Backbench Business Committee

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman says that that was put in place by the previous Government, and that is true. Tonight, however, we are taking a huge leap forward with this raft of radical proposals. The establishment of a business committee, the introduction of September sittings and the speedy announcement of private Members’ Bill days are all signs that the Government have hit the ground running and are really keen on major reforms. But certain things could be improved, and many of the amendments that have been tabled need to be discussed, because they could improve on what are already important, radical proposals.

In the short time available to me, I want to speak to amendment (a), which stands in my name, relating to the number of days allocated to private Members’ Bills. In the Executive’s haste to bring this matter to the House, they have failed to appreciate that the number of days allowed for private Members’ Bills needs to be increased to compensate for the curtailing of private Members’ Bills in the previous Parliamentary Session. The amendment states:

“Line 1, leave out from ‘That’ to end and add—

‘(1) Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business) shall have effect for this Session with the following modification, namely:

In paragraph (4) the word ‘eighteen’ shall be substituted for the word ‘thirteen’ in line 42; and

(2) Private Members’ Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 10 and 17 September, 15 and 22 October, 12 and 19 November and 3 December 2010 and 21 January, 4 and 11 February, 4 and 18 March, 1 April, 13 May, 10, 17 and 24 June and 1 July 2011.’”

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am tempted to support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, so I wonder whether he could address this particular point. The Leader of the House said that having the same number of days for private Members’ Bills, but extending them over a longer period, would make it easier for those Bills to go through. I did not understand that; I wonder if the hon. Gentleman could explain it.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for that intervention; I have to say that I thought there was a little bit of smoke and mirrors there. We have already heard the comments that the Leader of the House made during the previous debate on this topic, but some other comments—from both the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House—perhaps express a slightly different view.

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[Jo Swinson]

I greatly appreciate that intervention from my hon. Friend, and that reassurance. I am sure that this can be solved. The Speaker certainly seems to be given a lot of power in these elections as almost a de facto returning officer, so I suspect a solution can be found.

I shall now turn to the issue of private Members’ Bills and the two amendments in my name: amendment (d) to motion 2 and amendment (b) to motion 4. I want to share with the House why I think this is an important issue, although I also appreciate that some new Members are present and I do not wish to scare them or put them off. I just want to describe my experience of the horror of Friday sittings.

One of the first Friday sittings I attended dealt with a private Member’s Bill sponsored by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz). His Bill was on climate change and I was keen to support it, and many of my constituents were also keen for me to do so. The second Bill on the Order Paper was about the management of energy in buildings, and we thought that because there would be five hours of business in the Chamber, we might be able to get one Second Reading finished and have another one well under way. We had not counted, however, on a two-hour speech from one Member, and then another Member standing up to try to make a speech of a similar length.

In order to get a private Member’s Bill passed, there need to be 100 MPs for the closure vote, so there were dozens of MPs in the Chamber who had come along to support this private Member’s Bill. Indeed, some of them wanted to make some comments on the record, perhaps through an intervention, but had we all done that, the Bill would have been talked out, and all because one or two Members were being, frankly, quite rude about using up time to talk it out.

I remember sitting in the Chamber and thinking that if I wanted the Bill to go through, I would just have to be quiet and say nothing—and not even say that I supported the Bill. I accepted that but, along with many other new Members at the time, I left the Chamber appalled and furious that this was the way we did our business, and I thought that it absolutely had to change.

I also remember that when I spoke to Members who had been in the House for longer than me, it was clear that they had got used to things as they said, “Well, that’s the way it is.” I thought to myself that I never wanted to accept that such a ridiculous way of working is the way it had to be. I suspect that current new MPs would be equally appalled if that happened, but I am sure that there will be an opportunity to make a change, because there needs to be one.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I well remember the progress of that particular private Member’s Bill, and I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s support on that occasion. She will also recall that that Bill came back not only on one Friday, but that it had to come back a total of three Fridays precisely because some Members chose to use their right to speak at length. Does she agree that that underlines that until such time as there is a more fundamental reform of procedure for private Member’s Bills, we do not want to lose any days for private Member’s Bill discussion on Friday, which is why we support the amendment of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)?

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[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head; he may want to intervene. Sixteen is always the number at which there is at least a chance that we will be included. That is why I seek in my amendment to increase the number to 16.

It is good to get more Members involved. What is wrong with that? Why restrict the number to eight? I know that the Committee might get more business done that way, but the term “Backbench business committee” suggests that it should be full of Back Benchers. There should be lots of them involved, from Labour, the Liberals, the Conservatives, the DUP and the SNP. What is wrong with having a reasonable-sized Back-Bench business committee? Restricting membership to eight just does not make sense and I cannot see the reason for it. Surely there are loads of Back Benchers who want to be part of what could be a very exciting and promising Committee.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The hon. Gentleman is making a strong case, but does he not accept that a smaller Committee is important to allow business to be conducted efficaciously? As he knows, although there were a large number of Green and Scottish Socialist party Members in the previous Scottish Parliament, they were not members of the Business Committee by right. It is difficult to strike a balance, but I accept that the hon. Gentleman has some powerful arguments.

[Pete Wishart]

I am not so sure about the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. There is a good case to be made for the business committee to be larger and more open, to ensure that we hear a different chorus of voices on the Back-Bench agenda. I see nothing wrong with a bigger committee, and I hope the House supports us this evening.

We went along with Wright—as I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd served on the Committee—but we believed it was a good thing to do. As the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) mentioned in her speech, it seemed to be starting from the right premise, taking on the powers of the Whips, making the House more accountable, and making sure that there is a proper Back-Bench voice in the House. We accepted that that was an agenda that needed to be addressed and we went along with it in the hope that we would get some sort of change.

We even accepted in good faith the assurances given by Wright Committee members. I remember intervening, as did several of my hon. Friends, on Tony Wright when these matters were being debated, and he would say, “Don’t worry, it will be okay. Don’t worry about the fact that it is not specifically mentioned that you will get a place on Select Committees. It will be all right.” It was not all right. It has been a disaster. We were given no places at all on Select Committees initially. We have no place on the Back-Bench business committee as it is currently to be constituted. That must be addressed.

We accepted those assurances in good faith, and I ask those who are the fervent champions of the reforms to get out there and make sure that the issue is addressed. They should approach it with the same enthusiasm as those on the Government Front Bench seem to be approaching it, and make sure that it is resolved. We must fix it. It is not good enough that we are excluded. We have to find a mechanism to ensure that minority parties will have a place on the Back-Bench business committee. It is important that the committee is seen to be legitimate, and that it is representative of the House as a whole. As the hon. Lady said, there is no point substituting one Westminster elite for another.

As the committee is currently to be constituted, it will not be representative. The only way that we can change that and make the committee truly representative, to give everybody an opportunity to serve on it, the only way that we will get minority party members on it, is to increase the size. I hope the House supports us this evening in increasing the committee’s size. I cannot see any other solution to ensure that we have a place. If any Member has any other suggestions, I may consider not pressing my amendment to a Division, but as far as I can see, I have no alternative but to ask the House to determine the matter on a vote this evening. We need those numbers to ensure that we have a Back-Bench business committee that is representative of the whole House.

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[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election to your new post, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I wish to speak in support of amendment (a) to motion 11, tabled by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), on providing more days for the discussion of private Members’ Bills. There are all sorts of good democratic reasons for doing that. I had intended to expand on them a little tonight but, given the excellent, comprehensive and wide-ranging speeches that we have already heard, I shall merely say that I endorse the hon. Gentleman’s comments, as well as those from the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), on why there should be more days for the discussion of private Members’ Bills than the Government are currently proposing.

I have not heard any good arguments against the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. The Leader of the House of Commons put forward an argument that the hon. Member for Wellingborough described as consisting of “smoke and mirrors”. With respect, I am not sure that I would even dignify it with that description. The Leader of the House’s argument seemed to be that it was important to have more days between private Members’ Bill sittings to allow things to go on outside the main Chamber. I was not sure what was meant by that. I can only assume that it was felt that that arrangement would allow the Committee stages of private Members’ Bills to take place between the different Fridays, and that that would be easier to achieve if there were more time between the sittings allocated for private Members’ Bills. If that is the case, it reveals a misunderstanding of the way in which the private Members’ Bill system operates. If three successive Fridays were allocated for private Members’ Bills, with a Second Reading one week, the Committee stage the next, and Third Reading on the third Friday, the next private Member’s Bill in line would simply be debated on the subsequent Friday. As the hon. Member for Wellingborough has suggested, it is hard to see how allowing more days for private Members’ Bills would jeopardise the Government’s position.

It has been suggested that, if we were to adopt a private Members’ Bill system that worked more effectively, fewer days could be allocated for the purpose of dealing with them if a positive outcome could be achieved in the time allowed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said earlier, however, we all know that what matters on private Members’ Bill Fridays is not the quality of the measure, or even the number of Members present to support the Bill, but whether the proposer and those on the Government and Opposition Front Benches can find their way round the arcane procedures that are used on such Fridays—procedures that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda described as “shenanigans”. I have had the experience of taking three private Members’ Bills through the House over the past six years, so I certainly know how the system works. I know some of the ways of getting round it, but I also know that it is a very unsatisfactory procedure for all concerned.

Addressing the way in which private Members’ Bills are taken through Parliament will require a number of procedural changes, and I welcome the commitment from the new Chair of the Procedure Committee that his Committee will look at that at an early stage. One way of allowing private Members’ Bills proper time for debate would be to move them from Fridays to Wednesdays or to Tuesday evenings, which would give Members the opportunity to attend the debates in much greater numbers than they are able to do on Fridays.

I take issue with the hon. Member for Wellingborough—I otherwise agreed with much of what he said about private Members’ Bills—as it is not satisfactory to say that Members can decide whether or not to turn up on Fridays to consider those Bills. We all have to make such a decision at the moment, but because of our constituency commitments, it is difficult for us, with one or two exceptions, regularly to attend on Fridays—and the further away from London our constituencies are, the less easy it is for us to do so.

I would often like to participate in private Members’ Bills debates on Fridays, and they often relate to issues that are important to many of my constituents who understandably expect me to debate them. They are likely to find out, however, not only that I and many other Members are unlikely to be there, but that what they thought was going to be debated on a particular day—and hoped had a chance to get through—is likely to be talked out because of the use of some parliamentary procedure and never reach any further stages. Not surprisingly, members of the public get angry at Members of Parliament and at the political system that allows that to happen.

I believe that Fridays should be recognised and named as a constituency day, on which Members can allocate their time to their constituencies. It should be named as a constituency day so that those out there who want to condemn any absence from Westminster as equivalent to some form of extended holiday can, if they wish, carry out a study to ensure that we are indeed in our constituencies as opposed to sunning ourselves on a beach. Let us make it a regular commitment, with Fridays acknowledged as a constituency day. I hope that the Back-Bench business committee will discuss this proposal at an early stage of its considerations. It could look into the constituency issues more widely, and demonstrate that MPs spending some of their time in their constituencies is essential to our democracy. We cannot represent the views of our constituents in Parliament if we are not regularly in touch with them.

That brings me to the issue of September sittings. On the one hand, I support the proposal to come back in September, as I believe that Robin Cook’s initiative when he was Leader of the House was totally justified. It is hard—indeed, impossible—to justify to the public why we need this long 13 or 14-week gap in the summer, in which we are unable to hold the Government to account unless the House is brought back for a special Sitting. On the other, we have to recognise that we cannot keep adding days and days, weeks and weeks to the parliamentary Session without it having knock-on effects somewhere else in the system.

We have to recognise that Members need to be in their constituencies and we also need to recognise, bluntly, that Members have family commitments. I have an interest here in that I have four children in either primary or secondary schools in Scotland; my children are likely to be on holiday from the end of June and will be back at school in mid-August. I would like to have the same opportunity that colleagues in England have to be at home for a fair part of my children’s school holidays, but I will not have that opportunity. Anything that makes it harder for people to combine their role as Members of Parliament with a normal family life is not exactly going to encourage this place to be open and more representative of the public in the way that we all want. I hope that, in addition to considering the procedures for private Members’ Bills, the Leader of the House will look at ways to recognise our constituency commitments as an important aspect of all MPs’ work and reflect them in the sitting days of the House.

I invite the Deputy Leader of the House to clarify in his closing remarks the Government attitude towards an early proposal to move away from Friday sittings for private Members’ Bills and replace them with Wednesday sittings. I certainly gained the impression that the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House were sympathetic to the idea of moving to Wednesdays for private Members’ Bills. There was quite strong support for this across the House, so I hope that the Government will be able to give that proposal at least a favourable and general welcome today. I believe that such a proposal would be welcomed not just by individual Members, but by all those who want to see private Members’ business getting the status it deserves.