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Chair (Terminology)

I am sorry that I was not able to take part in last week's debate about these issues, but I have read it with care. I rise to speak, briefly, only because I share the universal view of Members that it is important to do everything that we can to increase the public's confidence in the House. However, I must confess to a degree of scepticism about the contribution that all the changes will make to that process, even if they are all carried, and I think that many, if not all, will be. The public's confidence will increase when they believe and have evidence that their top priorities are also ours. That brings me to my concerns about the variety of proposals before the House. My first concern relates to motion 7 and amendment (a), to which the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who has just spoken, directed most of his remarks. Reading the Wright Committee report and last week's debate, I was struck forcibly by the degree to which the context and culture of the proposals are, first, rooted in most Members' experience of the House: one in which the Government of the day have a comfortable majority; and—with deep respect to members of the minority parties—one in which there are not so many minority parties and few non-party Members. That might not be the structure of the next House of Commons, and nothing says that it is compelled to be the structure of future Houses, either. Further to the structure of and voting power in the House, the second point that runs culturally through the proposals is an assumption of understanding and co-operation between all players. That will be absolutely crucial if a business committee is to work, whether it is a Back-Bench business committee or a House business committee. However, having served on a House Committee, as only one or two other participants in our debate have, I do not share the assumption and confidence of all those who spoke in last week's debate that such understanding and co-operation is a given. That brings me to my second concern. I have as much experience as anybody—certainly anybody in the Chamber today—of introducing reform to the House in the teeth, sometimes, of vociferous opposition, and I have learned that it is best to proceed by experiment. I have no quarrel with motion 7 or the establishment of a Back-Bench committee at whatever point, but, although I know that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome made amendment (a) the touchstone of whether one is for reform, I am concerned about the House carrying it without any experience in a different Parliament of how a Back-Bench committee would work. I suspect, with deep respect to the motives and content of the observations made in our opening debate on the business motion, that we could see every week of the next Parliament dominated by a wrangle—not necessarily a good-tempered wrangle—about what the business of the House should be. That would not do anything to enhance our standing in the eyes of the public. I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to allow all this to go through with a claim that it is the best thing since sliced bread, particularly—I say this with the greatest possible deference and respect to all hon. Members who have taken part in these debates—when so many of the voices that are heard are those of Members who do not intend to be here in the next Parliament and will not have to pick up the pieces.