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Administration Committee

I am extremely honoured to follow the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and I hope that the House will heed his very wise words. If our parliamentary democracy is to remain respected and trusted by the electorate, the House as a whole must be able to scrutinise a Government’s performance, legislation and management of the country as fully and effectively as possible. In my experience, the Select Committee system is the only way to achieve that. Therefore, the usual channels—that is, the Government and Opposition Front Benches—should not have a major patronage function when it comes to appointing members of Select Committees. I think that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) is trying to achieve that, although I am not sure that I go along with the procedure that he proposes. In the previous Parliament, the Modernisation Committee put forward proposals that could have achieved what many Back-Bench Members want but, sadly, those proposals were rejected by the House by a narrow majority. Shortly, the Leader of the House will be elected Chairman of the Modernisation Committee. I hope that he and the shadow Leader of the House will review the appointments of hon. Members to Select Committees so that those Committees can fulfil their functions on behalf of the House. My contribution to the debate will be brief, but I wish to reiterate a point that several hon. Members have already made, which is that the Government of the day have a duty to appoint Committees as quickly as possible after a general election, so that the House can properly monitor and scrutinise legislation and the performance of the Government. I remain somewhat confused by the explanation that the Leader of the House provided to other hon. Members on the question of term limits for Chairmen of Select Committees. It appears that there is an eight-year rule, but that that period could be extended to 12 or 13 years. I am sure that that cannot be right or fair in any situation. The period should be two Parliaments or eight years. If someone is appointed in the middle of a Parliament, the three years of that Parliament should not be entirely ignored so that they can go on to serve as Chairman of a Select Committee for a further two Parliaments.