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Legislative Process

I commend the Leader of the House for motion 4, on Standing Orders, which will take forward how we deal with legislation in the House. In an earlier intervention, I said that I had heard comments from public and private agencies in Scotland—British organisations that deal with both the Scottish Parliament and Westminster, and can make comparisons. They have concluded that the way in which legislation is handled in Scotland, whether or not it involves a partnership or shared responsibility between Westminster and the Scottish Parliament, is much more efficient and effective and that the quality of the legislation is much higher. That is not because the calibre of the political animal in Scotland is necessarily better, but because the process ensures that evidence is taken and that committees help to shape legislation through their deliberations. Problems of the kind that we have here, whereby legislation is ill prepared and there are lots of late Government amendments, do not happen to anything like the same extent. The Leader of the House’s proposal seems to give us a much better chance of achieving that quality, which would benefit the House, outside agencies wishing to influence legislation, and, ultimately, the Government, who will end up with better laws. There is a demarcation dispute as to who should chair the evidence-taking element of the Committee. The hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who is not in his place, declared his interest as a member of the Speaker’s Panel. I am surprised that relatively few members of the Liaison Committee have taken part in the debate, because they said at a meeting last week that they were somewhat unhappy with some of the proposals, and I would have thought that some might come here to say so. The process of taking evidence is different from that of deliberating on a Bill. It is no disrespect to the excellent members of the Speaker’s Panel to suggest that it is not necessarily where their experience lies, although of course if their job changes their competence will change. It is argued that members of Select Committees who specialise in a particular Department have particular expertise, so the quality and depth of their inquisition is therefore likely to be that much more effective. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) told me informally that when he sat on the ““Puttnam Committee””—a Committee of both Houses that took evidence on the Ofcom legislation—his expertise hugely helped the process of the deliberations and improved the quality of the Bill. I hope that the House will consider and accept the recommendations made by the Modernisation Committee in this respect. I also hope that the Leader of the House, who implied in his response to the hon. Member for Buckingham that he was rather more in favour of the Speaker’s Panel approach, will reflect on the matter, and that we may even have the opportunity to discuss it more fully. I want to speak against motion 7, on September sittings, and in favour of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). Indeed, an amendment of a somewhat similar character stands in my name. It is worth recalling that before the introduction of September sittings, the House was recalled during the summer recess in 1992, 1998, 2001 and 2002. In 2003, when the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) was Leader of the House, he said:"““The hon. Gentleman should note that there was no demand for the House to be recalled over the summer recess. Why? Because everyone knew that we were coming back at the earliest opportunity in September. Year after year, however, there have been almost ritual demands for a recall…The public do not understand how we can be in recess for 13 weeks, as happened with the old model.””—[Official Report, 18 September 2003; Vol. 410, c. 1077.]" The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) gave examples of years in which the recess lasted for 13 weeks. I am not interested in what the media think about what we are doing during those 13 weeks—I am interested in how we can possibly stand up in front of our constituents and say that the important business of questioning Ministers and calling Parliament to account goes on week in, week out, except for 13 weeks when it does not go on at all. I think that most people understand that there is a period in August when hardly any other Parliament in the world sits, other than in extremis. As the then Leader of the House said, Members can hold back for a few weeks if we know that the House is going to be sitting and that we can marshal our arguments before we make our case. It is not credible to suggest that we can do the job that we are elected to do effectively when the House does not sit for 13 weeks at a time. Frankly, I found some of the contrary arguments breathtakingly unbelievable.