Expenditure Committee (Role)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 15 January 1974.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Michael English Mr Michael English , Nottingham West 12:00, 15 January 1974

I sincerely trust that the hon. Gentleman will take the same advice about his new constituency.

I now turn to the Sixth Special Report of 1971–72. It is one of the easier problems with which the Leader of the House will be dealing. The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid) rightly went back to the earlier history of the Procedure Committee's consideration of how to reform the Estimates Committee. He may recollect that I was a member of the Procedure Committee when the discussions started and when some of the reports were published.

There were a number of advocates of specialist committees. I was such an advocate and I still am. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) and his colleagues on the old Estimates Committee had a not unnatural reluctance to be abolished. That is what would have happened had a set of specialist committees been created. If that had been done, the old Estimates Committee would have had no function, nor indeed would there have been any function for the Expenditure Committee if there had been set up specialist committees dealing with, for example, defence and foreign affairs or other issues. The compromise was reached of setting up the Expenditure Committee which, unlike the old Estimates Committee, could, if it wished, consider policy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ash-ton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) has detailed what the Procedure Committee said in one of its reports. Sub-committees were created which were specialist committees. That is what they are, although I agree with my hon. Friend that they proved in practice to be more limited than was envisaged. It was then said that it was a reasonable compromise because the Expenditure Committee, with experience of of its own working, could say after a time whether it wished to continue to work in the way in which it was set up or whether, in the light of experience, it had recommendations to make to the House.

The first thing to be said about the Sixth Report is that it does exactly what the Expenditure Committee was set up to do. One of the purposes for which it was set up was to recommend how the problem should be resolved. The Committee is now putting forward a modest suggestion—namely, that a sub-committee should report directly to the House as if it were a full committee. There is a need for co-ordination between the sub-committees. For example, there could be a committee of the chairmen. There must be something to ensure that the sub-committees do not cross each other's boundaries as regards their function.

It is almost the unanimous view of the Expenditure Committee that it does not want to interfere with a sub-committee which has heard all the evidence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. William Rodgers) said, after, for example, 52 meetings, and which has produced a report which in the overwhelming number of cases is unanimous. It is the sub-committee which sees the witnessses. It is possible to read the evidence, but it is the members of the subcommittee who see the witnesses' demeanour. It is even true that the Expenditure Committee does not see a large part of the evidence of the sub-committee dealing with defence and foreign affairs because of the confidential nature of the evidence.

The Expenditure Committee does not wish to interfere with that position, but it is in an unsatisfactory position in that the principle which the chairman has been trying to inculcate cannot be adhered to under the rules of the House.

Under those rules we are responsible for something for which we do not feel we are responsible. Under the rules of the House, whether the chairman tries to discourage it or not, he cannot stop a member of his Committee tabling an amendment. For example, if I sought to table an amendment relating to the report of the sub-committee of which the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees is a member, the other 40-odd members, however daft they thought I was, could not stop me from doing so. They could not stop me from tabling an amendment and wasting their time. No doubt they would defeat it but they could not stop me.

That is what we wish to alter. I refer the Leader of the House to his answer to a question which I raised in the Minutes of Evidence of the Select Committee on Expenditure on Monday 9th April 1973. I asked the right hon. Gentleman, after going through the history which I have detailed, to give his views on the report. It was a good answer which he gave at the time. He said: In the light of what has been said this afternoon, I shall have to have another look at this. One of the points made by Dr. Owen—that certainly unanimous reports by a Sub-Committee should be able to be reported direct to the House—is something that I would like to consider again and see whether or not it is possible. One wanted to build up the strength of the whole Committee and one wanted reports to have the stamp of the Expenditure Committee as a whole behind them. They are the Lord President's views and not the views of the Expenditure Committee. The right hon. Gentleman then said: For this reason we thought that it was right that the Committee itself only should report ; but perhaps I can consider this again. The recommendation of the Committee does not of itself have to be debated in this case but there are ways and means by which the Committee could get it debated, and I shall have to consider with my colleagues and the usual channels what the next step is to take. I would not want to go further than that. We understood that he would not want to do so off the cuff.

When he said We thought it was right that the Committee itself only should report. the right hon. Gentleman was then referring to the Government memorandum on the report. Frankly, I do not think that that was ever considered. I say that as one who was concerned with the setting up of the organisation. There was created a committee and sub-committees to which the normal rules of the House applied. We said specifically that the Committee, when it was set up, could decide how it wanted to operate. We did not decide, just because there is a rule of the House which says that a sub-committee has to report to the Expenditure Committee, that that was the only way to proceed. We thought that that is how the matter should start but that afterwards the Expenditure Committee should decide all the details.

I hope that after considering this the Lord President will look favourably upon the suggestion. It seems a small thing which in no way interferes with the normal practice of the House. It is justifiable to ask, if the Expenditure Committee wishes to work in this way, why should the House or the Government wish to stop it?

I turn now to broadcasting. I voted in favour of the Second Special Report on broadcasting to come out in the 1972–73 Session. I did so on the general principle that, like the hon. Member for Nottingham, South, I have been in favour of this proposal for as long as I have been in this House—since 1964. I did it only for that reason, because I believe the Committee did not fully discuss the problems that arise from it. The Second Special Report of the Committee is simply one sentence, to the effect that the Expenditure Committee asked the House to authorise the broadcasting of the Committee's public proceedings.

I would not wish to lay much stress on that. The Committee was aware at the time that it put this forward that it did so simply to get the subject aired. Technically, if such a resolution were passed by the House, it would have no effect whatever because the Committee does not have any public proceedings. With the exception of our discussion with the Lord President the Committee hardly ever interviews witnesses. It leaves that to its sub-committees and it deliberates in private.

In consequence the number of public meetings of the Expenditure Committee is practically nil. It would have to be the proceedings of the sub-committees that would be broadcast. We sought to raise the principle. Much as I am in favour of that principle I feel that we must consider the implications and the difficulties. There are no difficulties of substance with radio broadcasting with one exception. It is not possible to do it in the way recommended by the Select Committee which considered broadcasting the proceedings of the House—that is, by producing a feed from the House from which the broadcasting authorities could select what they wanted. That is because Committees are discontinuous bodies.

it might be that to provide enough work for the unit preparing the feed we would literally have to distribute the Select Committees of the House in such a way that one met on Monday, another on Tuesday and so on. Otherwise we would have the extraordinary situation of the personnel producing the feed trying to cover the meetings of two or three Select Committees at the same time on a Wednesday and having no work on a Monday or Tuesday.

There is, however, no significant problem with radio broadcasting. With televising the proceedings there comes the problem of the excessive heat generated by the lights required for colour television. Technologically it is possible to produce cameras which do not require excessive light, but no one is doing that development work because there is no motivation for it. Until the House decides that it wants this work done, it will never get done.

There is much to be said for us agreeing to radio broadcasting and then developing the necessary camera for televison work. I do not think that hon. Members would want to sit for hours in the heat and light required for present-day colour television. We would certainly need to spend a considerable amount of money upon air-conditioning in the appropriate Committee Room otherwise hon. Members would be collapsing in the heat.

Nevertheless, I agree with previous speakers who have said that there is no earthly reason why, even if the House does not want its proceedings broadcast, its Committees should not be broadcast. The obvious example is the United States. Many people do not realise that the Senate has consistently rejected television and radio broadcasting of its proceedings but has said, "It is nothing to do with us if our committees want to be broadcast." It has said that although it does not wish its proceedings as a chamber to be broadcast, it is willing to leave it to its committees to decide whether they will permit broadcasting. Sometimes they do not permit it, for the reasons mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees. They feel that it would be better not to do so. Sometimes the committees are simply not newsworthy. It is only in certain cases that broadcasting is permitted by the individual committee.

There is no reason why the House should not be as tolerant as the Senate and say that it does not want its proceedings broadcast—which is what it says at the moment—but that it sees no reason why facilities should not be established to make it possible for the proceedings of the Committee to be broadcast.