Clause 8 - Scotland
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
12:30 pm
David Howarth (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)
I am prepared to talk to Committee members from all parties about what that number should be. One possible way forward is to say that it should be 10 per cent. of the number of Members of the House, which would make it 65 if we round up rather than down. The number that I am putting forward is well in excess of the number suggested by the hon. Member for Christchurch in his definition of “controversial”, which said that it would be enough if any Member objected. The number 50 is a pretty large concession to begin with.
One problem is the built-in Government majority on any Committee. The other problems are the ease with which Committee membership can be changed and the influence of the Government Whips on that membership. The hon. Member for Christchurch has referred to the absence from this Committee of the very distinguished hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), which illustrates the power of the Whips in Committee selection. The Committee veto is far from an absolute guarantee that the powers in the Bill will not be used in what Opposition Members consider to be an inappropriate way.
In addition, the long-term nature of Select Committees might be a problem if they become part of the legislative process. Select Committees work in a largely consensual way, focusing on the topic to be discussed rather than the political positions of the parties within the Committee. If the Select Committees became a regular part of the legislative process, it would attract the attention of the Government Whips in a way that would be detrimental to how Select Committees work, and might even be the end of the Select Committee system as we have come to know it. It would make Select Committees into versions of Standing Committees, which would be an undesirable development.
Amendment No. 52 would cure those defects in the proposed Committee veto. The method is familiar in many walks of life from local government to company law: giving a certain number of members of the institution the collective power to halt a particular process. We are not proposing that 50 Members of the House—or whatever number of Members we might eventually agree—should be able to prevent legislation from passing. We are simply proposing that a certain number of Members should be able to object to legislation by statutory instrument under the Bill. That would provide the sort of guarantee that we have been looking for.
The amendment would avoid another problem: the consensus of the Front Benches. During my short time in the House, I have observed quite often that the “usual channels”—marvellous not to behold—achieve a great number of things. They work towards the smooth working of the institution, but they sometimes do things that are not necessarily in line with the view of Back Benchers, either on the Government side or in the Opposition parties. The mechanism in the amendment would put real power in the hands of Back Benchers, which would be a useful development in itself. It would change the relationship between the Front and Back Benches in all parties.