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

I will not because I have been very generous in giving way, and I think that we have probably heard enough. In many ways, this debate could have been entitled the "Robin Cook Memorial Debate". For me, it was a huge pleasure to work with Robin Cook on parliamentary reform. He was, in my view, the greatest leader that the Labour party never had. That work went back to the disgraceful decision to try to exclude Gwyneth Dunwoody and Donald Anderson from their chairmanships of Select Committees by procedural wranglings, through to the internal processes that we adopted within the parliamentary Labour party that stopped the Executive from handing out Select Committee chairs as booby prizes to sacked Ministers. We had a ridiculous situation—it happened on both sides of the House—in which someone would be removed from Government and, as a consolation prize, given a Select Committee chair and they would then scrutinise the decisions that they had made some months previously. If there is one simple principle to which we should all adhere, it is that we cannot have those who would be scrutinised selecting their own scrutineers, and we certainly cannot have Government Ministers or former Government Ministers scrutinising their own decisions in that way. I am glad that we have moved on from that. In many ways, the changes that we have introduced within the parliamentary Labour party, through our internal elections, are reflected in the Wright Committee's recommendations, and I am delighted that other parties are moving on. It is worth giving more air time to a couple of other issues. I think that the game is up for us, as Members of Parliament, in terms of the validity of many of our procedures. It is time for us to be honest with the public and to say that early-day motions have become a con trick. They are political graffiti, and we sign too many of them. I am guilty of this; indeed, we all are. I sign too many of them; in many circumstances, I sign them to make people who write to me happy. I should be limited on the number of early-day motions that I may sign—we all should. Frankly, if we were allowed to sign only four or five a month, and if a debate on the Floor of the House were automatically triggered if 50, 60 or 70 per cent. of the House signed up to an early-day motion on a suitable cross-party basis, that would be a way in which the public could meaningfully drive the agenda of this place. Of course, we have to do better with petitions. In many ways, the Scottish Parliament is showing the way forward on that issue. What an absurd treatment of a petition and of the thousands of people who sign it to put it in a bag and forget about it. I cannot quite believe that we are having this debate in the 21st century. These reforms should have been introduced 200 years ago—but better late than never. I conclude on a serious point. I am leaving this place in a few weeks' time, but I want to say that this Parliament, of all Parliaments, has been tainted not by the actions of the majority of Members of Parliament who are, on the whole, diligent, hard-working and tremendously committed to the people who they represent, but has been let down by the actions of a minority. This Parliament of all Parliaments needs to show that it is capable of reform, but reform is not 50 recommendations of the Wright Committee, or resolutions tabled by Robin Cook or by Jopling; it is a continuous process, but it has stalled—and for far too long. We now have an opportunity, despite the procedural wranglings, to get the reform agenda back on track and to reconnect this place with the people who sent us here.