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House of Commons Reform

My personal view is that it would be a Committee for all business of the House. I believe that we scrutinise expenditure extraordinarily badly. On the days on which we are supposed to deal with estimates, the one thing we do not discuss is the estimates. It is extraordinary that we devote a minimal amount of time, with minute participation, to eye-wateringly large amounts of taxpayers' money. That is what we are there to scrutinise on those days, but we do such a poor job of it. That problem is not fully addressed in the Committee's report. It does deal with control of Select Committees, which is an important issue, but, in the great scheme of things, not the most important issue. However, it is certainly something on which we should make progress. Private Members' business is important, as it is about re-establishing the respect for the role of the individual Member in the House and for the idea that we are here as legislators and we have things to say on behalf of our constituents. It is for Parliament to determine whether what we have to say is relevant in the wider statute book, rather than for a single member of the Government—a Whip—to shout "Object" and ruin many months of detailed work. The report has produced a draft resolution for the consideration of the House, so the question is this: why on earth are the Government not simply putting that draft resolution before the House? They said that that was a matter of urgency, but they have dillied and dallied for weeks. They have written to me and to the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara), the shadow Leader of the House, whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber, and asked what we think about the matter. It is not for me alone to think about those issues, but for the House to think about them. I believe that that resolution should be put before the House and that we should have a debate on it, because there is still detailed work to be done on making changes to Standing Orders if the House agrees to the draft resolution, as I hope it will. The most important issue before the House is how we make Parliament work effectively. It is a matter of urgency, of massive import and cannot be delayed. There was a Roman senator—I believe it was Cato the Censor—who used to finish every debate with "Carthago delenda est": Carthage must be destroyed. If I had the same discipline, I would end every speech with "Standing Order No. 14 delenda est". We must remove that Standing Order to give back control of this House to its Members, not the people who serve as Ministers, who should not have that responsibility.