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Report from the House of Commons Reform Committee on Rebuilding the House

This is not going to be a whipped vote; it will be a free vote. If people want to accept advice from dear friends and colleagues of any political party, they can do so, but the serious point here is that this will not be a whipped vote. I should also point out that in some of the votes to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred, he will have seen that different members of the Government went into a different Lobby and, indeed, different members of the Whips Office went into a different Lobby, so the fact that there might be lively debate at the entrance to the Lobby does not mean votes are not free votes. I want it to be absolutely clear that, from our side, this will be a free vote, not a whipped vote, and there is nothing mysterious about that. I want to set out to the House my views, in particular on the four key recommendations of the House of Commons Reform Committee. Before the general election, I want us to have done the following: to have approved and put in place plans to elect Chairs of Select Committees by secret ballot and to elect members of Select Committees by each party in the House by a secret ballot; to have provided for Members' motions, where Members can table a debate on a motion that the House will vote on; and to have established a Committee of the House to decide on Back-Bench business. Those are the four key recommendations of the House of Commons Reform Committee that I would like the House to take through. These measures will mark a major step forward in the process of reform that has been under way over the past years, and which was given new impetus by the Prime Minister in his statement of 3 July 2007, when he said:""All Members of this House and all the people of this country have a shared interest in building trust in our democracy, and it is my hope that, by working together for change in a spirit that takes us beyond parties and beyond partisanship, we can agree a new British constitutional settlement that entrusts more power to Parliament and the British people."—[Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 815.]" This process of reform has—