Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I think that that question would be more appropriately put to Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who, I hope, can give the hon. Lady the assurance that she seeks. They will be before the House on Thursday 9 September.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I ask my right hon. Friend for a debate, for which legislation clearly provides, but that he seems not to wish to have on the Floor of the House, namely on motion 16 on the Order Paper about the new members of the Electoral Commission? Motion 8 on delegated legislation in his name seems determined to remove the subject from the Floor of the House of Commons, where it was originally intended to be debated. May I invite him to reconsider so that we can have a debate about the new Electoral Commissioners?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Clearly, we want to make progress on appointing the new members of the Electoral Commission. Of course, the House is entitled to scrutinise the proposals that are on the Order Paper, either by debate on the Floor of the House or through the appropriate Committee.

Backbench Business Committee

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing out those restrictions which might preclude the nomination of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) for chair of the committee, unless he was minded to join a larger party for a day.

If colleagues believe that the committee should be accountable to the House, they might wish to resist the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Nottingham North, which would have the committee elected for the whole Parliament.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has tabled an amendment to increase the size of the committee, and I have already dealt with that point. Although I understand the reason behind his amendment, the review may also be able to consider it.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is involved in a historic shift of power to this House that is extremely welcome, but will he consider the balance that needs to be struck between accountability and independence? Members of the Back-Bench business committee may be able to act more courageously and independently if they do not feel under threat of defeat at an election.

[Sir George Young]

I am not sure that I buy that point. The object of the Back-Bench business committee is to reflect the views of the House in selecting the agenda for discussion. I am not sure that a display of heroic independence—to an extent that led the committee away from the centre of gravity of the House—is what the committee should be about.

Motion 4 defines Back-Bench business and provides for the committee to have 35 days at its disposal in the House and in Westminster Hall. This is one of the central recommendations of the report, but it is important to remember the bigger picture. The Wright Committee noted:

“The single greatest cause of dissatisfaction…with current scheduling of legislative business in the House arises from the handling of the report stage of government bills.”

In implementing one part of the Wright report, it is important not to undermine what another part of the same report says. In addition, the Back-Bench business committee is only half of the picture, and we must not lose sight of the progress that we want to see made in the third year of this Parliament on a House business committee. The creation of a House committee—looking at both the scheduling of Government and Back-Bench time as a single entity—will be better able to balance the time more effectively between debates and scrutiny.

I shall explain briefly how the proposals will work. The committee will have a total of 35 days at its disposal, which equates, as the Wright Committee recommended, to about one day per sitting week. The time will be divided between the House and Westminster Hall. The Liaison Committee will have 20 Thursday sittings in Westminster Hall for debates on Select Committee reports, and all other Thursdays will be for business determined by the Back-Bench business committee. Each of these Thursdays will count as half a day towards the total allocation of 35. In a typical Session of about 35 sitting weeks, therefore, the committee will use seven or eight days of its allocation in Westminster Hall debates, and the remainder—about 27 or 28 days—will be taken in the Chamber. Some of that time may be taken in the form of 90-minute topical debates, under Standing Order No. 24A, which will count as a quarter of a day; and I am happy to say that I see no difficulty in accepting amendment (a) to motion 4, which encapsulates the 27 days in the form I just outlined.

It may also be helpful if I say to the House that it is my intention to invite the Procedure Committee to consider whether the sittings in Westminster Hall could be extended to allow for sittings on Monday afternoons. That would provide the Back-Bench business committee with even more flexibility in how it schedules business. In future, it will also be for the Back-Bench business committee, not the Government, to schedule debates on pre-recess Adjournments, on set-piece debates on defence, Welsh affairs and international women’s day, and on topical debates. These decisions will rest entirely in its hands, and just as I am accountable to the House for Government business, so it will be so accountable for Back-Bench business.

Finally on the Wright Committee recommendations, we propose that the operation of the new system should be reviewed at the beginning of the next Session, in late 2011. I recognise that there is concern about the reasoning behind this review, but the object of the review is to enable the House to move forwards, rather than, as some have said, to wind back. There is absolutely no intention to shut down the Back-Bench committee after the first Session. We are committed to establishing a House business committee, dealing with both Government and Back-Bench business, by the third year of this Parliament, so a review of the Back-Bench business committee any later than that would make no sense. I would therefore urge the hon. Member for Nottingham North not to press his amendment deferring the review until the beginning of the next Parliament, which, as I said, will be after the House business committee has been set up.

I shall now deal briefly in turn with each of the remaining motions on the Order Paper.

Business of the House

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady puts forcefully the concern in her constituency. May I suggest that she apply for an Adjournment debate or a debate in Westminster Hall, where the issues she has raised can be tackled in more detail and she can get a response from Ministers? She may have heard what the Chief Secretary announced yesterday, when he outlined his commitment to laying the foundations for recovery by getting the deficit under control—a huge deficit, which we inherited from the outgoing Government.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall the prayer of St. Augustine, which can be paraphrased as, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet”? In that context, will he explain why it will take three years to establish a business committee, a principle for which I welcome his commendation?

[Sir George Young]

The Wright Committee made several propositions and it suggested that they should be implemented in stages. The early recommendation dealt with the Back-Bench business committee—the one on which we plan to make immediate progress. There was a much broader recommendation about a House committee, and it was always envisaged that that would be set up towards the end of the process of implementing the Wright recommendations. We have given a commitment, which did not exist previously, to do that within three years. I hope my hon. Friend will welcome the progress that has been made on that—it is an advance on the position at the end of the previous Parliament.