---

Administration Committee

I had not intended to speak, but it has been such an interesting and engrossing debate that I thought that I would have my penny’s worth. I want to pick up on what the Father of the House said. In our system, we have very strong government and we need strong scrutiny, a point that my Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) constantly makes. If we do not have strong scrutiny, we need to do something about it. I am sure that it is not unique to this Parliament, but we have a terrible curse of patronage. The stain spreads everywhere and we must clean up our act in so far as it is possible. On the powers of Select Committees, the Leader of the House quite casually dropped into the debate the important announcement that changes to the Osmotherly rules will be published tomorrow. Is not that amazing? The Osmotherly rules go to the very heart of our system. When my Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) wanted John Scarlett to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee, he was told no. When he said, ““We want John Scarlett and we can meet in camera””, he was again told no. Then, along came Lord Hutton, who posted everything on the world wide web so that everybody all over the world could see it. Lord Hutton said to Scarlett, ““Come before me””, and John Scarlett dropped everything to do so. What do the Osmotherly rules do? They set out the framework within which civil servants and those in the Government sphere appear before Select Committees. It will be fascinating to see the new rules when they are published tomorrow. When the Public Administration Committee, on which I served in the previous Parliament and to which I have been fortunate to have been reappointed, was inquiring into Government communications, we summoned Alastair Campbell, as we were entitled to do. He said that he was on a speaking tour or some such thing and could not appear before us. We asked him to think again. I thought that that would become a great constitutional spat, but Alastair Campbell came before us and that went well. We cannot have people refusing to appear before Select Committees and we cannot have someone—whoever—telling Select Committees that people cannot appear before them, as in the case of John Scarlett.