statement
made in the previous week. In this way it will be possible to
bring a Minister to the House to be questioned on a statement
without either trespassing on the time available for the main
business or causing unwelcome uncertainty in the finishing time
for business in the Chamber. Such sessions would take place only
when the Chairman of Ways and Means had determined that it was
appropriate: we would not expect them to be held every week.
82. Since we made our original recommendation, the
Backbench Business Committee has established itself as a mechanism
for determining what debates should take place in backbench time.
We do not, however, consider that it would be appropriate to give
the task of determining which statements should be taken in Westminster
Hall under this procedure to that Committee. The task, which is
likely to involve Opposition frontbenchers as much as—indeed
possibly to a greater extent than—backbenchers, is more
akin to that of determining whether an urgent question should
be taken than that of choosing subjects for debate. We consider
that it therefore lies more appropriately with the Chairman of
Ways and Means, as the determiner of business in Westminster Hall
under Standing Order No. 10(3).
56 Ev w58 Back
57
Q 231, Q 299 Back
58
Ev w95 Back
59
Ev w95 Back
60
First Report of Session 2010-12 (printed as 2010-11), Ministerial
Statements, HC 602, para 52. Back
61
HC 602, para 51 Back
62
Q 300 Back
63
HC 602, paras 53-55 Back
64
Ev w93 Back
65
HC 602, para 68. Back
66
First Special Report of the Procedure Committee, Session 2010-12,
Ministerial Statements: Government Response to the Committee's
First Report of Session 2010-11, HC 1062 Back
| 
