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Legislative Process

The value of a special Committee lies in the fact that an organisation that had produced such evidence could be challenged by Committee members to justify it. As we all know, not everything that organisations say is entirely accurate or, indeed, entirely true. If Back Benchers believe that Bills will be changed in the light of proper evidence, much more constructive work will be done when proposals are presented to Committees. At present Back Benchers in both Houses do not believe that a Bill can be easily altered once it is in Committee, so they tend to ““go through the motions””. Standing Committees are hugely important to the making of laws. They are not given much of the limelight of publicity, but they engage hours of people’s time, and what emerges from them is the law that we have made. That is one of the most important things that we do as Members of Parliament. If we do not believe that we can change what we do in any way, it is hardly surprising that Members themselves sometimes become disengaged from the legislative process. When I visit schools and am asked what I do as a Member of Parliament, I say, ““Well, Members of Parliament make the laws.”” Part of our problem is that to most, if not all, members of the public, the process is not understandable. They therefore do not understand how they can influence the way in which we make laws, although they care passionately about some of the proposals that we may or may not advance. We talk of disengagement from our democracy. We cannot engage with the public unless what we do is seen to be transparent, and unless the public feel that they can play a part other than by electing us once every four years. Most people currently believe that that is the only way in which they can influence what happens. Like other Members, I receive hundreds of requests to sign early-day motions every year. Recently I have been receiving even more, generated by postcard and e-mail campaigns—initiated, usually, by lobby groups. The public understand what signing an early-day motion means, and they believe that it has an impact on what happens in this place. That is not entirely true, of course: thousands of early-day motions are signed each year, and few of them have any influence at all. Nevertheless, the public understand what is meant by asking a Member of Parliament to sign an early-day motion. The special Committee system will enable my constituents, some of whom have considerable personal and expert experience in particular fields, to contribute to the passage of legislation. Presumably they will able to submit written evidence and be called to give evidence on matters of which they have special knowledge. They will see that as a real, understandable way of contributing to debates on legislation and to the parliamentary process, enabling them to connect with this place. That can only be good for us and for democracy. I believe that modernisation must be about changing our procedures, making them more transparent to allow wider engagement with the public. That, for me, is the modernisation agenda, and these proposals for change are an important step along the modernisation road. I am very interested in the citizenship curriculum. In my constituency, teachers are doing excellent work. Many schools have school councils, and the children are involved in projects. We have an active youth council. Only last week I attended a meeting with some young people to discuss transport with representatives of the Greater Manchester passenger transport authority and Stagecoach. The young people made very interesting comments, having spent a great deal of time thinking about what they wanted to say. The problem then was where to take the concerns that they had raised, and where they perceived those concerns to have been taken. It is disappointing that a recent Ofsted report referred to a poor national standard of teaching in schools. That is not my experience in the constituency. It cannot be right for young people to leave school with excellent A-levels or GCSEs and no idea how our democracy works, but it is not enough for us to ask for higher standards of teaching if the young people to whom I talked on the youth council do not know how to contribute their comments to the democratic process. The two things that we must do should go hand in hand. We have to offer engagement to the public, and also ask for the standard of citizenship teaching in our schools to improve.