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Administration Committee

I think that that has clarified matters. Let me move on to the Modernisation Committee’s new remit. I disagree with the Government’s approach to the Modernisation Committee. That Committee should serve from time to time when there is a need for it to do so. If it meets week after week, it will look for things to do and tread on the toes of other Committees. We have already heard in the exchanges between the Leader of the House and my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield about the remits of the Modernisation Committee and Procedure Committee running into each other. The Leader of the House spoke of broadening the Modernisation Committee’s remit so that it could examine other issues, especially administration. However, we are in the process of setting up the Administration Committee. Surely that Committee, not the Modernisation Committee, should deal with administration matters. A Committee that meets week in, week out will look for work that may not necessarily exist. I am in favour of Committees that consider changes that need to be made to the House’s procedures and workings, but we do not need a Committee that simply looks for work to do every week. We have other Committees that can make the sort of small changes in procedure, standards and privileges and administration that are inevitably needed in this place. The danger of the Modernisation Committee being in the form that the Leader of the House suggests is that it will get in the way of the workings of other Committees unnecessarily. I have some sympathy with amendment (a) to motion 34, which the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Frank Cook) tabled, especially given that the Father of the House has rightly been added to the Liaison Committee. The Liaison Committee has gained a high profile because of its work interviewing the Prime Minister twice a year. It has other co-ordinating roles. The Chairmen’s Panel has a different purpose from that of Select Committees, but I believe that the House’s workings would be strengthened by a bridge between them. The presence on the Liaison Committee of a senior figure from the Chairmen’s Panel would be beneficial. Hon. Members should consider the amendment carefully and sympathetically.