| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way again. I have no problem with time limits--I hope that we all strive to be concise. My difficulty is that if we constrain too tightly the requirement always to notify the Speaker in writing if one wishes to contribute, the danger will be that hon. Members who might not have thought that they would speak, but who attend the debate and listen to other speeches, may wish to contribute but simply not be able to do so. Would the Leader of the House share my regret if that were ever to be the case?
Mrs. Taylor: It is not a question of excluding people. There is not always high demand to speak in debates, although in many debates there is. If hon. Members have been waiting for a specific debate and have written to the Speaker and prepared in advance, and if they have perhaps not spoken for some time, that should be taken into account. I am not saying that one should not be able to participate in a debate if one has not written to the Speaker; nor is the Modernisation Committee.
Mr. Cash: Occasionally, statements are made--the practice has become frequent in the past few years--on days when there is controversial business. They take up a great deal of time and thus considerably curtail debate on the main business, much to the infuriation of hon. Members who wanted to speak. Some people believe that that has been done deliberately to reduce the length of the main debate. Statements are bound to affect whether Madam Speaker wishes to impose a time limit. Will the right hon. Lady comment on that and on the eight-minute rule, to which she has not yet referred and about which the House can reasonably expect some explanation?
Mrs. Taylor: I will deal with the hon. Gentleman's final point when I come to the changes that require amendments to the Standing Orders. The usual complaint from Opposition Members about statements is that we do not have enough of them. Now we have a complaint that
statements conflict with the desire for longer debates on certain matters. The hon. Gentleman merely illustrates the dilemma that we always face when we consider whether to have a statement on a particular issue. It always has to be a balance between the importance of the statement and the importance and pressure of the debate. Sometimes, statements are moved to protect Opposition days and there is always the possibility that a private notice question may be granted, which can also cut into the time for debate.
The first recommendation of the Committee that involves amendments to the Standing Orders--I hope that Opposition Members who have intervened will welcome this change--is that extra time should be allowed for interventions in short speeches when there is a time limit. If hon. Members are inhibited from giving way during their speech to let other Members make a point, it can inhibit debate and lead to set speeches, with no flexibility. I raised that matter on the Floor of the House when we originally debated the Jopling changes in December 1994 and argued that we should consider the possibility of injury time. The experience since then has shown that there is a very strong case indeed for injury time, but we say that it should be for interventions and not for the full length of any answer; otherwise, it could lead to abuse of the time limit. I hope that the House will agree that there is a strong case for that.
Our next recommendation is that the Speaker should be given discretion to impose a variable time limit on speeches. At the moment, the limit is 10 minutes between certain hours. There may be occasions when that is not the most appropriate limit. For example, in a debate where there is much pressure, but it is not intense, if everyone speaks for 15 minutes, every hon. Member who wants to speak may be able to do so, whereas if someone hogs the debate and takes much longer they will not. That was the reason for the recommendation. We decided on the lower limit of eight minutes, for example, for an order or a prayer after 10 pm, with only one and a half hours for debate, when there is great pressure. We thought that that limit might be useful on some occasions, but we do not envisage its being used frequently--certainly not in the near future. We thought it right to have that option for very short debates.
Another recommendation is that hon. Members who are named by the Chair should lose their parliamentary salary for the period of their suspension and be excluded from the precincts. The latter point was considered by the Committee because it dealt with what we considered a loophole in the rule, which was shown up in the previous Parliament. Our proposal was recommended by the Procedure Committee then.
Standing Orders provide for exclusion from the precincts for those who are suspended for disorder in the Chamber, but not for those suspended for other reasons--for example, following the report from the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges. It is right to be consistent in our approach on those matters. Such a restriction would not prevent hon. Members from carrying out their constituency duties.
The other recommendation that I must mention is the way in which we deal with the old procedure of spying strangers. The Modernisation Committee made a recommendation that would have had consequences that it had not foreseen: a motion could be passed in a well-attended House, and the business could be lost. Also, it was not a motion which could be used on all occasions.
For example, if the House were debating a matter on the Adjournment, the procedure could not be used because there would be no next business.
The Standing Order change that I am suggesting would keep present procedure but dispense with the antiquated--and to some, offensive--wording. A Member would have to move that we should sit in private session, rather than using the words, "I spy strangers." The ability to use such a procedure is an important safety valve for individual Members and provides minimum change while modernising the language. Of course, the procedure could still be used to demonstrate the lack of a quorum if that was what the Member had in mind.
Mr. Sheldon:
We used to have the count--a procedure used to ensure that 40 Members were always present in the Chamber. That was of particular value in ensuring that hon. Members were present and that we did not have the depleted numbers that we have now. The change was one of Dick Crossman's less elegant ideas. At some stage in the future perhaps we might consider some variation on the count to ensure that the House is properly representative of the people who send us here.
Mrs. Taylor:
My right hon. Friend makes a valid point, but, as I said, the procedure can be used to demonstrate whether there is a quorum.
There is only one significant change mentioned in our previous debate on the subject that we have not taken on board. That is whether we should refer to Members by name or by constituency. The Committee felt that we should make no change in that respect. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) said in the previous debate that he wanted constituency references to continue because Members of Parliament are here as representatives of constituents, not in their own right. You, Madam Speaker, have pointed out on occasion that if we referred to each other by name, Members might be more likely to get hot-tempered or carried away.
I think that I have dealt with all the points in the third and fourth reports. I was going to mention the electronic voting report that came out today and progress on other matters. Suffice it to say that, because of the time that I have taken as a result of accepting interventions, I will not detain the House further.
Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire):
I thank the right hon. Lady for her kind words at the beginning of her speech. I look forward to working with her for most of the time, but, inevitably, against her from time to time. I hope to make the transition from debating Eurofighters to debating top hats without too much discontinuity.
I welcome the two reports, which seem to be a sensible, pragmatic approach to reform. It is easy for me to commend the work of the Select Committee because I am
not yet a member of it. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), whose co-operative approach at the beginning of the Committee's agenda helped get it off to a good start. I also commend the Leader of the House for the way in which she chaired the Committee, exhibiting patience when confronted with a wide range of views and distilling them into a consensus.
Like other hon. Members, I got a parliamentary brief on the work of the Modernisation Committee and its reports in my post from Charter 88 a few days ago. I thought that its comments on the work of the Committee were a bit harsh. The ones that caught my eye were: "extremely cautious", "disappointing" and
I certainly prefer this cautious, incremental approach to the roller-coaster approach on constitutional reform with which we are confronted: devolution, the Human Rights Bill, Lords reform, elected mayors, change in the voting system, and all that. If I had to choose between the two approaches, I would back the approach of the Modernisation Committee.
Some of the practical results of the Committee's work already benefit the House: the revised, user-friendly Order Paper; the more comfortable voting arrangements in the Lobbies; the programming of Bills by agreement, with proper respect for Bills of first-class constitutional importance; and more extensive use of pre-legislative scrutiny through a variety of means, some of which the Leader of the House mentioned. There is also clearer information about proposed legislation. The Committee already has a lot of good work to its credit.
All Governments have occasionally found it necessary to make changes to the workings of the House. Our approach to reform should be guided by some principles. We should support sensible evolutionary reform, provided that it does not weaken the power of Parliament or the chain of accountability that links the elector and his or her elected representative and the ability to question and hold in check the Executive. It must not weaken, but enhance, the esteem in which the House is held and achieve practical improvement in the task of the House to scrutinise and make laws. It must help us to communicate with the nation and provide a focus for the concerns of the nation. As Bagehot said, it must allow Parliament
On the fourth report, I was struck by a sentence in paragraph 7, which states:
"minor amendments to existing practice".
However, paragraph 2 of the fourth report makes it clear that the reports are an initial response, focusing on areas where immediate action can be taken. Charter 88 should suspend its judgment for three or four years until it can consider the work of the Committee in the round.
"to be the cockpit of the whole life of English politics which is action and reaction between the Ministry and the Parliament."
I turn briefly--I accept the representations about short speeches--to the third report, I acknowledge that there is a tension between the sessional cut-off and the proposals for better scrutiny of Bills. I also accept that it is right to resolve it by easing the sessional cut-off in certain circumstances. To use another analogy, we are extending the runway way for worthier, slower-moving Bills so that they can achieve take-off and not abort. I welcome the safeguards that the Leader of the House mentioned in her opening remarks. It is sensible for the usual channels to determine eligibility, and to have an experimental period before finalising procedure.
"Ultimately it will be for the authority of the Chair, and the confidence which every Member should have in any Speaker, rather than the changes of procedure and practice which we are proposing, which will determine the regard in which the House is held and the effectiveness of its proceedings."
There is much common sense in that. Anyone who has played football knows that it is not what the rules say, but what the referee decides, that is often crucial in determining a result.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |