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Administration Committee

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper). I will be extremely brief, for reasons that are obvious. I draw the House’s attention to motion 33 on Modernisation of the House of Commons. The House has talked about scrutiny; the whole process is about scrutiny. At the heart of scrutiny is this Chamber. When Members vote for this motion, I ask them to reflect on the fact that among those appointed to the Committee is one Mr. Geoffrey Hoon. Mr. Geoffrey Hoon is a Minister; he is the Leader of the House. That illustrates best the way in which this Chamber and this Parliament are controlled. The Modernisation Committee is no more an independent Committee than a fly in the air. That is the truth of the matter. The restrictions and the motions, to the disadvantage of the Procedure Committee, which has been sidelined by so many of them, originated in the Modernisation Committee. This House should look very carefully at what the Modernisation Committee does. The reason why we have been reduced to systematic guillotining of Bills originated in the Modernisation Committee. The Committee that we shall vote for in a moment has been the instrument by which the Government have seized total control over the timetabling of business, and this House can stand for or represent very little if we cannot unpick that which is brought before us in the form of motions, orders and Bills. I draw to the attention of the House the fact that a Minister of the Crown who is responsible for the business of this House constructs and has constructed the very motions on the Order Paper that many Members present have resented, argued against and tried to bring to the sense of a wider House. This House is nothing unless it stems from ourselves. As I have always said, we are temporary Members of this House, but we are passing on very much a diminished inheritance. Yet, there is value in Select Committees and the value afforded by expressing those views on the Floor of the House is all too often lost because of the work of the Modernisation Committee.