The Committee deliberated.

Draft Report [Programming of Legislation and Timing of Votes], proposed by the Chairman, brought up and read.

Draft Report, proposed by Sir George Young, brought up and read, as follows:

"Summary

 1. We are unable to agree with the proposals in the Chairman's draft Report on Programming of Legislation and Timing of Votes. Over the past three years, all the members of the Committee have worked together on proposing changes to the procedures in the House. Our objective has been to enhance the way the House approaches its primary tasks of legislative scrutiny and holding the Government to account; and, up to now, all members have contributed to the production of unanimous reports.

 2. At times, we have done so with some misgivings; our view has been that Parliament needs strengthening of its ability fully to examine all Government Bills, secondary legislation and resolutions. But we recognise that it was right to review how the House operates and that, where possible, the Committee should proceed by agreement.

 3. We are however concerned at the way Parliament, over the years, has been marginalised and bypassed - a process which has accelerated in recent years. We believe that the terms of trade between Parliament and Executive need to be tilted back towards Parliament.

 4. But the proposals in the paper make it yet easier for Government to get its legislative programme through the House and, in so doing, lessen rather than encourage proper and adequate scrutiny.

 5. The proposals on the programming of legislation do not recognise that the Government has a role to play in improving the operation of the House by reducing the sheer volume of often badly-drafted legislation. Instead of this, they promote an acceleration of the current process, making it easier for Government to get its legislative programme through the House and, in so doing, lessen the prospect of adequate scrutiny and making the constitutional duty of Opposition more difficult. We make some proposals of our own which are more in keeping with the House's traditions of evolutionary change.

 6. The proposals on the timing of legislation are manifestly for the convenience of Government supporters; but the procedures of the House are not primarily aimed at being family-friendly but rather at enabling the House properly to carry out its duties. These proposals will heighten the cynicism of the political process.

 7. The Chairman's draft Report suggests that the proposals are "a further incremental change in the way in which the House works". Not only is this entirely unsubstantiated, but we see them as a missed opportunity to reassert the duty of Parliament to provide better opportunities to hold Government to account.

Programming of Legislation

 8. We recognise the pressure from many Members, embodied in the representations made by Anne Campbell, for changes in the hours of the House. The Chairman's draft Report explores whether Parliamentary business can be arranged in such a way as to ensure greater certainty in the time at which votable business finishes and therefore in the time when Members can go home.

 9. We have no interest whatsoever in unnecessary protracted sittings of the House. They risk making the House look ridiculous. The four Conservative members of the Committee spent 72 collective years between 1979 and 1997, being kept in the House far later and more often than has happened in this Parliament, by Members who, now they are in Government, press reform on them.

 10. As we have agreed in the past, we accept that there should be changes which minimise the need for late night sittings, compatible with proper scrutiny. The Finance Bill committee stages, for example, used to take place on the floor of the House, whereas now they are mostly taken in Standing Committee.

 11. However, the Chairman's draft Report wholly fails to analyse the reasons why the House has recently been sitting late. It therefore tackles the symptoms, without diagnosing the cause. It proposes less time for the process of scrutiny, and for the responsible role of opposition at a time when more time needs to be allocated to scrutinising legislation and statutory instruments.

 12. Not only does the draft Report fail to look at the causes; but it does not examine alternative solutions such as rearranging the Parliamentary year to see whether an earlier rising of the House might be accommodated with the loss of a week or two of the recesses. Instead, it focuses on one particular solution which has the consequence of restricting debate within the Chamber.

 13. Contrary to what is sometimes asserted, the reasons why the House has been sitting late are not because the Opposition has needlessly prolonged debate. Annex A contains a detailed analysis of those occasions where the House has taken substantive business after 10pm. It shows that the principal reason for sitting late is the sheer volume of business tabled by the Government - not protracted discussion by the Opposition. Annex A, which is detailed, is summarised for convenience in Annex B.

 14. This increase in the number and complexity of the Government Bills has been widely commented on. Madam Speaker says in her letter (Appendix 1) "As background to that observation, I note that Government legislation introduced in this House or brought from the House of Lords in the current session to date comprises a total of 2537 pages (excluding consolidation bills). The equivalent figure for the long 1997-98 session was 1901, and for session 1998-99 was 1590."

 15. This is further substantiated in the June 2000 Constitution Unit Bulletin under the headline "Legislative Logjam." "But the originators of the logjam are the Government. They plan each session's legislative programme in Cabinet committee, which is where collective discipline has broken down. Bills are allowed into the legislative programme which are insufficiently prepared, and then subjected to rafts of government amendments as they go through Parliament...If Mr Blair is serious about joined up government he could start by giving more authority and support to the Legislative Policy Committee of his own Cabinet. That is where collective responsibility and discipline need to be exercised, by detecting and blocking inadequately prepared bills; not by leaving the mess to be sorted out later by Parliament."

 16. The point was well made by Gwyneth Dunwoody on June 28th when she asked the Leader of the House "which half of her legislative programme she is thinking of abandoning" so the House could rise for the Recess. (Col 714. June 28th)

 17. Not only is the legislative programme too unwieldy; it has been poorly managed. The Disqualifications Bill was rushed through the House of Commons in January, but has only had first reading in the House of Lords. The Freedom of Information Bill had its first reading in the House of Lords on 6 April and has not progressed beyond second reading on April 20th. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, which the Home Office would like to be on the statute book before the summer recess, has had one day in committee in the Lords on 11 May and is not due to be discussed until after the summer recess. This may cast doubt about the rules under which the next General Election will be fought.

 18. A bill that was promised in the Queen's Speech has now been abandoned. "Legislation will be introduced to improve the education of children with Special Educational Needs." But it has not been.

 19. Problems arising from the volume of legislation have been compounded by poor drafting. Inadequate recognition has been given of the need to draft bills properly so that the best use is made of the House's time. The parliamentary draftsmen have a finite capacity to draft bills, and if they are asked to do too much, a price is paid by devoting time to amendments as the bills goes through; occasionally, fresh primary legislation is required in a later session.

 20. The Financial Services and Markets Bill returned to this House from the Lords with 675 amendments, of which only 15 were non-Government amendments.

 21. On March 2nd, the Government dropped the water and telecommunication sections of the Utilities Bill, despite having claimed to have consulted industry before introducing the Bill.

 22. As Lord Alexander of Weedon said in his Constitution Unit lecture on June 28th, "And in many cases the Government has used the legislative process to tidy up bills which were defective because the hard-pressed Parliamentary draftsmen and women had insufficient time to do their highly skilled and increasingly complex work."

 23. To cope with this growing workload, the guillotine is being used more frequently than in previous administrations to drive the programme through. This is shown in Annex C. So far this Parliament, 18 bills have been guillotined, more than the 17 in the six Major years.

 24. These underlying causes of the congestion in the business of Parliament are neither discussed nor addressed in the Chairman's draft Report. Instead, it proposes a supposedly more "efficient" procedure. This would process the same volume of ill-considered legislation more quickly and with greater certainty, much to the benefit of the Government. Further, the paper proposes constructing this entirely new edifice on fragile and untested foundations.

 25. So far, the agreed programmes which form the central feature of the draft Report have neither been extensively tested, nor have they been an unqualified success. And of course all programme motions, whether agreed or not, have the potential to limit the rights of backbenchers who are not party to the agreements to have their amendments debated.

 26. As Madam Speaker has said, "Their success is ensuring that all parts of a bill are properly considered has perhaps been more mixed." The Chairman of Ways and Means goes further. "If then the justification for programming is that it allows debating time to be spread or rationed so that all parts of a bill can get appropriate attention, observation from the Chair would lead me to conclude that this outcome has not been frequently achieved...Later he says, "However, I ought to say in parenthesis that the evidence for how the new arrangements have worked in practice is thin."

 27. Annex C to the Chairman's draft Report shows how often sections of bills that have been programmed have not been discussed. Of the programme motion on the Northern Ireland Bill, the paper states (para 2) "By then the available time had run out, and Clause 2 was disposed of without further debate, and Clauses 3 to 9 and the Schedule to the Bill without any debate." Of the programme motion on the Transport Bill, the paper states (para 5), "42 groups of amendments were selected by the Chair; 11 of them were debated, but 31 (of which 4 consisted of minor and drafting amendments) were not reached."

 28. The supplementary guillotine motion for the Lords amendments to the Representation of the People Bill allowed two hours for debate on the motion and on the Lords amendments. Four groups of amendments were debated but eight were not.

 29. Yet on these modest, short-lived and not wholly satisfactory foundations, a whole new edifice for programming all bills is to be constructed.

 30. We believe, as an alternative, that the Opposition should continue to agree programme motions for the remaining stages of controversial bills, as with the Local Government Bill [Lords] on July 4th and 5th, and the Transport Bill last month. This can ensure that debates on the important issues take place in prime time and give the House more experience of agreed programme motions.

 31. We have no objection to a Standing Committee Business Sub-committee deciding how a Standing Committee stage of a Bill should be organised, if it sets out to ensure that all parts of the bill are able to be considered.

 32. We also suggest that, where agreements on progress of the business of the House are arrived at through the usual channels, these should be more widely known and at the earliest possible moment. This will bring benefit both to those inside and outside the House, and keep the flexibility that these arrangements have over the rigidity of a time-table motion.

 33. We believe that this offers a better way forward, in the tradition of evolutionary progress, than the proposals in the draft Report. These one-sided proposals contain no recognition that the Government should make a contribution in return for the great benefits that the draft report proposes to give the Government. It should be remembered that improvements or amendments to procedure have only worked when they have had the assent of all parties in the House. It is not the role of a responsible Opposition to validate proposals which accelerate an over-ambitious and badly drafted legislative programme.

Timing of Votes

 34. When one considers the timing of divisions, the proposal to defer those votes which normally take place after 10 pm until the following Wednesday must be immensely attractive to the Government. But helping Government at the expense of the Opposition and at times of their own backbenchers is not the intention of the procedure of the House. The proposals would certainly be convenient for those who want to vote in the afternoon in midweek, without the related inconvenience of being anywhere near a debate after 10 pm.

 35. While we see the attractions, from the Government's point of view, of deferring votes on the motions as set out in para 32 of the Chairman's draft Report, we find the arguments on the other side more powerful.

 36. One of the principal purposes of the Chamber is to debate and then come to a decision. The concept of Members voting once a week on a whole range of different and important issues that have been discussed on the previous four sitting days, when they may not even have been in the House, is insupportable. The absolute divorce of decision from discussion in the method proposed, for the convenience of government supporters, will heighten cynicism about the relevance of debate and discussion, and undermine confidence in the parliamentary process.

 37. The two arguments used to establish that votes can be delayed from after the immediate debate do not support the major change of voting proposed in the report.

 38. On debates on Estimates, if the day is divided to deal with two reports and there is a motion requiring a division which would normally be taken at 7 pm, this can be postponed under standing orders until 10 pm, a delay of only three hours.

 39. So far as amendments during committee or report are concerned, where amendments in different parts of the bill are grouped for debate, one of those amendments may not be voted on until the part of the bill relevant to the amendment is reached. However, that is usually later in the same day, during the proceedings on that bill.

 40. Neither of these two "precedents" begins to justify the proposed postponement of divisions to a "mass vote-in" on a Wednesday. That a similar procedure might have been adopted in other Parliaments has never been a reason for Westminster to copy it; and, in any event, we note the comment of Martin Westlake on page 202 of A Modern Guide to the European Parliament: "This detachment from debate on the one hand, and grouping (of votes) on the other, inevitably removes the climactic element from parliamentary debate and makes the Parliament seem like a voting machine."

 41. The proposal would further aggravate two existing problems and create some new ones. First, it will diminish attendance and interest in the Chamber; the casual attender of the debate after 10 pm will often raise points of interest which can destabilise the Minister and occasionally give rise to a division.

 42. Second, it must make it yet easier for the Government to get even more secondary legislation through parliament, when there is a need for the Government to be challenged more often - a point forcefully made by the Liaison Committee's recent report, Shifting the Balance: Select Committees and the Executive.

 43. It will create new problems; the deferral of a vote on a matter discussed on a Wednesday evening until the following Wednesday will delay the implementation of decisions taken by Parliament. Urgent decisions, which could not wait for days, would have to be taken forthwith at the commencement of business. Prime time for debate will therefore be taken up by a series of conventional votes.

 44. Divorcing the vote from the debate also further reduces the likelihood of Member's being influenced in their voting behaviour by what is actually said in debate. If there is a substantial gap between a debate in which the Government has come in for criticism from its own side and the actual vote, then there is time for the Government whips to bring the dissenters to heel.

 45. The suggested arrangements for deferred votes are described as analogous to the procedure used for private Members' bills ballots. We do not accept the analogy. The private Members' bills ballot requires a Member to register only once and registration may take place at any time during sitting hours on two consecutive days. (Erskine May sets out these procedures on page 495.) This is a ballot; not the passing of legislation.

 46. Under the proposals in the Chairman's draft Report, there would, potentially, be many questions upon which Members would be required to record their votes. It is envisaged that a voting sheet would be prepared for Members to complete, but the report does not clarify how each question would be described on the sheet in order to ensure there was no confusion amongst Members as to the issues upon which they were voting.

 47. A string of divisions in the House could interrupt the period of recording of votes. Members could find themselves in a position where they had taken part in a debate but the vote was deferred until a day when they were absent on, for example, select committee business.

 48. The related proposal that all programme motions introduced under the Committee's proposals should contain provisions that proceedings on any particular day should be concluded at about 10 pm (or 7 pm on a Thursday) has important consequences that have not been fully thought through.

 49. At the moment, report stages frequently occupy time between 10 pm and midnight - and occasionally later. For example, the report stage of the Learning and Skills Bill, which was completed in one sitting day beginning at 4.18 pm, lasted until 12.41 am; and the first of the two days spent on remaining stages of the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill lasted from 3.43 pm to 11.34 pm.

 50. If that time is to be foregone by curtailing debate at 10 pm, and bills are still to be properly scrutinised, then either the House will have to sit for longer in the year; or there will have to be fewer bills. Neither option is put forward for consideration, so the proposal will simply further curtail discussion on Government bills.

 51. For these reasons, we cannot commend the Chairman's draft Report and its proposals to the House.