Amendments to Bills (Explanatory Statements)

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I want to make it mandatory for everybody. It is very nice to do it voluntarily, as we would have done had we been allowed, but we were not. [Interruption.] Instead of smirking in that rather irritating fashion, the hon. Gentleman should focus on the debate in hand.

I was making the point that MPs should not be treated as Lobby fodder. After two pilot schemes, everyone seems now to agree that 50-word explanations are a good thing, so the motion from the Procedure Committee to make possible explanatory statements to amendments to be discussed on the Floor of the House is very welcome. I wish it was possible all the time; it is a pity that we have to get special permission even to make it possible. On those two pilots, it was possible.

I also welcome statement in the Procedure Committee’s report that it wants the statements to

“become an accepted norm of the legislative process.”

If that is what the Committee wants, why not make the statements mandatory, rather than just talking about an aspiration or a wish? The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) rightly said that the Government did indeed issue explanatory statements on that occasion, and that the Opposition did not do so. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that, one day, the Government will become the Opposition and find it less convenient to produce them in future. If we want it to become as natural to issue an explanatory statement as it is to sign an amendment, we have the opportunity tonight to make them mandatory.

A cross-party group of us, including senior colleagues, who are working on parliamentary reform have tabled amendment (a) because we would like the explanatory statements to be mandatory, to ensure that the Procedure Committee’s wish for the statements to become the norm becomes a reality. To clarify, in calling for the statements to be mandatory, we envisage guidelines to include dispensing for the need for them in relation to self-explanatory or consequential amendments. Actually, that is a good reason for not having circulated an explanatory statement on amendment (a), as the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) was tempting me to do: it is surely, even to him, self-explanatory.

Unless we have a mandatory scheme, as amendment (a) proposes, there is a danger that the statements would not become part of the culture of this place, and that they would be submitted only when it suited Members to do so. As we all know, the Executive do not behave within the spirit of the legislative system at all times, and we need a system that will ensure that, when they are substantially amending their own legislation—on Report, for example—they have to explain why.

The recent pilot taught us that the Whips pick and choose. The official Opposition did not bother to submit statements on the first Bill, the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, which was a great shame. However, they appeared to have a change of heart, and were prepared to submit them on the relatively uncontentious Small Charitable Donations Bill. I do not accept that they did not participate on the first Bill because of a lack of resources. Sometimes it is more convenient not to explain, and frankly that is not good enough. That is why we need the statements to be mandatory.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I will try not to smirk. Does she not accept the valid point that the Opposition party and, particularly, Back Benchers do not have sufficient resources to submit explanatory statements as well as putting in the time and effort required to table the amendments themselves, especially on an extremely detailed and complex Bill?

[Caroline Lucas]

No, I do not accept that point. If the hon. Gentleman has thought enough about an amendment to table it, he must have thought about what he is trying to achieve with it. If he cannot summarise that in 50 words, why is he tabling the amendment in the first place? He could also call on the Public Bill Office to help him with the statements.

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[Wayne David]

I want to ask the hon. Lady a simple question. Has she heard of probing amendments? If she has, she will know full well that their purpose is to elicit information and commitments from the Government, and not necessarily to declare a position.

[Caroline Lucas]

I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the point of the explanatory statements. They would simply make the aim of an amendment clear. If that aim is to seek information from the Government, that could be made perfectly clear.

I should like to move on to costs and resources. Hon. Members will have noticed that the Procedure Committee did not recommend a mandatory approach partly because it thought that that could take up time and resources, and that it could therefore restrict the ability of the Opposition and Back-Bench Members to table amendments. It feared that that could be damaging to the House’s ability to scrutinise legislation. I believe that there is a strong case to be made that the opposite is true, and that mandatory statements would save time and improve scrutiny.

The evidence from the Public Bill Office is clear on the question of resource implications. It stated that, where assistance was given with the drafting of explanatory statements,

“this took little time (no more than five minutes per amendment), and usually saved time elsewhere by establishing a verifiable shared understanding of what amendments were intended to achieve.”

So the idea that this would create a burden for the Opposition and Back Benchers is not supported by the Public Bill Office, which has made it clear that the statements typically save time.

The Public Bill Office also stated:

“It is not that difficult to draft a brief explanatory statement, and a Member seeking to table an amendment might want to think again about doing so if they were unable to explain briefly what it would achieve.”

This brings us to the nub of the issue. Do we want Back Benchers to participate or not? Do we want our constituents and our local press to be able to follow what is going on? Do we want this to be possible at all times or only some of the time, and who gets to be the judge of when people should or should not necessarily get to receive these explanations? If we want scrutiny, surely we have to make sure that those who might scrutinise are properly assisted to do so; otherwise, one might ask what is the point of the amendments at all.

Still on resources, the Clerk of the House produced a helpful memorandum pointing out that there would be no extra costs to the PBO, but there could be some printing costs. However, once self-explanatory and consequential amendments are discounted, the printing costs would clearly be very low. In the context of the entire printing costs of this place, the likely cost for this is tiny—less than 0.00005% of a £7 million annual spend on the printing of procedural publications.

For that minimal cost, we would get something valuable—information, and information being given to those who should have it as they vote on legislation that affects us all. When the bell goes, we should all know why. Brief explanations would not only allow Members to check what they are voting on when the bell goes, but allow us to see in advance what Members seeking to amend legislation are attempting to do. This would enhance scrutiny and might even increase participation in the Chamber, as Members could easily see in advance what an amendment was for.

In conclusion, I hope hon. Members will agree that this is more than procedural housekeeping. I think our constituents would be shocked if they knew that their MPs often did not know what they were voting on. When I run down the escalator from Portcullis House at the same time as many other colleagues, I often hear people saying “What are we voting on; what are we voting on?” I am not whipped, so I have to find that out myself, but many colleagues do not necessarily have that information, and I think that they should. This is not a criticism of colleagues. I have no doubt that MPs do not like trying to find out what the vote is on as they run down the escalators. The point is that this information is not being properly provided. It is good that the Procedure Committee is calling for a scheme to make explanations possible, so let us make sure that everyone uses it.

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[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I agree that it is better to have clarity, so that not just Members in this House but others looking at our proceedings can understand what we are debating.

There are other benefits to be had. I have always had this romantic view that we can improve the procedures of this House and do things in a more effective, focused and timely way. That would help everybody who has come to a debate on amendments and found that the purpose of the proposer of an amendment was quite different from what they had imagined when they first read it. That applies not only to Back Benchers, but to the Government. Very often Ministers have learned screeds of paper telling them what the civil servants who support them in the Bill believe the Opposition Member was intending by their amendment, only then to find that that was absolutely a wrong guess.

[Wayne David]

Inadvertently, the hon. Gentleman has made an astute point, because it is wrong to believe that all amendments have an objective truth about them. Amendments, particularly those from the Opposition, often have different interpretations attached to them. He mentioned the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, which is a good example of when our interpretation of what we were putting forward was objectively different from that of the civil servants. The essential clarification often is provided through debate, not by declamatory written statements.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I am always grateful to my hon. Friend, who is a genuine parliamentarian. However, as I have said, this is about putting a greater onus on the Chair of a Bill Committee or the Chair in the Chamber. I do not think that we want to add to those burdens. We have some wonderful Chairs who chair proceedings with a light touch. I fear that there would be complaints from the Government, the Opposition, the minority parties and Back Benchers saying, “Why has that one been allowed in, when an explanatory statement was not scheduled in time?” We have seen too often that, because the Government have tended to introduce Bills at the last minute—I am thinking of the gagging Bill in September—it would be difficult for my hon. Friends to table amendments, then produce explanatory statements.

I genuinely welcome the fact that the Government have made it absolutely clear that they intend all their amendments to have explanatory statements whenever practicable—I take their word on that. I had a slight exchange with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, who said with some justification, to be fair, that when he was a Minister explanatory statements were produced for all his revisions. I suspect that his civil servants had a hand in the drafting of those statements, but that is not a luxury that the Opposition or, indeed, Back Benchers enjoy. If the Government wish to expand the resources available—

[Wayne David]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there could be a strong case for mandatory explanatory statements if the Opposition had exactly the same resources at their disposal as the Government?

[Thomas Docherty]

That is a fair point. I do not think that I am giving away anything when I say that that was one of the discussions that the Procedure Committee had with the Front-Bench team and the House service. Regrettably, however, in these austere times, that is not on the table. If it were, I would wholeheartedly support the amendment, with the caveat that Back Benchers should be given greater resource.

It is something of an insult to parliamentary colleagues to maintain the myth that Members of Parliament are confused or vote the wrong way. I am conscious that Liberal Democrats may see that as a good excuse at the next general election to explain why they voted for a series of measures—“I am very sorry. I didn’t realise what I was voting for”—but I am not aware of a single case where a Liberal Democrat MP will argue that they voted to increase tuition fees or break their other promises because they were confused about what the motion or amendment meant. Perhaps the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome will correct me. The idea that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is promoting that Members are confused about what they are voting for is utter nonsense.

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[Zac Goldsmith]

I take the point. There have been many occasions in the short time I have been in the House when I have had to seek advice on votes I was being asked to cast. I have asked many Back Benchers on both sides of the House and the Whips but have still been unable to understand them or get any kind of clarity. I have had to abstain in Divisions because I simply did not know what the amendments I was being asked to vote for were about.

[Wayne David]

Is the hon. Gentleman confident that he understands every explanatory statement he reads?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I think that we would stand a much better chance of understanding what we were voting for if the amendments had explanatory statements.

I reject the argument that this would place an undue burden on Back Benchers. I accept up to a point that an extra burden would be placed on Opposition parties because, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said, for Members tabling 100, 200 or 300 amendments that amounts to quite a lot of minutes, but I believe that they should be given the administrative support they need to achieve that. However, that does not apply for Back Benchers, because they rarely table more than a small handful of amendments, unless they have set out to become parliamentary pests. They will have spent a lot of time understanding how to table them, so the extra five, 10, 15 or perhaps 30 minutes required to explain them is not much to ask. If a Back Bencher is not willing to invest those 30 minutes in the explanatory notes, perhaps they ought not to be wasting our time with the amendments in the first place.

This is a very small measure—a very small price to pay—that would undoubtedly, unavoidably and unarguably improve the legislative process in this place. I believe that people are appalled by some of the things that have happened here over the past few years, not least the expenses scandal and the more recent issue relating to fuel, which could be described as a scandal. The far bigger scandal is the fact that the one thing we are paid to do, we do not, on the whole, do anything like as well as we should, because we often simply do not know what we are doing. That is a scandal that can be rectified so easily with this small measure proposed by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.