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

Absolutely. If this was the beginning and not the end of a process, I might feel differently. These proposals, whether they are the recommendation that the Committee presented at the back of its report or the Government motions before us, do not make much difference to me. They are still finite proposals, stating, "We think there should be a Back-Bench business committee, or a House business committee, or election by the whole House of Chairs, or election by the whole House or just by political parties of members of Select Committees." They are tiny, tinkering reforms. If they were part of a much bigger picture of reform, I might spend some time thinking about them. It is not that they do not go far enough; they go nowhere at all, and the danger of then saying, "We have done reform; that is reform over and done with," is so big that I shall vote against the motions before us, because they stop reform in the first place. Interestingly, the Committee started its life as a constitutional reform Committee and very quickly changed its remit to that of a parliamentary reform Committee. I should love to see it carry on. Many of its 18 or 19 members were long-serving Members and experts on constitutional and parliamentary reform. Many have books under their belts on parliamentary reform, and it would have been helpful and much better to gather that experience together. Many of the Committee's members are standing down at the next election, and it would have been helpful if we had started looking at the pros and cons of the separation of powers and the role of political parties. Do we want to strengthen or weaken the role of political parties? Do we think that Parliament supersedes the role of political parties or not? We should look at the pros and cons of those issues in order to take them into the next Parliament.