Amendment of Standing Orders

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

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

It is, as always, a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who has made some very arcane points, which were more entertaining than I could ever have imagined them to be. My disagreements with him are about bringing more powers to the House and what we do with those powers, rather than in judging what he has tabled in all good spirit against the Government’s wishes. I thank him and the Procedure Committee, and the previous Chair of the Committee, who undertook the review of the Backbench Business Committee. The Committee had been in existence for only one Session when it was reviewed and was therefore very much in its infancy. The report recognised an important truth about the Committee: it is a Select Committee in name only, and completely different from any other Committee of the House in what it does.

When the Backbench Business Committee was established, it was governed by a very basic set of Standing Orders. They said how many members there should be and the party make-up. They also said how many days Government were to allocate to us, and that we could not table any motions that affected the workings of the Committee, which was perfectly sensible. That was it—the day-to-day working and functioning of the Committee were not mentioned in Standing Orders.

When we started, there was nothing to stop the eight members of the Backbench Business Committee meeting in private session and deciding for ourselves what would be debated by our colleagues on one day every parliamentary week. Therefore, the very first founding principles we established were to ensure that any debate we scheduled came from our colleagues—came from ideas from other Back Benchers—and that we met in public so that everything we decided was open and transparent. These were very important founding principles.

We set some other founding principles, together with our excellent first Clerk, Andrew Kennon, one of which was that the Backbench Business Committee should take as many risks as possible as soon as possible, in order to see what worked and what did not. One of the risks we took, when the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) was a member of the Committee, was a new way of doing pre-recess Adjournment debates. That got mixed reviews and we have chopped and changed that around, but one of the more successful innovations, which is mentioned on the Order Paper, was enabling Select Committee Chairs to launch their reports on the Floor of the House. Interestingly, that did not work in quite the way we wanted it to. They used to have to do it by taking interventions from Members, without being able to stand up like Ministers and take questions from the Floor. We felt that that really required a change to the Standing Orders, and we welcome the motion on the Order Paper today in the name of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who chairs the Liaison Committee.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s and the Government’s support for this change. It has involved some discussion and there is an element of compromise about it, but it will be a much better procedure that will enable a Chair to table a report within five days of the Committee issuing it, and to take questions, rather than going through the contrived process of interventions that we have now.

[Natascha Engel]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

We also wanted to keep to the principle of having as few rules as possible governing the Backbench Business Committee, in order to allow Back Benchers themselves to decide what they want to do within their own allocated time. Although we congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne on the paragraph in his motion that deals with allowing us to meet in public and to take representations from Members—as he said, it simply formalises current practice—we disagree with the points made in the following paragraphs. The honourable exception to that is the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who is a member of both the Backbench Business Committee and the Procedure Committee, and supports these changes. We are concerned that these changes impose rigorous rules on us that might have negative consequences. We have enjoyed the freedom resulting from there being no rules governing what we could and could not do.

The first point on which we really disagreed was the allocating of our time pro rata. At the moment, as the hon. Member for Broxbourne said, the Backbench Business Committee is allocated 35 days a Session. As he also pointed out, the first Session stretched to almost two calendar years. We demanded, quite vocally, that the Government extend our allocation of time pro rata, and they did. There was a slight dispute over one or two days that the Government had scheduled before we came into existence, but broadly, the arrangement worked very well.

At the moment, the 35-day allocation is a minimum; the Government are perfectly free to allocate us more than that. My worry is that if pro rata-ing is imposed, there is nothing to say that this allocation will become a fixed amount of time. By the same token, if a Session is shorter than a calendar year, there is nothing to say that the Government could not then pro rata downwards. As the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, I would not want that to happen. Given that the arrangement only happened because of the introduction of fixed-term Parliaments, for which we were compensating, and given that we now have fixed-term Parliaments, it is highly unlikely that this situation will ever arise again. I just do not think it is worth taking the risk of an unforeseen consequence.

[Mr Hollobone]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her speech, which I am listening to closely. Let us say there were a change of Government, and a Labour Government decided to do the same thing and have an initial Session over two calendar years, the then Leader of the House and the then Chief Whip might not be as amenable as the current ones, and if so, without the change to the Standing Order, her words would ring very hollow indeed.

[Natascha Engel]

The hon. Gentleman was present when we produced our first provisional report, and all I would say is that one of our founding principles was that we should consider changing rules as and when we found a problem. There was not a problem in that first Session. However, if there is a problem in the future, I will personally lead the charge to ensure that we change the rules in order to accommodate and rectify it.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am sorry to disagree with the hon. Lady, but there was a problem. She had to get up on her feet every week during questions to the Leader of the House and beg for the Backbench Business Committee to be given time. In the end, that begging worked, but there was a problem and it was only her active intervention that solved it.

[Natascha Engel]

I would say that I was assertively, or even aggressively, demanding rather than begging. The Government eventually realised that they had no option but to pro rata the days, because there would have been uproar if they had not done so.

That brings me to my next point. As has been said, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) mentioned his debate on assisted dying in his submission to the Procedure Committee. A full day of debate was allocated. It was considerably longer than an hour and a half, but it is true that there would have been another 20 minutes of debate and that votes would have taken place at the end of the day. However, that problem was identified only in retrospect, so even if we had had the power to timetable a business motion, it would not have happened on that day.

I am concerned that the proposal could have unintended consequences. One of the things that I have witnessed working really well in Back-Bench debates is that, at the moment, Back Benchers control their own time by having flexibility. We are therefore able to respond to events such as urgent questions, statements and whatever else might happen in the House on the day. Unlike in debates in Government time, it is extraordinary how Back Benchers are aware and respectful of any subsequent debates and of the number of Members who have put their name down to speak. When time limits are imposed, Members take less time in order to allow others into the debate and to shorten the debate in order to allow the following debate enough time to be heard. We all know that, if we started to timetable our debates, that would no longer happen. When debates are timetabled, we fill that time. We go to the limit of the time that is permitted. That would take away something from the Backbench Business Committee that is working extremely well and that makes Back-Bench debates flexible.

The proposals could make the situation worse, which is why I oppose them. At the same time, I welcome the spirit in which the report was written and in which the motions were tabled by the Procedure Committee. I take nothing away from any of that. I ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne to leave the door open so that, if I am wrong and there are problems of this nature in the future, we will be able to return to the Procedure Committee and ask it to table motions for us to help us out. I would appreciate that enormously. I am glad that he has said he will not press these matters to a vote today, because our two Committees work very well together to represent the best interests of the wide variety of Back Benchers in this House. I am therefore grateful that he has taken such a conciliatory attitude this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Natascha Engel]

That was not quite what I said. I said that if we were given the power, Members would demand it. I am worried that if we are given the power, that is what Members will constantly want and then the time will become filled to the timetable rather than by what is needed.

[John Hemming]

Members will only want it if they see a need for it. The Committee will have discretion over whether to give that power. As I said, this issue comes down to where someone sees the power resting between the Executive and the legislature. My view is that democracy is important and that we should give power to the legislature.