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Members of Parliament

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing this debate, which will be one of the last of this Parliament. It will be the last time that we three shall stand here together, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like you and I, my hon. Friend came into this place in 1997, and in the next few days we shall all leave it. My hon. Friend has been a committed and assiduous Member of Parliament since his arrival here 13 years ago. I know, from many long nights in this place talking to him, how passionately hard he has worked for his constituents. During his time here he has held a number of posts, including Parliamentary Private Secretary to Baroness Symons when she was Deputy Leader of the Lords and when she was in the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry. He has also served on a number of Select Committees and is currently a member of the Treasury Committee. Tonight my hon. Friend has spoken thoughtfully, knowledgeably and, occasionally, amusingly about the changing role of a Member of Parliament in the 21st century. As he so rightly emphasised, this is a growing role and one that is increasingly scrutinised by organisations such as TheyWorkForYou.com, which is mainly based on the internet. They scrutinise aspects of the role that not everyone would consider to be as important as they do. I agree with my hon. Friend that establishing the purposes of an MP and then deciding the resources, procedure and business balance would be enormously helpful. I well remember my first few days in this place and how overwhelming the role suddenly seemed. As he said, the role broadly has three different responsibilities: holding the Executive to account through membership of Select Committees and through questions; participating in deliberation on legislation; and representing constituents in Parliament. As he so rightly emphasised, the latter has become far and away the larger part of one's job. Hon. Members will know that my husband is a writer. He has recently been writing about Members of Parliament in the 1920s and has been constantly interrupting my work and his to tell me how little they did. He described how many books they managed to read, how much hunting they managed to do and how much time they managed to spend with their families. Things have changed from the days when Members of Parliament would visit their constituencies only once a year and be greeted at the station with flags and celebrations by their constituents. Members now live in their constituencies; most of us spend the majority of our week and of our summer in them. We live in our constituencies because we want to know those constituencies so that we can better represent them. That is a good development, but it also means that the balance of our work here has changed. I passionately believe that the work of a Member of Parliament is extremely important and that before we make decisions about the number of people we have in this place and the way we work, we need to discuss it in a way that we have so far failed to do. The Government have taken the role of the Member of Parliament seriously and the Modernisation Committee has considered some aspects of it, but it has never held an investigation into that specific subject. The work of Members of Parliament has been the subject of much public attention during the past year. That can only increase in the run-up to the general election. One of the things that the Modernisation Committee has done—it did it when I was a member—has been to engage the public more in the work of the House. The launch of the new website last year improved public accessibility to information about the functions of MPs and Parliament. As my hon. Friend rightly said, those functions are not clear and not everyone does the same thing, so there is no real yardstick against which people can measure the work of their Member of Parliament compared with that of others. The Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons' recent report recommended ways in which Parliament could better interact with the public. The Government accepted these recommendations and are committed to engaging the public in the work of Parliament. On 22 February, the House agreed that consideration should be given to a new system whereby petitions from the public could trigger a debate in the House. The House also agreed that during the next Parliament there would be a trial of debates on petitions in Westminster Hall. Members play the crucial role of holding Ministers to account over their proposals to amend or make law. The close and detailed scrutiny of Bills and delegated legislation is invaluable. As my hon. Friend rightly said, the volume of this legislation—in particular the legislation coming in from Europe—needs to be considered. We do not need to be overwhelmed by it, but we must ensure that we have both the time and the resources to cope with it. The introduction of pre-legislative scrutiny has also added to work loads. However, it has made a lot of legislation a great deal better and I welcome it. I welcome the fact that four out of five draft Bills that received pre-legislative scrutiny in the 2008-09 Session were introduced. There are also private Members' Bills, which in some cases allow Members to bring their own policies into law. I know that my hon. Friend has had success with his own private Member's Bill, which became the Co-operatives and Community Benefit Societies Act 2003. That Act has protected charities, housing associations and clubs from asset strippers and it is something of which both this House and he should be proud. Members of Parliament are also responsible for holding the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues to account. That is done daily through written and oral parliamentary questions. As a Minister, I know how important they are in my work load and how much time and thought go into their setting and their answering. The same is true of the departmental Select Committees. Over the past 13 years, the increasing work load and increasing number of subjects to be discussed has led to the establishment of Westminster Hall as a parallel Chamber. That has given hon. Members more opportunities to raise and debate issues of regional significance. The appointment of Regional Ministers—I have the honour of being the Minister for the East of England—and of Regional Select Committees has certainly added to the Government's accountability across the United Kingdom and brought the regions, Whitehall and Westminster closer together. Given all that has been said tonight, the theory and practice of the role of Members of Parliament has grown. In the past 13 years, my hon. Friend has been exemplary in his service to the House and to his constituents. I know that, as we leave this House, many of us are thinking of ways it could have been made better in those 13 years. I personally regret that we did not manage to address the hours of the House sufficiently to make it an attractive place for younger people with families and other commitments. I hope that that will be considered in future, alongside the role of MPs, because in order to do his or her job well, an MP must, by necessity, have a well-rounded family and personal life. It has been a privilege to serve alongside my hon. Friend, and with you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish you well in the future, and, on behalf of the Government, I thank my hon. Friend for his work. Question put and agreed to. House adjourned.