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Legislative Process

There are nine other motions covering the legislative process, the communications allowance, September sittings and other matters and I will deal with them in that order. As the House has just agreed, it is for the convenience of the House that they should be debated in one block. Let me set the scene. The motions before the House have the potential to deliver significant improvements to the business of the Commons and the effectiveness of the legislative process. In so doing, they will help Members to carry out their work and to strengthen their bond, and that of Parliament more generally, with the public, whom we are here to serve. It is a commonplace that Parliament is weak or out of touch, but the truth is that the Commons is much more active and influential today than at any time since the second world war. Scrutiny of Government is far more substantial than, for example, when I was a special adviser to the 1970s Labour Government. The establishment of permanent departmental Select Committees by the then Norman St. John-Stevas, when he was Conservative Leader of the House, was an important step forward. I paid tribute to him at the time, and I continue to do so. Since 1997, however, we have sought to make further changes with a view both to modernising and strengthening the role of this place: the introduction of Westminster Hall; greater freedom for Select Committees to establish Sub-Committees and joint inquiries; the honouring of Select Committee and Standing Committee chairs by proper remuneration; reduced deadlines for tabling oral questions; answering parliamentary questions when Parliament is in recess; and the Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee twice a year. Those are just several of the changes. Having seen the work of Government for almost four years as a special adviser in the 1970s, and comparing that with my work as a senior Minister for nearly 10 years, the level of scrutiny to which Ministers are now properly subjected is much greater, in all sorts of respects, than it ever was 20 or 30 years ago. As Michael Ryle, a former Commons Clerk, recently noted,"““a simple factual comparison with the 1950s and early 1960s shows that Parliament— particularly the House of Commons—plays a more active, independent and influential role in Britain today than at any time for many years. Important reforms are still needed, but the major advances in the past fifty years should not be derided.””" Let me now turn to the main part of our debate, the three motions on the report from the Modernisation Committee on the legislative process, which was published in early September. A key part of my role as Leader of the House is to ensure that our work is understandable to, and open to involvement from, the public. The unanimous proposals in the Committee’s report will help to achieve that. I am grateful to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and all the other members of the Modernisation Committee, many of whom are here today, who have conducted the inquiry. The central proposal in the package is for improved Committee consideration of Bills. There has long been concern about the ritual nature of Standing Committee proceedings. I can see the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) nodding. All that I can say is that it is a bit less ritual than when I entered the House, when the aim of Opposition Members when they first joined a Standing Committee—and none was more practised than me in that regard, for the 18 years that I spent in that penury—was to speak as long as possible into the small hours, in the mistaken belief that one’s constituents or anyone else was noticing. The Government Back-Benchers simply did their correspondence or went outside to make phone calls, to be called back by the Whips. Proceedings gradually ground to halt, which was what everyone was aiming for. Then there was a three-hour guillotine debate, when outrage was expressed by the Opposition, and the Government routinely quoted all the occasions when the Opposition had introduced the guillotine when in government. The guillotine was passed, and the rest of the Bill sailed through without proper scrutiny. We now have programming, which is a start, but we recognise that the system still requires improvement. Therefore, when a programmed Bill is being considered upstairs, we propose that it should now be considered in a Committee that has the power to take oral evidence before it begins its line-by-line consideration. The model for that would be the so-called Special Standing Committee system, first introduced in the 1980s but rarely used. When it has been used, it has been regarded as successful, but it has only been used occasionally, and very rarely on contentious Bills. I think that the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Bill, which was introduced when I was Home Secretary, was the first example of a contentious Bill being subject to that procedure. I think that it worked to the advantage of both sides of the House, and it certainly improved the Bill, which I witnessed as the senior Minister.