1. It was rather more than two years ago, on 4 June 1997, that we were appointed with a wide ranging remit "to consider how the practices and procedures of the House should be modernised". As this Parliament approaches its halfway point, we thought it would be valuable to the House to give a progress report on what has been accomplished to date and to indicate what still remains to be done. Of the 56 recommendations we have made, 47 have been approved by the House and implemented either in full or in part (two of them are matters for Madam Speaker's discretion).

2. The Annex to this Report sets out in detail the recommendations made in our various Reports and the extent to which they have been implemented. They cover a wide range of areas, some major, others technical and detailed. Underlying them all, however, we have sought to pursue a consistent theme, that of enabling the whole House more effectively to carry out its functions of legislating, debating major issues, and holding the Executive to account, while at the same time seeking to ensure that individual Members were able to make better use of their time.

3. We were specifically charged as a first priority with improving the legislative process. We have sought to achieve this in four principal ways:

—  more pre-legislative scrutiny of draft bills by select committees or joint committees of both Houses;

—  the use of programme motions agreed through the usual channels rather than imposed guillotines;

—  the carry over from one Session to another by agreement of certain bills; and

—  the introduction of full explanatory notes for bills written in plain English.

The House has now resolved to carry over the Financial Services and Markets Bill into the coming Session, but it is too early to draw any conclusions from this. In all other respects the House will have had a chance to judge whether these reforms taken as whole have improved the way in which legislation is scrutinised from the quality of the final product.

4. Quite apart from United Kingdom primary legislation, major changes have begun to be implemented in the process of scrutiny of European legislation. The European Legislation Committee has been replaced by the European Scrutiny Committee with enlarged terms of reference, and despite some practical difficulties the number of European Standing Committees has been increased. The number may need to be reviewed in future.

5. The National Parliament Office in Brussels, which acts as a forward observation post for the House and as the eyes and ears of the European Scrutiny Committee acting on behalf of the House, opened on 18 October.[1]

6. There still remains the important topic of United Kingdom secondary legislation. By agreement the initial work on this will be undertaken shortly by the Procedure Committee, and we will await their conclusions with interest.

7. So far as the debating process is concerned, some long outdated and archaic practices, such as the wearing of top hats to catch the Speaker's eye to raise points of order in divisions, have been done away with, and greater flexibility has been given over limitations on the length of speeches. Members' constituencies, as well as their names, are now shown on the annunciators. The experiment with a parallel chamber in Westminster Hall, which will start next Session, will provide many more opportunities for backbenchers to raise matters of concern to them and their colleagues for which there is simply no time at the moment. The Wednesday morning backbench adjournment debates (except the three-hour pre-recess debates) will be transferred to Westminster Hall.

8. The Westminster Hall experiment will also extend the House's ability to call the Executive to account, since there will be regular debates on the reports of select committees, fewer than ten per cent of which are currently debated. The House rightly expects its select committees to be the principal means by which detailed scrutiny of the work of Government Departments can be undertaken, and it is essential that the House itself should be able to pronounce on their findings. The expansion of the work of the European Scrutiny Committee to include both pre- and post-Council evidence sessions is an important additional means of ensuring that the House keeps a watchful eye on Ministers' actions in Brussels.

9. Our proposals for revised sitting hours on Thursdays, which the House has agreed should be extended for a further year's experiment, have enabled Members to redress the balance between their duties to the House and to their constituents. The House has been able to debate significant business on Thursdays, but most Members have been able to spend a full Friday in their constituencies if they wished to do so.

10. In addition to all these changes designed to improve the effectiveness of the House and its individual Members, a new style Order Paper has been introduced, which has been greatly welcomed. We have reached agreement with the Procedure Committee in the House of Lords on a revised format for bills and Acts of Parliament.[2] The new format takes account of the requirements of new technology and of the work of the Inland Revenue Tax Law Rewrite Project, which both Houses have endorsed in order to make tax laws easier to understand.

11. Members have been given an informal opportunity to consider some form of electronic voting, but expressed no clear preference for any alternative. This is still a matter of considerable interest, which has been added to by the experience of electronic and timed voting in the Scottish Parliament. We have discussed this matter a number of times but may wish to revisit it.

12. We are conscious that this programme of work has produced a mixed response in the House. Some Members feel that the process of reform outlined above has gone far enough (some indeed suggest too far), while others, we are aware, regard what has been achieved as merely tinkering at the edges of the far more radical reforms needed. We have sought, however, to reach consensus where possible, and to provide for experimental and evolutionary change rather than an enforced revolution. We remain of the view that this approach is broadly acceptable and accepted.

13. We propose for example that there should now be a systematic review of the legislative reforms already introduced with a view to seeing what changes, if any, are needed. We shall in particular be looking at the relationship between standing and select committees and at ways in which their work might be better integrated and the pressure on the time of Members eased. Once the Procedure Committee has reported, we shall see what changes are needed in the scrutiny of delegated legislation.

14. We are conscious that the Procedure Committee has just produced a report on financial procedures which may have a considerable impact on select committees. We are also aware that the Liaison Committee is currently looking at the full range of relationships between select committees and the Executive, and that the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government has appointed a commission on the scrutiny role of Parliament. We do not wish to duplicate their work, but we intend to play our full part in strengthening the House's proper role in holding the Executive to account.

15. We shall monitor the Westminster Hall experiment closely, and in particular the effect it may have on the Chamber itself. If the experiment is successful we shall examine ways in which it might be extended. That in turn would enable us to look again at the structure of both the Parliamentary week and the Parliamentary year.

16. The House will be affected not only by reforms to its own practices and procedures but also by changes elsewhere, most notably the establishment of devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales and the reform of the House of Lords. As a first step the House debated the Procedure Committee's report on the consequences of devolution on 21 October. Our proposals will need to take appropriate account of these and other developments.

17. We would welcome the views of Members, both on how the reforms we have recommended so far are working in practice and on other matters to which we might usefully turn our attention in the coming Session.