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Legislative Process

The right hon. Gentleman should think for a moment, because it is an extraordinary proposition that one can only comment on a Select Committee report if one sits on the Committee. He may be surprised to learn that I do not entirely agree with him. I sat on the Modernisation Committee for a short time, but it became irreconcilable with the other duties that I perform on behalf of my party, which is why I stood down from that Committee and asked my hon. Friend the Chief Whip to sit in my place. I am sure that my hon. Friend does a good job in Committee, but that does not stop me giving my opinion on the conclusions of the Modernisation Committee in a debate such as this. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman does not want to prevent me from giving my views. Turning to the specifics, the proposal on public Bill committees will commend itself to the House. There is widespread support for the suggestion that we should take a more reasoned view, including taking evidence, before conducting line-by-line scrutiny, although one should not be at the expense of the other. I hope that we will not lose the capacity closely to scrutinise what is written in statute, because I am one of those old-fashioned people who thinks that it matters what we write into laws and that what we write into laws should be right. At the moment, that happens in Committee, and I do not want to lose that procedure. In an earlier intervention, I raised the issue of delegated legislation with the Leader of the House. Given that so much legislation that has a crucial effect on our constituents is now secondary legislation, there may be occasions when it is appropriate for a Committee considering delegated legislation to take evidence before reaching a conclusion. I support the view that it should be possible to amend delegated legislation, because we often make bad law simply because there is no way to express a different view. It would also be in the interests of the Government to be able to accede to a sensible amendment in a Committee considering delegated legislation rather than passing flawed legislation that must be amended later. The communications allowance is a more difficult matter, and I have listened carefully to the exchanges on the subject. It is a matter for individual hon. Members, so I can only speak personally, but I have not been persuaded that the communications allowance is necessary. I find it difficult to understand how some hon. Members manage to spend quite as much as they do on their postage allowance within the rules of the House, as I understand them. Some hon. Members have extraordinarily busy inner-city constituencies, and they deal with a huge volume of correspondence that is far beyond what, for example, I would expect to receive in my constituency. Those hon. Members reply to all that correspondence by letter, but they get nowhere near the upper limits that other hon. Members find it appropriate to claim. I suspect, although I cannot prove it, that there are widely differing interpretations of the current rules. The starting point should be interpreting the rules consistently and ensuring that the rules are clear. There are instances in which it is appropriate to write on House of Commons notepaper to a particular constituent, because one is aware of something that will affect that constituent directly and one would like their view, which is legitimate parliamentary business. I am equally certain that something that is essentially a party political leaflet in a House of Commons envelope is not an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money. We should be able clearly to distinguish between the two. I do not take the view that annual reports are a waste of time. They communicate directly between hon. Members and their constituents and ensure that constituents are aware of the range and availability of services that Members offer them. However, Members who put out a glossy leaflet on a much more regular basis than an annual report are probably abusing the use of taxpayers’ money for party political aims. It is important to get the balance right and to ensure that the rules are clear. Some Members face difficulties because our allowances system does not properly cater for the variances between the running costs of constituency offices. The most appropriate cost to ring-fence might be that of office rental, because that can differ hugely as between a central London location and somewhere in an extremely rural area. It seems perverse that some Members can spend a large part of their so-called expenses just on ensuring that they have an office available to their constituents while others will pay much less and have more money available for other activities that they undertake. I worry that the rules sometimes seem to be applied in a very arbitrary fashion, not because the Fees Office wants to be arbitrary but because we have failed to provide sufficient and adequate guidance as to what are appropriate expenses.