Session 2013-14
Publications on the internet
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIP T
HOUSE OF COMMONS
REPRESENTATIONS MADE BEFORE THE
BACKBENCH BUSINESS COMMITTEE
ON TUESDAY 11 MARCH 2014
BACKBENCH DEBATES
DR JULIAN HUPPERT, MARTIN HORWOOD and MR BROOKS NEWMARK
MR BERNARD JENKIN, MRS CAROLINE SPELMAN, LINDSAY ROY and
NICK HERBERT
Evidence heard in Public | Questions 1 - 26 |
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Representations
Made before the Backbench Business Committee
on Tuesday 11 March 2014
Members present:
Natascha Engel (Chair)
Mr David Amess
John Hemming
Ian Mearns
Alec Shelbrooke
Dr Julian Huppert, Martin Horwood and Mr Brooks Newmark made representations.
Chair: You have been to this Committee before?
Dr Huppert: Indeed.
Q1 Chair: Twenty years on: the Rwandan genocide, in the Chamber for three hours with a motion. For the sake of the record, will you read out the motion for us?
Dr Huppert: Thank you for allowing us to come again. This was an astonishing event 20 years ago: 800,000 people killed at the rate of six per minute for every hour of the day for over three months. The motion is: "That this House commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, where over the course of a 100-day period in 1994 at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered, and calls on the Government to reinforce its commitment to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and to work within the United Nations to promote international justice and avoid mass atrocities which are still committed across the globe today".
Q2 Chair: At the moment, we have 20 March in Westminster Hall and provisional Chamber time only on 27 March. When is the 20th anniversary itself?
Dr Huppert: First, we feel quite strongly that this should be in the Chamber rather than Westminster Hall. I do not think that we would want to take a Westminster Hall slot, which I have done in the past. Given the international significance of this, and what the people of Rwanda might hope we would do, it should be in the Chamber. A CPA trip is also going there, which Brooks knows more about.
Mr Newmark: The CPA trip comes back on 4 April and the anniversary itself is from 7 April. So 7 April is effectively the critical day, ideally, if there were any time in the main Chamber that week. I appreciate that is the last week we are here before Easter recess. There are over 120 members of the all-party group on the great lakes, most of whom have a strong interest in Rwanda itself. My interest here is that after I spoke to you, Madam Chairman, Dr Huppert heard I was putting together a similar proposal. I totally support his proposal-100%.
I sense from speaking to colleagues that there would be a lot of interest in this. Given the important role that the UK played-I think we were the largest donor to Rwanda for years after the genocide, and we are still the second largest, after the US-this is important in terms of our support, through DFID in particular. It ties in very much with the Foreign Office’s policy on issues such as abuse of women in war and rape, which still continues today in the DRC, and the right to protect that Dr Huppert has been talking about. So it ties in well with what the Government are trying to do as well.
Martin Horwood: I would like to underline the fact that there were British connections at the time to the international community, which were part of what made this so traumatic. I was working for Oxfam at the time of the genocide, and I remember the daily bulletin about how many expat staff we had managed to get out and the whereabouts of our Rwandan staff and of other NGOs in that position.
The interaction-or lack of interaction, to be honest-between the international community and what was going on in Rwanda was traumatising for people at many levels of the UN, for example, and led pretty directly to the debate about the responsibility to protect, which was finally adopted by the UN 10 years later. That, of course, is still a live and topical issue in the light of current issues around Syria and so on. So it is a very topical thing and a timely one to mark.
Q3 John Hemming: This is the usual question, which you have already sort of answered. The problem for the Committee is the limited amount of time, particularly in the Chamber. I think everybody would agree with the motion. It is actually possible, under limited circumstances, to have motions in Westminster Hall, but before you finally answer the question of whether you would accept Westminster Hall, address it from this point of view. The Budget is coming up, there are various other pressures and then the parliamentary Session comes to an end, and we already have a number of items where people qualify for a debate. Would you prefer not to have a debate, or to have a debate in Westminster Hall?
Mr Newmark: Personally, having spent seven years going back and forth to Rwanda, the political sensitivities would be such, in my honest opinion, that if we shunted it into Westminster Hall, no matter how we take it here, it would be perceived as hugely disrespectful, given that the 20th anniversary is massively important from the Rwandan standpoint.
Q4 Chair: What if we had no time to allocate in the Chamber?
John Hemming: It would mean not having a debate. That is the difficulty. All these issues are important in different ways. The question is whether or not to have a debate. You are saying, basically, that you would rather not have anything at all-
Mr Newmark: No, that is not what we are saying.
Martin Horwood: We would have to find another way to observe it, to be honest. I would feel nervous about going back to colleagues in the NGO community and saying that the British Parliament alone could not find time to debate it in the main Chamber, and that it was going to be put in a Chamber alongside debates on the impact of HS2 in Hertfordshire and so on. That is not to diminish what goes on in Westminster Hall. It is just that there is going to be a global campaign of recognition marking this. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, in Washington, and others, are promoting this in Parliaments all round the world and I just think we have to do it properly. We would probably find another medium in which to do it.
Q5 John Hemming: Not Westminster Hall, full stop?
Martin Horwood: No.
Dr Huppert: You have asked me this in other contexts before. I have been very happy with Westminster Hall for many years, but not on this one.
Q6 Alec Shelbrooke: Obviously, you have gone for three hours and you have plenty of names here. One of the questions when allocating the Chamber is to make sure that those three hours can be filled. I am sure that you can, and the motion probably would allow a wider debate. But I would like you to give some consideration to your final version of the motion, to make sure you have a packed Chamber and enough speakers. You mentioned Syria and other areas where atrocities are taking place, and while the substantive motion will be about Rwanda, in order to make sure that you can fill a three-hour debate, it would be helpful if other such areas of the world could be brought into the debate. You may well be able to do this, looking at your motion, and it is something I think you should consider.
Mr Newmark: We went to the Table Office last night in order to achieve that exact objective, which is why the wording, as I think you spotted, allows people to discuss DRC, Syria and elsewhere.
Q7 Alec Shelbrooke: I think the last sentence is okay. It is about making sure you have enough colleagues in the House who recognise that there is an opportunity to widen the debate.
Martin Horwood: I am sure that the connection to R2P will make it very topical. As was discussed immediately after the genocide, issues arise such as the effectiveness of the UN in a situation where the Security Council is hamstrung. There are a lot of major issues.
Chair: We do not know too far ahead whether we have any time to schedule, but we will try to find out about the availability and give you some kind of indicator. We will not be able to tell you for definite, but at least we can give you some indication for organisational purposes. We will definitely get back to you as soon as we can. It probably will not be today, but it will be as soon as possible.
Dr Huppert: Thank you very much.
Mr Bernard Jenkin, Mrs Caroline Spelman, Lindsay Roy and Nick Herbert made representations.
Mr Jenkin: I have brought along Lindsay Roy, who is a Labour member of the Select Committee on Public Administration, Caroline, whom I will explain in a moment, and I am pleased to have Nick Herbert here as well, because it underlines how much interest there is in the topic of the civil service.
It is great to be here, instead of having lunch. Thank you very much. There has not been a debate on the civil service in this Parliament, although there used to be an annual debate on the civil service-you are used to hearing that kind of refrain. The subject of the debate has certainly become topical in this Parliament, as there has been a great deal of controversy about the relationship between Ministers and officials, how well or badly they get on and how effective the civil service is.
A lot of the Public Administration Committee’s work has been about leadership in the civil service, strategic thinking in Whitehall and capabilities in civil service procurement. Our report, "Truth to power: how Civil Service reform can succeed"-it is dauntingly thick because it was published with the evidence, but it is not actually that long-had only one recommendation: that there should be a parliamentary commission on the future of the civil service. There has been no such comprehensive external consideration of the civil service since the Fulton committee in the 1960s, which was rather a failure, and which followed a regular royal commission on the civil service approximately every 15 years.
The case for a parliamentary commission was supported by the Liaison Committee in its report "Civil Service: lacking capacity", which was produced shortly after our report and endorsed our recommendation. Both reports were debated in the House of Lords in a packed two and a half hour debate, and most of the people who spoke were in favour of the recommendation. There was a considerable degree of support for the proposal.
The substantive motion has a more limited remit than we originally suggested, in deference to the way the Government responded to our proposals. They are wary of having a vast inquiry, so we have gone for a more limited remit, concentrating on the questions of the relationship between Ministers and officials, accountability and what kind of leadership the civil service requires.
Q8 Chair: Bernard, I know it is quite long, but could you read it for the sake of the record?
Mr Jenkin: It is a substantive motion to establish a parliamentary commission on the civil service:
"(1) That a select committee of six Members be appointed to join with a committee appointed of the House of Lords, together to be called the Parliamentary Commission on the Civil Service.
(2) That the commission shall consider and report on-
a) the future operation of the doctrine of accountability,
b) the relationship between ministers and officials; and
c) leadership within the Civil Service and Whitehall;
and make recommendations on these matters, including a timetable for implementation.
(3) That Bernard Jenkin, Caroline Spelman, Cheryl Gillan, Margaret Hodge, Jack Straw and Sir Nick Harvey be members of the Commission.
(4) That the Commission may hold meetings at any time after the Lords has agreed to appoint a committee to join with this committee."
There then follows a part of the motion that very much shadows the precedent set by the Banking Commission, and the mechanism for establishing the Committee of both Houses, which I will not read in detail. The Clerk is obliged under Standing Orders to table a note of the cost implications of such a Committee, which is another matter that the House must consider when making its decision, and I have seen a draft of that note.
Some have raised the objection that this matter is ultra vires of the Backbench Business Committee, but I have checked with the Clerks that it is in order. It falls, in my view, completely within what the Wright Committee intended: "We should seek to enhance the House of Commons’ control over its own agenda, timetable and procedures, in consultation with Government and Opposition", and that is what we are doing here. Secondly, the money question has been raised, but that is a matter for the House. Thirdly, the substance of the question is a matter for the House.
Q9 Chair: I am going to ask Caroline Spelman to add something and then you, Nick Herbert, wanted to respond. I will then bring in John Hemming and others on the Committee.
Mrs Spelman: Thank you. I think that the last roughly 12 months of this Parliament is a very good time to have this discussion and commission. Uniquely in my almost 17 years as a parliamentarian, all three parties will have had Ministers at this point. All parties therefore have Members who have experience of working directly with the civil service. Personally, I had a good experience working with civil servants at DEFRA, even if we had difficult times. I definitely think that there are things that need to be improved and changed that will benefit the workings of Government and ultimately benefit the workings of our democracy. I am particularly interested in the career development of civil servants and things that we can do better to help them ensure that we have a civil service that is really fit for the 21st century, with all the challenges that brings. The fact that all parties at this point have current memory of working with the civil service will make it a genuinely cross-party exercise, to which I think we could all contribute and from which we could produce a very good outcome.
Nick Herbert: I strongly agree with Bernard and Caroline about the desirability of having a debate on the civil service at this time. There has not been such a debate and I think that Back Benchers will welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues and PASC’s report, in the same way as there was a debate recently in the House of Lords on the issue. I question strongly whether we should be jumping to a specific motion that proposes a parliamentary commission before we have had that debate. It is not only a specific motion to set up the parliamentary commission, but one that states who will be on it. Indeed, the proposers of the motion propose that they themselves should be on the commission. There has not been an opportunity for a discussion about who should be on the commission, or any testing of the opinion of the House as to where people might be coming from or the views that they might bring to that commission.
There is also an issue about the remit, which is one that includes two of the major subjects, accountability and leadership, but, extraordinarily, excludes skills-surely perceived to be one of the biggest challenges facing the civil service-and instead focuses on the rather contentious issue of the relationship between Ministers and officials. This is of great interest to the media, but perhaps of less significance when it comes to designing a civil service for the future. All those are issues that ought to be debated in a general debate on the civil service, so that we can see what people’s views are. From that, no doubt, there could be a motion to set up a commission, if that is what people appeared to support. We could then have a discussion about the remit of that commission and who should be on it. At the moment, Back Benchers will be presented with a motion that they can either support or not. We have got ahead of ourselves. The Lords did not do it like this. The Lords had their general debate, and will in time no doubt consider a more specific motion. I hope the Backbench Business Committee might take that into consideration.
Q10 Chair: I am going to bring in Bernard and then I will open it up to the rest of the Committee.
Mr Jenkin: That is very kind. I should say that both Margaret Hodge and Jack Straw regret that they cannot be here. Margaret Hodge had a pre-booked lunch speaking engagement and Jack Straw is in Nigeria, but they are both strongly supportive. I fully accept what Nick is saying about the names. I have personally consulted quite widely and I regard the motion as an opportunity to propose other names by amendment if they wish. Again, the motion is not set in stone. There may be a period before the motion is debated, and I reserve the right to amend the motion if there is a consensus about what names should be on it.
I think the skills question is very important. The Public Administration Committee is holding an inquiry into skills, but there is a question around our capacity to run one on skills and one on accountability and the relationship between Ministers and officials and the required leadership at the same time.
Finally, I do not think that the question of the relationship between Ministers and officials is an issue to shy away from. On the contrary, it is the very thing that needs to be discussed, aired, surfaced and understood in order to improve the relationship, however they are appointed and managed.
Chair: I will save my questions until the end.
Q11 John Hemming: There are many interesting questions behind all this. I actually tried to set up a Committee using a parliamentary motion some two or three years ago and was derailed into a Westminster Hall debate, which was actually quite useful. This is interesting, because here you see the challenge between the Executive and Parliament in the sense of Parliament having the effrontery actually to go and set up its own Committee, rather than it being driven by the Government.
We are obviously not going to allocate time today, because there is no time to allocate. It is an effective motion, so it has to be in the Chamber-there is no question about that-but does it really need six hours? Could it be at the end of the day? Could it be a three-hour debate?
Mr Jenkin: I have applied for a six-hour debate and have, so far, 28 names in support of the motion from across the House, but I have not really even begun canvassing widespread support. Those names include a significant number of Liaison Committee members-some 16 Select Committee Chairs-but I defer to your judgment. A three-hour debate would be short, but I am certain that we could fill it given the interest on both sides.
Could it be an end-of-day motion? If there was consensus and agreement, it could be, but I do not sense that that agreement yet exists. This application is partly to promote the discussion and to elevate the debate in order that we can maybe reach that consensus, but I take your suggestion seriously.
Q12 John Hemming: This is a question for Nick. Is there room for discussion on the wording of the motion? Before we come to the issue of whether amendments can be tabled, is there a potential discussion on the wording of the motion?
Nick Herbert: I of course strongly support the idea of having a debate, but it seems that the better way to do it is to have a general debate, so that we can assess the views of Members of the House and then come to the motion, because trying to do so by way of private discussions-taps on the shoulder in the Lobby-as to who will be on the commission and what its remit should be does not seem proper when the House has simply not discussed the issue until now. We do not really know what people’s views will be about the remit and so on. We can of course have sensible, behind-the-scenes discussions, but the proper thing is to have a debate about it first.
Q13 Chair: In the past, Select Committee reports have been debated, something has come out of them and then the Committee or individuals come to us to ask for a specific motion in the Chamber. Have you had a debate on this through the Liaison Committee?
Mr Jenkin: No, we have not. If you take the Wright Committee, for example, its recommendations were accepted at the first debate.
Q14 Chair: That was set up through the Government, rather than through-
Mr Jenkin: That was the other point that I was going to make. It seems okay for the Government to produce fait-accompli motions with fait-accompli names. I feel that I have worked in a very open and consensual manner and perhaps rather more openly than Whips offices usually work.
Q15 Chair: The members of the Wright Committee were elected.
Mr Jenkin: The members on the Wright Committee were elected; yes. Maybe we should consider that there should be elections instead of simply putting the names on the motion. I would certainly consider that.
Q16 John Hemming: Would that receive sympathy from the Government?
Mr Jenkin: The point is that the Wright Committee’s report was adopted by the House after a single debate. This is about adopting the recommendation of two Select Committees of the House.
Q17 Mr Amess: Please do not read anything into my questions; they are just to help us when we go into private session. Obviously, Governments would not particularly like the timing of the motion. The first thing I want to understand is whether the reason for having it now, following on from what Caroline just said, is that Jack Straw is not standing again and you want to use his expertise. There is a counter-argument that it would be better to have this debate at the start of a new Parliament, rather than at the end.
Mrs Spelman: I do not think the question of when certain Members are standing or not standing comes into it. We are in a fixed-term Parliament, which is a new experience for the House. We know how much time there is left until the election. Often the legislative programme becomes a bit lighter on the approach to the final hurdle. My experience as a former Minister is that the first two years of this Parliament were extremely front-loaded.
If you look at most Administrations, a lot of their work is done at the front end. I think it was the former Prime Minister Tony Blair who said that if you do not get what you want to achieve done in the first 18 months, you might not get it done at all, or words to that effect. New Government Ministers in any Administration will be trying to bring through the policies in their manifesto. The country will be looking to a new Administration to make the differences they promised they would.
Coming to the end of a period of a fixed-term Parliament is a good time to look back at what has happened. Because we have had a coalition in this fixed-term Parliament, we rather uniquely have people from all parties with recent experience of working in government. I spent 13 years in opposition with no contact with civil servants at all. It came as a novelty to me to find out what the civil service is like, how it works and its procedures. We are in the unusual position of that knowledge being spread well across all the main parties of the House.
Q18 Mr Amess: That is very helpful. I have another two quick questions. We could not quite hear Bernard’s response to Nick on a general debate and a specific debate. If we decided to have a general debate first and a specific debate afterwards, but within the lifetime of this Parliament, is that something that you would be completely against?
Mr Jenkin: I will take whatever I am offered, but the point here is that there is a limited amount of time in this Parliament. The advantage of having it at the back end of a Parliament is that the legislative timetable is light and the demands on resources are lighter. There will be fewer Joint Committees to consider draft legislation, so it is a good time to have a Joint Committee. It is also a good time to consider this and make recommendations so that a new Administration after the general election will be able to implement the findings of the commission. Could you remind me of what you were saying?
Q19 Chair: I think it was about the Session ending on 3 June, so there is limited time.
Mr Jenkin: There is a limited amount of time. The out date in our motion is 26 February next year. If we do not establish this before Easter, there is less time for the commission to do its work.
Ian Mearns: There is a little glitch to David’s question, in that this Committee is re-elected following the Queen’s Speech, so it would be incumbent on a new Committee to follow on the wishes of this Committee, if this Committee so wishes.
Q20 Mr Amess: My final question, although this is perhaps something that we should not discuss here, is about whether you can give us any idea of the cost implication.
Mr Jenkin: Yes, I can. I have already got a draft note. The entire Banking Commission cost £1.4 million. This project is not anything like as ambitious. The estimate is that it will cost £185,000 for each House. To put that in context, the present House of Commons resources budget is £215 million. We are handing back £2 million at the end of this year that has been underspent. It is likely that we will significantly underspend in the next year, when the cost of the commission would fall, because of what is called the general election shadow over the workings of the House. It is a rather short parliamentary year. The activity of Select Committees will be lower. There will be less legislation. There will be fewer Joint Committees. I am advised that there is ample elbow room in budgets to fund this rather modest expenditure.
Mr Amess: That is very helpful.
Q21 Alec Shelbrooke: Clearly, you would not have brought this forward if you did not want this to happen in a set time frame. The concern that will raise its head is, if we were to push forward with this motion rather than the general debate first, would the Government whip against it and you lose the whole thing? So is it better to have a general debate first, forming a substantive debate, with the chance of getting that through-rather than the Government saying, "We are not having that," and whipping everybody to vote it down? That is to inform us. I am playing devil’s advocate.
Mr Jenkin: I am in discussion with the Government about the form that this might take in order that we might reach a consensus about it. Whether we have a substantive motion or not, it is an occasion for a general debate about the civil service. Anybody may come and speak about the civil service in any manner they like. It is a very comprehensive remit for the Committee. That would put anything in order for a general debate about the civil service. If you are short of time and you are concerned about the allocation of time, it is a two-birds-with-one-stone moment for your Committee.
Q22 Chair: I have a couple of questions. First, even though our allocation of time is about to run out, we are anticipating that there will be bits of time that will be made available to us, because we have until 3 June. In the past, it has been much more successful to have a general debate followed by a specific debate. If we can make that happen on this side of the Session, I think that could create greater happiness in the House. Obviously, that is a decision for us. A general debate with the report that you have produced tagged to the debate, which then has the specific recommendation to set up a commission, would also give you time to talk to those people who participate in that general debate and then come back to us with this specific motion or another one that you bring forward. If we can make time for both of those, that might be quite a good way forward.
Secondly, have you explored less expensive ways of doing this? A commission is one way of doing it; what about setting up joint Select Committee inquiries? Have you explored other mechanisms? I don’t know quite what else is available.
Mr Jenkin: The reason for going for a Joint Committee of both Houses is that there are a great many experienced colleagues in this House and in the other place who will not generally sit on Select Committees but would sit on a Joint Committee established for a specific purpose. I should add that Lord Hope of Craighead, who was the senior judge in Scotland and the first Deputy President of the Supreme Court, has indicated that if he was invited to chair this, he would do so as a Cross Bencher in the House of Lords. There is no way that someone of his experience and ability is going to be tempted to sit on a Select Committee as part of his general contribution to public life. The same goes for people like Jack Straw, or indeed Caroline, or other people who have held senior Government office. That is the first reason for having a Joint Committee.
Yes, we have explored other ways of doing it. Obviously it falls within the remit of my Committee and I have been asked frequently, "Why don’t you do it?" But we have limited capacity. That is why the very limited extra expenditure is worthwhile. Yes, we have looked at cheaper ways of doing it, for example not to employ cross-examining counsel or have extensive outside advice, both of which the Tyrie Banking Commission did. Indeed, I do not think the remit is as complex in terms of the outside interests involved that would add to that expense. We feel that by designing it this way we have made it very good value for scrutiny of the Executive and for the House of Commons.
Nick Herbert: Who is "we"? Other Members of the House have not had the opportunity to contribute views on this. I think there may be other ways to do this. There is certainly value in a discussion about how it is going to be done and, again, that could form part of a general debate, rather than on a specific motion.
Q23 Chair: I am quite excited by the idea of this but my concern is that it opens up the Committee to lots of people wanting to set up lots of commissions. There are already some in the pipeline. We have to think quite carefully about the consequences of that. We would have to deal with that.
The other point raised earlier was that if you do go straight in with this as a votable motion-amendable as it is, though very specific-without having a general debate first, if it is voted down, it is voted down. A general debate may pave the way for something that could command greater consensus in the House. Those are both points for us to consider and will definitely be the issues that we discuss in private session.
Mr Jenkin: My only concern is one of timing.
Q24 Chair: As is ours.
Mr Jenkin: If it is in the end the House’s wish to establish a Joint Committee, time is short in this Parliament.
Q25 Chair: It is this Session. We understand that the debate will take place this side of the Session, so we are talking about before 3 June. When we go into private session we will not be scheduling anything because it is the Budget next week, on the 20th. We will not be making any scheduling decisions today, but we will be next week.
Mr Jenkin: May I just make one point? I have canvassed the prospective members of the commission about a date and 27 March is when everybody appears likely to be in the country. Obviously, you schedule the business.
Q26 Chair: We have 27 March as a provisional date, though not definitely.
Mr Jenkin: Thank you so much.
Chair: Unless there are any more questions, we will finish there. That was very comprehensive. Thank you.