---

Administration Committee

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice). Perhaps I could pick up a point that he made towards the end of his speech, which reflected what the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) said. They made it clear that they were opposed in principle to the payment of Select Committee Chairmen and that therefore they oppose what they call the ““creep”” represented by the motions on the Order Paper today. I shall try to persuade them both that what we are doing is right. Both hon. Members are good House of Commons men. One of the problems for the House of Commons is that, as new Members arrive, they tend to get drawn by the political and financial attraction of becoming Ministers. The principle of paying Select Committee Chairmen seeks to provide some gravitational pull the other way, so that the Government do not hoover up all the talent and there is an alternative career. I very much regret that the talents that both hon. Members have displayed this afternoon have been consistently overlooked by the Government, but I hope they recognise that there is an alternative career in the House. In order to add value to that alternative career, the decision that the House took a few years ago was the right one. I am delighted to see the newly appointed Chairman of the Committee of Selection, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna), in her place. She has taken to her new task like a duck to water, and I welcome what the Committee has done. Apart from her, I am the only non-Whip who attends the Committee of Selection, and it is rather like an atheist turning up at the General Synod. Perhaps I could reflect on the change of character of this debate, compared with the corresponding debate at the beginning of the previous Parliament. That was not a happy debate, as those who were there will remember. It was an animated debate and at the end the Committee of Selection’s motions were overturned. Although we have taken longer than we should have this time round, the mistakes that were made in the last Parliament have been avoided—mistakes, may I say, mainly on the Government’s side. What I was looking out for from the Committee of Selection was whether any Ministers who had recently lost their job had been parachuted on to Select Committees, and the answer was no. Have the minority parties had a square deal? On the whole, they have, and they are not represented on the Committee of Selection. What has happened to what I might call the awkward squad—the independent, fearless Members? Are they still on their Select Committees? For me, the litmus test was whether the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) was still on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he was. As a relatively neutral member of the Committee of Selection, I concluded that it did a better job this time than last time. However, we can do even better next time by revisiting the Liaison Committee’s recommendations, which involve a completely different means of choosing Select Committees. I was interested in the exchange at the beginning of the debate in which it was suggested that the Modernisation Committee might revisit that matter. In this Parliament, I hope that we have an opportunity to rerun a debate that we held in the previous Parliament, in which the proposition that we should move to a more independent system was narrowly lost. The Executive still have too much control over appointments to Select Committees, and the House of Commons should repatriate such decisions. I like the idea of a timetable, which was suggested by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). Under his proposal, we would have a set timetable for the establishment of Select Committees. There would be no doubt about the target, which would prevent delay. On the Liaison Committee, I support the proposition that the Father of the House should be reappointed. He skilfully chaired the Liaison Committee in the previous Parliament, when we developed a new role of interrogating the Prime Minister. Subject to one qualification, I support the proposal that the senior hon. Member should join the Chairmen’s Panel. If one examines the nominations for Select Committees, roughly half the Liaison Committee will consist of new hon. Members. There is a strong argument for continuity in the membership of the Liaison Committee as we continue to interrogate the Prime Minister. By adopting that proposal, we would achieve additional continuity on the Liaison Committee. I am pleased to hear that the Prime Minister has already been approached about finding a date in his diary to recapture the sitting that we missed in July, hopefully by holding an early meeting when we return in the autumn. In an earlier exchange on the Modernisation Committee, the Leader of the House was asked what it can do that the Liaison Committee cannot, and his answer was illuminating—““delivery””. That answer is dangerous: the Modernisation Committee has delivered on measures that are sympathetic to the Government, but it has not delivered on measures that are sympathetic to the House of Commons, such as the vote in the previous Parliament on an alternative means of appointing Select Committees.