Sittings of the House

Joan Ruddock Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Knight]

That is certainly true; I think we are all aware of that. It may not be a matter of any moment for Opposition Members, but, if the House were to decide to sit earlier on a Tuesday, it would in effect scupper many ministerial visits to different parts of the country during the daytime. Opposition Members might not be bothered about that now, but there might come a time when it does matter to them.

To return to the process, if the Tuesday motion on retaining the status quo falls, I understand that the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) will then move motion 4, which I have also signed, recommending that our sitting hours on a Tuesday change to mirror those currently in force on a Wednesday.

I understand also that if the right hon. Lady is successful and the motion is passed, she might also move motion 9, at the end of this business on the Order Paper, recommending that private Members’ Bills be taken on a Tuesday evening after 7 pm. I have considerable sympathy for the House looking at whether we move the time for debate on private Members’ Bills, but, if her motion becomes eligible to move, I ask her again to reflect on not doing so—for five reasons.

The Procedure Committee has resolved to undertake a full report into private Members’ Bills and the procedure relating thereto. I have also been to see the Leader of the House, because it is important that the House, at an early date, decides whether it wishes private Members’ Bills to continue on a Friday or to move to another day of the week—not necessarily a Tuesday.

I am pleased to say that the Leader of the House accepted the strength of the necessity for an early decision on the matter, and he made it clear to me that he intends to provide time for the Backbench Business Committee, either in the September spill-over or shortly thereafter, when I hope that the Committee will allocate a debate for that purpose. So we have had a promise of time to debate the question of when we deal with private Members’ Bills, and it should be a wider one than just, say, moving them from Friday to Tuesday; the House should debate whether to take such Bills on a Wednesday—perhaps even a Thursday might be an option—or keep them where they are on a Friday.

There are consequences of just moving such Bills from a Friday to a Tuesday, not least that such business will be more likely to attract a payroll Whip if the Government of the day find it unpalatable.

[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman indicates that the payroll vote may become a factor in any consideration of private Members’ Bills, but it would apply whenever such Bills were debated, and there are of course other mechanisms that Governments use to talk them out on a Friday. Specifically, will his thinking encompass running such Bills parallel to the sittings of the Chamber, or are we talking solely about putting them on at the end of regular business?

[Mr Knight]

As the Procedure Committee has only just resolved to look into the matter, I would not want to cut off any avenue of discussion. I think that it will be happy to look at both suggestions—[Interruption.]

I know that one other aspect of the matter which the Committee wants to look at is the steps that we take to reduce the likelihood of just two or three Members completely destroying a Bill that has the support of many. There are various ways of doing so, one of which is to put the Question on a private Member’s Bill’s Second Reading after a certain amount of time has elapsed, rather than Members having to get 100 people here to vote in the affirmative.

So we are seeking to be helpful; we have been promised an early debate about the matter; and on that basis I hope that the House will be prepared to wait until September for a wide-ranging debate about private Members’ Bills and where we allocate them within our sittings, rather than accept motion 9 today. I thought that someone else was seeking to intervene.

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[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) and his Committee on their report, and on facilitating today’s debate. I also thank the right hon. Gentleman personally for the assistance that he has given me in ensuring that there was a proper range of options on the Order Paper.

When I entered the House 25 years ago, 40% of our sittings lasted until midnight or beyond and we were here five days a week. We had no computers, no mobile phones and no e-mail, and very little time was available for constituency work.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Utopia!

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman says that it was Utopia, and indeed there were Members at that time who boasted about how infrequently they visited their constituencies. A few could recall the days when a brass band and the stationmaster greeted such an arrival.

I was determined to try to make a change. That is why, in 2001, I joined the Modernisation Committee chaired by Robin Cook which introduced the reforms that shape the parliamentary timetables of today. However, 10 years have passed since then. Everything has changed, and I believe that the House must change too.

Our constituents present us with a paradox. They despise us as a class, but individually and locally they value us. They are ever demanding—through e-mails, campaigns, packed surgeries, and constant invitations for us to support local events—and Parliament itself proceeds at a faster pace than ever under the glare of an all-pervasive media. As the Procedure Committee observed,

“This is an extraordinarily demanding role.”

The Committee found MPs working an average of 70 hours a week while the House was sitting, taking few holidays, and often remaining in touch even then and even when away with their families. For many Members, this life is very different from the one they led before entering the House.

Most telling was the Hansard Society survey that found that the effect of becoming an MP on personal and family life was universally negative. That is not a complaint. We are all volunteers and most of us fought very hard to get here, but the question is this: is that a reasonable state of affairs or could we improve how we work? Would it not make better sense, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) said, for the House to sit earlier in the mornings, functioning more like the other institutions of our national life? Might we not make better decisions if we started earlier and finished earlier? Constituents are always amazed that we begin to vote at 10 pm on two nights of the week.

Personally, I would be more radical than the options on the Order Paper, but I think that the 11.30 am start and 7 pm finish on a Tuesday is where the greatest consensus for change lies.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that talking about an 11.30 am start or, as a journalist did on Twitter this morning, a 2.30 pm start demeans the work of Members? I do not know of any Member who starts their working day at 11.30 am or 2.30 pm.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I have already said that we work 70 hours a week. Those were the findings of an independent committee and of the Procedure Committee survey, so we clearly are working all sorts of hours. I think my hon. Friend knows that I am talking about the formal sittings of the Chamber.

[Dan Byles]

As a new Member of the House with a young family and a seven-and-a-half-month-old daughter, I am open to the argument that more family-friendly hours might make it easier for Members with young families, but I also sit on the Energy and Climate Change Committee. It is a busy Committee that meets Tuesday mornings, and I do not see how such a change could be made to fit with Members’ other responsibilities, which we usually discharge before the House sits.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am sympathetic to what the hon. Gentleman says, but in the past six weeks just 15 of the 35 Select Committees have met on a Tuesday morning.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I agree with everything that the right hon. Lady is saying in her excellent remarks. The Treasury Committee, on which I sit, meets in private at 9.45 am on Tuesdays for a 10 am start. I take my daughter to school and am here by 8.30 am. Why not start then?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I share the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm for real change, but we have on offer what we have on offer.

[Mr Gray]

I am not certain what precise thesis the right hon. Lady is advancing. She says that we all work 70 hours a week—I suspect we do more—but is she saying that Members should work for fewer hours a week? If so, how would we deal with the constituency demands she described? Or, if we are to continue working that long, why should we necessarily change the formal sitting hours, given that we will still be doing other things in the evenings and before we sit?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I think the hon. Gentleman fails to grasp one point.

[Mr Gray]

indicated assent.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

He has indeed. The motions are concerned with the hours in which the House sits. That is all we are concerning ourselves with. What matters to most of us is that we have to vote on legislation that comes before the Chamber. The timings determine when we are obliged to be here, as opposed to our offices, our local offices, at home working or anywhere else. It removes choice. It is about the choice of when we are required to be here and voting. If the sitting hours of the day are moved forward, there will be no question of working fewer hours; we will simply work different hours.

[Mr Straw]

My right hon. Friend referred to the Hansard Society findings about the pressures on families when people enter the House. Those are undoubted. Does she accept, however, that the vast majority of Members have constituencies and families way beyond commuting distance from here, so whether the House finishes at 7 pm or 10 pm is irrelevant to whether they see their families? Moreover, as I know from talking to new Members, the pressures on families arise not from whether we finish at 7 pm or 10 pm but from the fact that Members are under increasing power to work on Fridays, during the day and in the evening, and on Saturdays and Sundays?

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[Dame Joan Ruddock]

Again, I am sympathetic to everything that my right hon. Friend says. He is absolutely right, and if he is patient, he will hear that I have taken account of all his points.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend admit that she is not distinguishing between sitting hours and what we do in those sitting hours? She is conflating the two. Will she separate those two things, because the sitting hours are one thing but what we do in them is something completely different?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I think my hon. Friend is teasing me, because she knows exactly what I am suggesting. The sitting hours of the Chamber are the hours that condition the voting patterns, which most of us consider to be mandatory. I am talking about the opportunity for Members to consider bringing forward the mandatory voting hours to earlier in the day. Each person will choose how they vote during all the hours of the day and, indeed, all the hours of the night.

I do not claim that the proposed reforms are family-friendly. All families are different, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, nothing is family-friendly if the family are hundreds of miles away. To bring forward the sitting hours, however, would be more people-friendly and would give us more control over our own time and more choice about how to spend the remaining hours of the day. It is not just a London issue either. The gap in preferences for earlier hours between those in the London area and those outside it is not that great.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend makes a series of excellent points, the most pertinent of which concerns the moment of interruption. The hour upon which we vote is clearly, for most Members, the most fixed moment of our diaries. It is clearly the most important decision that we can make. Although we can talk about the complications of Select Committees, where our constituencies are or our particular family make-ups, the point about flexibility is the most important one. That is why I advocate her position of making that hour as early as possible in the day.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I echo the right hon. Lady’s remarks. Although I cannot return to my constituency in the evening, I still think this issue says something about our institutional culture and what we think is a normal working practice.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Lady might also feel that if she gets home a little earlier in the evening, perhaps she has more time to talk to her family.

[Sir Robert Smith]

It is important to remember that we are talking about the moment of interruption. When we bring forward the moment of interruption, as we have done on Wednesdays, the business managers often find it convenient to schedule business for after the moment of interruption, because the House is sitting more normal hours. There is no guarantee that people planning their diaries will know what time is available after the moment of interruption until the week before, when the business statement is made.

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[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I have looked at the figures. The coalition Government have been very bad about doing that, but the Labour Government were not. We were much more disciplined. I think that the hon. Gentleman should complain to those in charge, not to me.

In the survey of more than 500 MPs that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and I conducted over a year ago, the most frequent demands from Members were for more control over time, more predictable voting times and debates, and Friday to be recognised as a constituency day for everyone. A few recorded their difficulties in getting home on Thursdays, and I very much welcome the Procedure Committee’s motion to start and finish one hour earlier on Thursdays.

[Kevin Brennan]

On the matter of the moment of interruption on Mondays and Tuesdays, is it not the case that we are talking about 68 days in the year when Members are required to be here until 10 pm? The proposals being put forward would take away 34 days of the year when we might be required to be here on Mondays and Tuesdays—and we are not always required to be—because we meet for only 34 weeks of the year. Why is being here for 68 days until 10 pm—possibly—such a terrible thing?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I can only tell my hon. Friend that although this might not be something that people want to acknowledge in this public place, the vast majority of MPs say that they are perpetually tired, that they are stressed and that they find the late hours a particular problem. That is what people say when they are speaking in private. I acknowledge that having an earlier start and an earlier finish would make many of us feel better, think better and probably be healthier.

[Mr Burley]

The right hon. Lady is being modest in saying that this proposal is people-friendly and not family-friendly. Does she agree that were an MP with a family in my constituency in the west midlands, which is still more than 170 miles away, to finish earlier, at say 5 pm or 6 pm, they could drive up to their constituency, spend an evening with their family and then drive back? The argument that just because the constituency is far away an MP might as well stay here until 10 pm as they will never see their family is totally ludicrous.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman makes one of the key points: this is about choice and the fact that all families are different. As I said, some people will be able to take opportunities. I simply say to our colleagues: just because it does not suit you because you cannot do it, why would you prevent another person from being able to do it? We should be generous in our support of our colleagues. None of the proposals to be voted on today mean that MPs would work fewer hours. I am not advocating fewer hours, but simply a rearrangement within the day and the week; this is a very small attempt to make this workplace more manageable.

[Dan Byles]

A couple of times the right hon. Lady has alluded to the idea that what we do here is very different from what is done in other organisations. I just say to her that I have many friends in the private sector, and some in the public sector, too, who work until 10 pm, when they are busy and there is a lot of work to be done.

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[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I could not agree more. I have a constituency of many very poor people and one of the things they do is work antisocial hours. They have several jobs and many of them work through the night, but believe me they do not want to do it. They would wish to be able to work in the hours of daylight and to do a normal and reasonable job. We owe it to ourselves to consider whether that would not work for us as well.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Given that this debate is focused on the Tuesdays, because most people believe that the Mondays should remain the same, and because whether we finish at 6 pm or 7 pm on Wednesdays is neither here nor there, is not the way to solve this problem without major upheaval to keep the sitting hours as they are but just move one-line Whip business or Back-Bench debates, which tend to have a one-line Whip—or they do not necessarily have a three-line Whip—and private Members’ Bills to Tuesday nights? People would then have the option on whether or not to stay here in the Chamber.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

That is an interesting suggestion, but the hon. Gentleman would have had to put it to his Government business managers before the debate to see whether they would have done it. We are too late for that now, because we have the motions on the Order Paper.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I want to reiterate, with the right hon. Lady’s support, that this is absolutely not about Members working fewer hours. Unfortunately, the media tend to focus on MPs trying to vote themselves fewer hours, but that is not the case here. This is, exactly as she says, about the precise moment of interruption, when we are required to be here 99% of the time. If that moment is at 10 pm, people are given very little flexibility. If it were to come earlier, we would be able to make the choice to be working at home or in our offices. I entirely support the right hon. Lady.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady.

I now wish to discuss the Friday sittings. I have heard what the Chair of the Committee has said and I will be considering that as the debate goes on. It is very important that we discuss Fridays. The Friday proposal appears to be the most contentious, because we have heard dire warnings of reputational damage to MPs and the suggestion that MPs are going to be skiving off. Those of us who want to see private Members’ Bills moved from Friday to earlier in the week are not advocating a four-day week. On the contrary, all the evidence shows that MPs’ hours are already, as I have said, double those of a standard working week. MPs are rightly in their constituencies working for their constituents on a Friday.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are a number of Members who, like me, have constituency advice surgeries on Friday? As a result of those, I have not been able to participate in debates on private Members’ Bills where I would have wanted to contribute. Friday is the only day when I can make sure that I am there for my constituents, and I do not want to have to choose between legislation and my constituents. This House is getting more powerful and private Members’ Bills can make more difference, and I genuinely think it ought to be easier for Back Benchers to participate in private Members’ legislation. This change would make that possible.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I absolutely agree. As I was saying, our constituents want us to be in our constituencies working for them on a Friday. It is also where we want to be, and the record bears that out. On the 17 sitting Fridays in the 2010 to 2012 Session, recorded attendance varied from 19 to 134. Indeed, according to the records, some of the strongest advocates of a five-day Westminster week have never attended a Friday sitting—I have all the names.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I can tell the right hon. Lady that she has completely won me over to her arguments, which she has made so powerfully. Does she also agree that Friday is the day when we go to see schools and hospitals—when we meet ordinary people who live in the real world and work normal hours?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady because she is 100% right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, the worst thing that can happen if a Member comes to a private Members’ Bill sitting is that they end up wiping out their entire Friday and, in particular, their surgery. I am convinced that we should move parliamentary business from a Friday, and if we bring Tuesday business forward by three hours we could accommodate private Members’ Bills on a Tuesday evening. Attendance for Back Benchers would be optional and voting would be guaranteed at 10 pm, thus ending the farce of talking out these precious Bills, as happens at the moment.

Any changes to MPs’ hours will, of course, require change to the working patterns of the staff and officers who make this place work for us. Care will need to be taken to ensure that they are not disadvantaged. If we sit earlier on a Tuesday, there will be, as on Wednesdays now, a continuing need for some services to continue beyond the time voting begins.

The reform proposals available to MPs today are modest; they involve no reduction in hours but an important rearrangement. The afternoon start on a Monday is, I believe, in the best interests of the House, enabling all MPs to travel from their constituencies in the morning and still do an eight-hour day. But on all other days I am committed to change. Not only will that benefit many sitting Members of this House, but it would help to bring into this House a wider range of future candidates, as they would believe that this is a place in which they could work. So I recommend voting against the no-change motions for Tuesday and Wednesday, and voting positively in favour of earlier hours on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and moving private Members’ Bills from Friday. This is a chance to make a small change and a small gain, but it is an opportunity that will not come to this Parliament again. I hope that Members will seize it.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—