Select Committee on Governance of the House

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I support the motion, and I support the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) being the Chairman of the Committee—and not just because he rather surprisingly said very nice things about me in his excellent book.

I am not really known for being an establishment man, and I signed the motion of no confidence in the previous Speaker, so I am not afraid to put my head above the parapet when the need arises. I did not vote for the current Speaker, either. Usually in elections in which there is a secret ballot, the custom is to go around telling all the candidates that we will vote for them, and then choose one to actually vote for. Before the election of the current Speaker, I decided to go and see him and sat down with him for an hour to tell him all the reasons why I was not going to vote for him.

I certainly do not agree with everything that Mr Speaker does, and I guess I do not particularly agree with the decision on this particular appointment or some of the process around it, which was set out very well by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley). However, for some of my colleagues to use this issue as a Trojan horse to pursue a personal vendetta against the Speaker carries the danger of making them look absolutely ridiculous. I urge them to end that custom now, because it is not getting us very far.

Those who were elected only in 2010 may be forgiven for thinking that the current Speaker is not particularly to their taste—perhaps they have some gripe with him— because they have no one to benchmark him against. Anybody who was in the previous Parliament should know better. Compared with this Speaker, the previous one was an absolute disgrace. In my opinion we do not know how lucky we are to have the current Speaker, despite any faults that he may have, and anyone who uses this issue as an excuse to go after him does not know what they are talking about.

As for the actual role, until this evening I had been rather disappointed by the lack of noise, so to speak, from people on the panel to claim credit for the decision they took. The responsibility seemed to be left to the Speaker, and nobody else on the panel appeared willing to put their head above the parapet and say that it was also their decision. They appeared quite happy to allow all the custard pies to be thrown at the Speaker, rather than taking some of the hits themselves.

As others have said, I think the role should be divided, and I very much agree with the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) who said that two very different skill sets are required for the two parts of the role. It will always be likely that someone who has the skill set to be a good Clerk may not necessarily have the skill set to be a good chief executive, and vice versa. That seems to me perfectly obvious. That does not mean that some people cannot do the joint roles well. We were very lucky to have in Sir Robert Rogers someone who had the charisma and ability to combine those roles particularly well. However, that should not change the fact that on the whole, more often than not we will not find somebody with that combined skill set, which is why I think the role should be changed. I suspect that the panel and the Speaker made the mistake of picking the person they thought would make the best chief executive, and that if they had chosen the person who they thought would make the best Clerk, we would not be in this situation today. The mood of the House is that the Clerk’s role is more important than that of the chief executive, and that should be the primary point.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I intervene only because I had to do a lot of co-operating with the previous Clerk, Sir Robert Rogers, in my capacity as Attorney-General, and I assure the House that the legal knowledge and skills that are required of the Clerk of the House fully justify the salary. It is an immensely complex task, and the House must understand that. At the end of the day, it is not dry; it is what makes this place work or cease to function completely.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend, and given how expert the legal knowledge needs to be, it seems that he was putting in a bid to do the job himself, with his expert legal knowledge.

I will conclude where I started. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on securing the debate. I think that the way forward in the motion is correct, and there is no one better than the right hon. Member for Blackburn to lead the Committee. I had the privilege of serving on the Modernisation Committee under his chairmanship during the last Parliament—I think I was only put on that Committee, along with Sir Nicholas Winterton, because I hated any modernisation. The right hon. Gentleman is the right man to Chair this Committee, and I hope it comes to the conclusion that the role should be divided. I hope that my colleagues will stop using this issue as a Trojan horse to attack a Speaker who we may not always agree with, but who on the whole is doing a very good job.