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

No. I have given way to my hon. Friend once, and I want to continue my speech. Reform, however, is a process, not an event, and we claim only to have made a start. The three matters that we were directed to examine—appointments to Select Committees, the scheduling of business, and public initiation of proceedings—had long been recognised as requiring attention, but they also raised fundamental issues about the role of Parliament to which we sought to apply consistent principles. For example, in relation to Select Committees, we concluded that it could not be right for the House's scrutiny Committees to continue to be chosen, directly or indirectly, by those whom they were charged with scrutinising, hence our recommendation for election of Chairs by the whole House and members by their parties. That would not only remove some of the problems that have caused difficulty in the past, but would—more significantly, in my view—give a positive boost to the profile and authority of the Committees themselves. In case anyone is worried that our proposal is too radical, we remind the House in our report that in the 18th century members were elected to Select Committees by secret ballot, with Members placing their preferred names in large glasses on the table. In relation to the business of the House, we concluded that it could not be right for a sovereign Parliament to have its business controlled so completely by the Executive, as enshrined in those stark words of Standing Order No. 14. As we say in our report, that both demonises Governments and infantilises Members, hence our recommendation for a Back-Bench business committee to take responsibility for non-ministerial business, and for a House business committee to construct an agreed programme of business, ministerial and non-ministerial, to be put to the House for its approval. A Back-Bench business committee would not only reclaim for the House what had been lost and rightly belonged to it, but provide a mechanism enabling the House to introduce imaginative innovations to the way in which it organised non-ministerial business. Similarly, a House business committee would want to ensure that all legislation received proper scrutiny, which, as we all know, is not the case at present. Thirdly, in relation to the public initiation of proceedings, we concluded that representative democracy could be strengthened if the public had a more active role in our proceedings, hence our recommendation for an improved petition system and for further work on public initiatives. We also suggest a mechanism whereby Members can give their support to propositions which, if sufficiently endorsed, can trigger motions for debate and decision.