HOUSE OF COMMONS (ADMINISTRATION)

HC Deb 04 December 1975 vol 901 cc1955-79

4.28 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Bortomley (Middlesbrough)

I beg to move, That this House takes note of the Report on House of Commons (Administration) (House of Commons Paper (1974–75) No. 624). I should like to thank my fellow hon. Members for their co-operation and assistance in making it possible to present a unanimous report, all those who gave evidence to the Committee, and the Joint Secretaries, Mr. Ryle and Mr. Townley, who gave me all possible assistance. I should also like to thank you, Mr. Speaker, and the House, for the honour of entrusting me with the inquiry.

Historically, the administrative services of the House of Commons have grown spasmodically. If the House found it needed a service, it was provided. For example, the appointment of a Clerk to the House dates from 1363. The Serjeant at Arms has looked after accommodation and housekeeping since 1812, although a Serjeant was first appointed in 1415. The Library research services have significantly developed only since the war, and the services of the Administrative Department are modern developments.

There has been no overall planning, although separate departments have been reviewed. The great value of Sir Edmund Compton's review was that, for the first time, all the services and departments were looked at in relation to each other. In the past there has been no overall control and no single authority for the development and deployment of the resources of the House.

Mr. Speaker, the Clerk and the Serjeant at Arms have been largely autonomous authorities. For example, they have been separate employers. It is for that reason that our principal recommendation is the creation of a general authority for controlled development of the House of Commons administrative services generally. We therefore recommend that they should be combined into a unified service. This is the heart of our Report, and all the rest flows from it.

We thought that the Compton Report, based on a single chief officer, and a structure based on a hierarchy, was too rigid and bureaucratic. The Report also failed to recognise that Members of Parliament would wish to have a voice in directing their services and appointing their most senior staff. We think the Compton proposals would gravely disrupt the services provided for the House. We saw the solution as one that would draw on the established and operating departments, their loyalty and experience, providing greater flexibility for adapting to the changing needs of the future. Our hope is that we have offered a good starting arrangement. How it works out will largely depend on those hon. Members and officers who will operate it. This means that both the quality and the attitudes of our staff, at all levels, will be of great importance.

The best people should be able to rise to the top in the service of the House of Commons. We believe that, as part of the unified service, the House of Commons will be imbued with a single sense of common purpose. We recommend that there should be an effective House of Commons Commission as a central authority and common employer of all the staff, under Mr. Speaker's chairmanship. We suggest that the Commission should be composed of five members—the Leader of the House, Opposition representatives, and senior Back-Bench Members. The Leader of the House would speak for the Commission, and the House itself in the Cabinet, and would also be responsible for defending the decisions of the Commission in the House.

The Commission would not take away the ultimate authority of Mr. Speaker, but would advise him, in particular, on the appointment of the most senior staff in the employ of the House. The Commission would plan major developments in the services and control the Estimates of the House. It might, perhaps, one day be responsible for accommodation as well as staff.

The Services Committee would continue to express the views of Back Benchers, and it could also advise the Commission on many matters. We recommend the establishment of a Board of Management, the Chairman of which would be the Clerk of the House. His rôle as Accounting Officer for the whole of the services would be of growing importance. The Clerk of the House would be required to see that the departments worked together and provided agreed answers to common problems. The departments would get on with their day-to-day work without centralised interference, and heads of departments would report directly to Mr. Speaker. The staffing arrangements would be those of a unified service with common recruitment, promotion methods, training arrangements, improved staff consultation, and so on. So far as possible, all senior appointments should come from within the service, including that of the Serjeant at Arms.

During the last war I was Deputy Regional Commissioner for the South of England and one of my responsibilities was to amalgamate the county and borough police forces. Most of the chief constables came from the Armed Forces. The late Herbert Morrison was Home Secretary at the time and I suggested to him that, probably, in the changed situation, someone should be appointed from within a police force as chief constable. As it is said that in the Army every private carries a field marshal's baton in his knapsack, so a policeman should have the same opportunity for promotion. In the event, Herbert Morrison agreed, and made a significant change in appointing for the first time a civilian as head of the Metropolitan Police.

We recommend that in achieving a unified House of Commons service the time has come to depart from the system whereby the Serjeant at Arms is appointed from the Armed Forces. We do not feel that the privilege of a separate appointment can any longer be justified, but I should emphasise that in coming to this conclusion we are not in any way passing judgment on those who have held the office of Serjeant at Arms in the past. We are concerned solely with the issue of principle involved and with the need to ensure the unification of the House of Commons services. The possibility of a civilian being appointed as Serjeant at Arms or Deputy Serjeant at Arms has been accepted in the past. For example, Mr. Erskine held the office of Deputy Serjeant at Arms before the last war.

Mr. David Steel (Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles)

The right hon. Gentleman moved on rather fast from the point at which I wished to interrupt, and I apologise for returning to it now. He is, perhaps, being a little too modest as Chairman of this Committee. Those of us who served under him are grateful for what he has done. But I suggest that he is not sufficiently stressing the significance of the rôle and structure of the new Commission which we have proposed. Perhaps not all hon. Members are aware that this would represent the abolition of the old 1812 Commission and a major extension of control over their own services and future here in the House of Commons. That is not something which should be lightly regarded. It is as important as are these staffing matters.

Mr. Bottomley

I hope some of my colleagues on the Committee will take part in the debate. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who was able to contribute so much to the work of the Committee, for what he has just said, which I warmly support.

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

Before the hon. Gentleman completes his remarks on the subject of the Serjeant at Arms, I take it he is complaining about the situation in which a senior distinguished officer from one of the three Services is sometimes imposed on the House from outside, in the post of Serjeant at Arms. I hope that his remarks are not directed towards other distinguished officers who are now serving in the Serjeant at Arms Department, and is not attempting to rule them out from any chance of promotion in the future.

Mr. Bottomley

The idea of the unified service is that anybody in the employ of the House will have the opportunity of reaching the highest ranks.

A matter of some difficulty arose from Sir Edmund Compton's recommendation that the Serjeant at Arms should be divested of his responsibility for accommodation and housekeeping. That may have been appropriate within the organisation proposed by Sir Edmund, but after very careful consideration we concluded, for reason set out in detail in our Report, that it would not have been satisfactory or necessary within the organisation that we propose.

In particular, we believe that it would be inefficient to separate the responsibilities for security and housekeeping. As the Serjeant at Arms pointed out in speaking of these matters, they are dealt with by the same staff and are inextricably intertwined. We believe, therefore that the Serjeant should continue to be responsible for accommodation. However, he would be required to work under the Commission as a member of the Board of Management within a unified service.

If the recommendations are to be accepted, some parts will require a short Bill. As a Committee we recognise that there is a need to end a long period of uncertainty. There are some senior appointments that have to be made. It is necessary to consider, plan and improve the services of the House of Commons.

It is for these reasons that, in presenting the Report and recognising that it will be noted, I urge upon the Government the need for it to be implemented as soon as possible.

4.42 p.m.

The Minister of State, Privy Council Office (Mr. Gerald Fowler)

I do not wish to speak at any length at this stage, and hope that I may intervene later in the debate, with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to deal with the recommendations in detail.

The Government are exceedingly grateful to my right hon. Friend and his Committee for the very detailed work that they have done. It was an exceedingly difficult task. This is one of those matters on which everybody will argue until the cows come home, and there are 635 views in the House on the way in which the House of Commons should be administered. The Committee has produced a splendid Report and the Government are exceedingly grateful to the Committee for it.

4.43 p.m.

Mr. John Garrett (Norwich, South)

I wish to comment on the Report, as someone with some professional experience of the organisation of bodies in the public service. In general, I welcome the Report. I believe that the recommendations, if adopted, would be a great improvement on the existing situation. But I have misgivings concerning two areas. The first is the relationship of Back Benchers to the administration. The second relates to arrangements for personnel management in the proposed unified service.

It is a pity that the Committee seems to have been innocent of modern developments in personnel management in the public sector in this country.

Authority for directing and controlling the services for the House is clearly vested in the Speaker, and it is proposed that he be advised and assisted by a House of Commons Commission under his chairmanship. Membership of the Commission would consist of the Leader of the House, a representative of the Official Opposition Front Bench, and three senior Back Benchers. This Commission would be advised by the Services Committee, which is broadly representative of Back-Bench feeling, to which complaints by Members about particular services could be reserved. The Services Committee and its Sub-Committees might also have direct access to heads of departments, but would have no direct executive authority over them.

The Report says that the proposed Commission would not obviate the need for a Services Committee, but it does not say why not. I should have thought that there was every case for the amalgamation of the proposed House of Commons Commission and the Services Committee. They should surely have the same aims—the development and improvement of House of Commons services. At the very least, I should have thought that the Commission—apart from the Speaker and Leader of the House—should be elected by the Services Committee.

I believe that the Commission, as proposed, could be insufficiently responsive to Back-Bench attitudes and requirements. The Commission could well have sub-committees, as the Services Committee does. One of them could be a small executive committee, which could meet rapidly and at short notice. The need for such a body is mentioned in the Report.

In general, as far as I can see, this part of the Report takes no cognisance of the requirement for greater involvement of the people whose activities are affected by the policy-making institution concerned. In other words, insufficient power is given to Back Benchers in the proposed Commission.

At the next level down, we have the proposed Board of Management, advised by a Staff Board which the Committee itself recognises as superfluous. I agree with a Board of Management under the chairmanship of the Clerk of the House as Accounting Officer and therefore liable for expenditure on these services, but I strongly regret the absence of a personnel manager on the Board.

I also see no adequate refutation of the recommendation in the 1967 Treasury O & M report that Hansard should be a separate department. It seems to me to be quite distinct from other departments of the House.

I would never have thought, seven years after the Report of the Fulton Committee, that I would see a reorganisation in the public service involving the creation of the post of Principal Establishments Officer, which, in general concept, is a throw-back of a decade or more. What is more, it is combined with the post of Principal Finance Officer.

The Fulton Committee savagely attacked "the establishments concept" and "establishment work" in the Civil Service, pointing out that establishments work was primarily concerned with cost control and the control of numbers employed. This is far removed from modern ideas of personnel management—the development of the ability of the individual employee.

The whole idea of establishment work was primarily conceived at the time of the "Geddes Axe" in 1919, as a means of controlling numbers and not as a means of allowing scope for the abilities and skills of staff. Establishments work is a byword in the Civil Service for rule-bound, inhuman bureaucracy, and has nothing whatsoever to do with personnel management. In the proposed organisation, nobody is concerned with personnel management, but everybody is concerned with staff matters.

The Speaker is ultimately responsible for staff policy. The Commission lays down staff policy, the Board of Management co-ordinates staff policy, the Head of Administration has a special responsibility for staff policy, the Accounting Officer is accountable for the cost of staff policy, the Staff Board advises on staff policy, and the Services Committee is concerned with the effects of staff policy. But who sees staff policy from the staff's point of view? What is more, who will actually manage the important technical developments that the Committee sees as required in the personnel management of the administration? I have in mind the revision of grading, for example, and the unification of the service.

This, after all, is a business employing about 1,500 people, and it should have a focus for personnel management within it.

The Committee seems to have been wholly unaware of the movement for the reform of personnel management—the creation, one might say, of personnel management—in our Civil Service. What is needed is a professional personnel management concerned to supervise re-grading, to set about unifying the administrative service, to introduce a staff appraisal scheme, design training, career development and succession systems, and to adjust the organisation to all the changes in labour relations and human relations legislation that the House is introducing.

That personnel manager can only report to the Clerk of the House as Accounting Officer, because the Clerk of the House carries the can for staff costs. The personnel manager must have functional or technical authority over all departments, in the sense of laying down staff policies and procedures to ensure that each department provides uniform treatment, and training and career opportunities, for staff throughout the unified service.

In terms of personal management the Committee took a bold leap from 1900 to about 1945, but its recommendations in this field must be looked at again in the light of all the debate that has gone on since the Fulton Committee's Report nearly 10 years ago on the management of people in public administration.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. David Steel (Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles)

I intend to be brief. I had not decided to intervene in the debate until I heard the speech of the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett). I accept that the hon. Gentleman has professional qualifications in this matter, but we must start, as the Committee started, from the standpoint that we are not dealing with a business employing 1,500 people, nor are we part of the Civil Service. If we were either of those things this place would be a great deal easier to administer. There is no one master, for one thing. There is no one chain of command. There are, and should remain, 635 employers, and that in itself makes a fundamental difference between the administration of this House and any other area of the public service, or any other business of a comparable size.

I may have misunderstood the hon. Gentleman, but I thought that he was a little confused. I thought he was criticising the Committee for not having recommended the abolition of the Services Committee, but in the next breath he said that the Commission should be elected by the Services Committee which he had suggested should be abolished.

Mr. John Garrett

The hon. Gentleman misunderstood me.

Mr. Steel

I may have done, but that was what I took from what he was saying.

The hon. Gentleman made a valuable point when he referred to what he felt, in the Report, was a lack of access or control by Back Benchers. I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. The fact that we decided not to abolish the Services Committee means that we are sensitive of the fact that although the new Commission is a major step forward from the present control of the House there is still a need to retain the Services Committee for the day-to-day airing of grievances by Bank Benchers, if nothing else. That is an important function of the Committee. I was a member of the Select Committee on Services when it was first set up in 1965 or 1966. After some time I found that I was the longest serving member, and I decided that it was time to go. I have considerable experience of the Services Committee. Its most valuable function, which could not be carried out by the Commission, is to be a sounding board and a complaints channel for Back Benchers, and to deal with all the matters which may at first sight seem trivial but which are of great importance to every hon. Members.

I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will feel that he is wrong to bring too much professional expertise to this matter, and to talk as he did. He used the phrase "personnel management" at least six times. Unhappily—or, perhaps, happily—the House of Commons is a unique institution, not comparable to any business.

Mr. John Garrett

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this must be one of the few institutions in which a charge of technical expertise is thought to be derogatory? Does he also agree that he misunderstood what I said? I said that the Services Committee and the Commission should be amalgamated, recognising that some small executive-type committee could perform the functions proposed for the Commission.

Mr. Steel

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that last point. An amalgamation of the Services Committee and the Commission would lead to far too large and unwieldy a body to carry out the functions that we have proposed in the Report. That will remain a matter of opinion. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not think that I am being derogatory about his professional expertise. I agree that it is the last thing that we should deride, but he started from the misconception that because the House of Commons employs 1,500 people one can treat it as though one has a parallel with the organisation and neatness that surrounds any business or any part of the public service.

4.55 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop (South Shields)

I intervene also as one who served on this Committee. It proved to be an interesting Committee, and brought to light a large number of issues and problems of which not even those who had been in this House for a long time were fully aware.

This is a valuable Report, and I am rather disappointed that the motion that we are debating merely asks us to take note of it. I felt, believed and hoped that, following the fairly lengthy period that has elapsed since it was made available, it would have proved possible for the Government to declare their support for the proposals in the Report, even though it might have been necessary to consider minor alterations of some sort or other.

I think that we would welcome a general declaration, so that preparations could be made for some of the major changes that are proposed. I support what has been said about the importance of making it clear that we must regard this House as wholly different from a department of the Civil Service, for obvious reasons. The job that we require the staff here to carry out is a very different sort of job from that done in other departments. The job of the staff here is to service Members, as has been said, and not to carry out certain principles of responsibility, as it were, that are common in Civil Service departments. Indeed, I think that the weakness that we all felt in the Compton Report—which in other respects produced some valuable and useful information—was that it seemed to try to imprison this place within a form of control that might have been far more suitable for an ordinary Department of State in the Civil Service.

The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) arises to some extent out of a misunderstanding. It is important that if we accept the general idea of having a new Commission to replace the old Commission—which, by common consent, is completely anachronistic—we must see that it is essentially a small body that will deal with general issues, promote fresh ideas and institute new investigations which the Management Board and the Services Committee, as revised, may carry out.

It would be a body to ensure that the House was able to adjust and alter its procedures to meet the changing times—because what became clear to many of us was that it was useless to try to work out a detailed, complicated and rigid structure for this House when almost certainly within a period of years—none of us knows how many—changes will be required. We may be affected by our relationship with Europe, for one thing. We may be very much affected by any movement towards regionalism. All these are matters that we cannot decide now, and it is therefore supremely important that we devise a structure that can relatively easily be adapted, and can itself encourage change when change is really needed, rather than take on the rôle of providing the House with a wholly new and complete structure that it would be very difficult to alter. That is a point of great importance.

It is incredible how long the House has carried on with the complete separation of the different departments that serve us. It is urgent that we should review that situation and try to bring about the development of a more unified service. I suggest not a hard-and-fast unified service, as proposed by Compton, but the growth of a unified service. I think that the fairly flexible procedures recommended in the Report offer the best hope and opportunity for that growth to take place.

It is surprising that in the past there have not been more opportunities for a wider range of recruitment and advancement within the House. It would be foolish to exaggerate the possibilities. In some areas there clearly are inevitable limitations. However, we should do all that we can to encourage movement.

I believe that one of the first duties of the Commission and Board of Management should be to investigate the possibilities and set in train new developments in training and recruitment to open up employment in this place. We should direct the attention of Members to the general principles set out in the Report that indicate the broad objectives which we are seeking.

It is right that, as the Report emphasises, the first duty should be to maintain, and, where possible, improve the services to Members. Secondly, overall control over the services of the House must remain with Members. Thirdly, the staff should be clearly seen as distinct from the Civil Service. Fourthly, there is the vital necessity of obtaining and maintaining the good will of the staff. Fifthly, we must preserve special expertise and unit loyalties. Sixthly, it is important that Mr. Speaker should retain direct contact with senior officials. Seventhly, there is a need for co-ordination of the services together with a unified staffing policy. Finally, there must be flexibility in being able to meet long-term changes. All these matters are vital and can be obtained from the kind of structure outlined in the report.

Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South, I think that it would be a mistake to try to combine the Commission and the Services Committee In the way that he proposed. The whole point is that the Commission should be a small body, capable of discussing general principles and of handing down a great deal of work to the Board of Management and, indeed, the Services Committee.

I hope that the Government will take an early decision on the matter. I am fully aware that not every hon. Member is wildly enthusiastic about this Report. I find that hon. Members are more than willing to complain about individual problems, but very few took the trouble to submit any evidence to the Committee. That did not surprise me in the least.

This is an important Report. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate that, if not immediately, the Government will make clear their support for its general principles and seek to put these proposals into effect as soon as possible.

5.5 p.m.

Mr. Roger Sims (Chislehurst)

I have yet to complete two years as a Member of this House. Therefore, it would be presumptuous of me to comment in detail on some of the proposals that have been put before us. I speak from limited experience, so I do not intend to criticise the Report in detail. [Interruption.] However, I am grateful for hon. Members' comments.

The Compton Report is extremely impressive, and the Committee's examination and alternative proposals are interesting and valuable. The account makes us realise the size of the organisation and appreciate the dedication of the staff involved in the smooth running of our affairs in this House. The various services that we receive are akin to our personal senses, in that we probably appreciate them only when we lack them. Indeed, we had evidence of that when the printing service was not all that it might have been.

The Report emphasises the special problems of the administration of this place. As has been said, it is literally unique. There is no other body or organisation in the country like it. Therefore, we cannot transfer en bloc the principles and practices of either the commercial world or the Civil Service to our methods and organisation.

Having served for the last 12 months on the Services Committee, I find myself still observing its proceedings as something of a new boy, but perhaps I may be permitted to make a couple of observations on it.

It is obviously desirable that we should have a committee in which issues concerning the circumstances under which we all work can be discussed and through which individual Members can air their problems and make suggestions.

Is it necessary for the Services Committee or its Sub-Committees to deal with so much detail? Are the placing of individual lights, the siting of clocks, when and how the taxi bell should be rung, or where a telephone should be installed, matters with which a group of busy Members of Parliament should be concerned? We are all busy. Is it necessary to devote not only our time but the time of officers to discussing such matters?

We are fortunate to have on the Services Committee a number of dedicated and hard-working Members—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke), who is enthusiastic, experienced and knowledgeable and does an enormous amount of work in the background. However, I feel that some of the decisions taken by the Services Committee and its Sub-Committees on matters of detail could be taken by officers, who would, of course, refer to the Committee or to one of the Sub-Committee Chairmen if matters were likely to be particularly controversial or delicate. Surely one of the members of the proposed Board of Management could be the chairman of the Accommodation Sub-Committee of the Services Committee.

Is it necessary for the proceedings of the Services Committee and its Sub-Committees to be constrained by the Select Committee procedures? I wonder whether it has to be a Select Committee. I confess that my modest researches have not revealed what other kind of Committee—

Mr. Blenkinsop

The Report makes recommendations to get over that difficulty.

Mr. Sims

Yes, indeed. I was about to make that comment. I realise that it is necessary for some matters to be recorded in detail, but surely it should be possible for the Committee and its Sub-Committees to consult the Serjeant at Arms, the Chief Engineer, and other officers without all the formality of literally every word having to be recorded. More informal arrangements would be quicker. They would avoid unnecessary expenditure and they would certainly be more efficient. No less an authority than the Lord President of the Council has suggested that the proceedings of the Services Committee might be more flexible. I hope that it will not be thought impertinent if, as a fairly new boy, I support that view.

5.10 p.m.

Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth (Thornaby)

I speak with two interests in this debate. I am the adviser to the Civil and Public Services Association, which has a substantial membership in this House, and I am also a relatively new hon. Member who, when I first came here, thought that the services that were provided for hon. Members were quite scandalous. I still hold that view. It is outrageous that the services that are provided are so inadequate. That is no criticism of the staff, who provide them under very difficult circumstances. My colleagues and I appreciate the wonderful efforts of the staff in this connection. It is from those two points of view that I speak tonight.

It is a great pleasure for me to speak on the Report of the Committee under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley), with whom I share a lot in common—his is the neighbouring constituency to mine. As Chairman of the Committee he has brought together a slightly disparate group of people and produced a Report that has received the general approval of all hon. Members and certainly of those members of the staff to whom I have spoken. I congratulate him on that, because the proposals in the Report represent a profound reform of the administration of the House—a reform which has fairly substantial implications for the constitutional position of the House and will strengthen the role that it plays in the country in future years.

I also regret the lack of interest shown by hon. Members in the Committee, in its predecessor, and in all matters of this sort, in terms of putting forward positive suggestions. I suppose that I am as guilty as many other hon. Members, but I am heartened by the fact that several hon. Members have come into the Chamber today—indeed, some have already spoken. I hope that that is a sign for the future. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that more hon. Members have not submitted evidence to the Committee and are not present today. We hear a lot of criticisms around the Tea Room, the bars and restaurants, about the facilities and the way in which the House is run. It is a pity that more hon. Members have not surfaced.

Generally, I welcome the proposal for a unified service. This is a reform that is long overdue. The proposal for one employer—the Commission—will be easily understood by members of the staff, by hon. Members and, indeed, by the public. The proposals that follow from that, such as accessibility to higher positions by all members of the staff of the House, and transferability from one department to another and from one job to another, are wholly welcome, will bring greater benefits to the House and, I hope, will make the work done by staff in the House much more attractive and interesting.

I also hope—I believe this to be the case—that a unified service will bring about a much greater degree of identification of staff activities. There is a need for a full commitment to the proposals for unification, transferability, accessibility and new recruiting and training procedures. If there is not that full-hearted support among senior members of the staff of the different departments, this will take a long time to get off the ground. I hope that senior members of the staff and also senior colleagues on the Commission will try to ensure that the proposal for a unified service is implemented as rapidly as possible.

I share some of the reservations that have been expressed about the rôle of the Services Committee. That Committee performs a quite remarkable job at present. The way in which it investigates hon. Members' complaints in incredible detail is quite ludicrous. That should be done by an officer of the House, acting as an executive. These are not matters that should be discussed by Committees of any sort. However, the rôle of the Services Committee needs to be made quite clear to hon. Members. It is an advisory Committee. If that rôle is not made clear, hon. Members will believe it to be the same body as it is at present, and will then lose all confidence in it. Hon. Members must appreciate that the Commission will be a real and powerful body in the House in future and that the Services Committee will not perform the sort of functions that it has attempted to perform in the past.

It is important that the new Services Committee represents opinions of Back Benchers loud and clear to the Commission. It needs to demonstrate that it is doing so, because hon. Members must have confidence in it if it is to succeed in the rô1e it has been given in the Report.

Finally, I regard as important the comments in paragraph 5.27 of the Report, about good staff relations. Mention has already been made of the need to strengthen personnel management. Unless there are good staff relations in the House, and a much greater degree of consultation than there has been—there is reference to the lack of meetings of the full Whitley Committee in this paragraph—it will be difficult to introduce these reforms and carry everyone along with them. I hope that the greatest number of consultations will take place, so that the importance of good staff relations, as stressed in that paragraph, will be recognised.

The House faces a new problem of security and management, and a greater demand from Members—which will be the order of the day for many years to come. It faces the problem of finding a new rôle in relation to other possible assemblies in the country and to the new Assembly overseas. The reform that has been proposed will help to strengthen the House and thus enable it to provide a better and more efficient service for hon. Members. That can only be good, at a time when we face the problems inherent in the new rôle that the House will play in the latter part of this decade and through into the 1980s.

5.19 p.m.

Mr. John Peyton (Yeovil)

My first task is to say a word of thanks, with, I am sure, the full agreement of every hon. Member who served on the Committee, to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley). He was a chairman who showed great patience and courtesy, not only to witnesses but—and this, I am sure, was more difficult—to his colleagues on the Committee. We all appreciate what he did. The fact that there is a completely unanimous Report, which is unusually clear for these days, is in no small measure due to him. I welcome the opportunity of saying this in public.

I should also like to say a strange word of thanks to Sir Edmund Compton, whose Report, though rejected, at least started us and stimulated us into very careful consideration of a series of very difficult problems.

I also express my thanks to the Clerks of the Committee, who were particularly helpful in the work that they did, and the mark of whose careful work is to be discerned throughout the Report.

The unanimity with which the Committee concluded its study has been echoed today by the speeches made by the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) and South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop). In a matter such as this it is particularly important not only that there should have been all-party agreement at the time but that it should survive into the later days and exist now.

The hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) made a very interesting speech. I hope very much that before long he will have a chance to deploy his experience and knowledge, and his concern for these matters, on the Services Committee. I hope that that will not be too unhappy a thing for the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Chisle-hurst (Mr. Sims) has had this experience already. I was glad to hear that he found it of interest.

I should like to call the attention of the House to one remark in paragraph 2.3 of the Report. The Committee rather shyly concluded that Members were more concerned with the scale of the services provided than with the details of their organisation. The speech of the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough has very eloquently echoed that. The Committee was certainly not made the recipient of a torrent of evidence by individual Members of Parliament—we heard from only one—nor is the House absolutely packed today with the usual queue of would-be speakers wishing to address it on this subject. On the whole, we recognised that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen who are Members of the House of Commons are eloquent and loud in their complaints about the deficiencies of services but are not prepared, despite what they may be tempted to say from time to time, to exert themselves unduly as to how they should be rectified.

It is hardly surprising, for that reason, that solutions to our administrative problems should be sought elsewhere than here. Nor is it surprising that those in Whitehall—which is, after all, conveniently nearby—should favour arrangements with which they themselves are familiar and tend to ignore the fact that whereas they administer policies the House of Commons staff is responsible for providing services, and a very great variety of services in a comparatively small area. I hope that this Report will discourage those in Whitehall who may feel it their duty to say, or who may be tempted from time to time into the rather enjoyable exercise of saying, how better Parliament could be run.

Parliament is not a Government Department. In my view it would be a very great mistake if we were to produce some new, grand Pooh-Bah of an official in the person of a Permanent Secretary. It would be to transplant a godlike individual from Whitehall to quite alien soil over here. I hope that that idea will make no further progress.

Parliament, I think—here, I speak entirely for myself—is already far too much the creature of the Executive, responding to its pressures and demands, bemused by a torrent of legislation, ill at ease in a sea of statistics and ministerial verbiage, and inundated with information that it lacks the power to digest. I believe that it is highly desirable that Parliament should be kept separate from the Executive and should be free to run its own affair in its own way, even if that way does not always seem too tidy to those elsewhere.

I was very interested to hear the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough making a particular point of the Committee's rejection of the idea that the functions of housekeeping and security should be separated. I should like to say how much I agree with him. On further reflection, I believe that we were completely right in concluding that those who come to a different conclusion on the whole do so because they have not become sufficiently familiar with the problems and have not had the experience that those who have had to carry out the duties possess—and it was their evidence that weighed very much with us.

The House of Commons needs not just a figurehead but a champion with real power, and a champion which it has itself produced. I cannot believe that the House of Commons would gain in any way if it allowed the paramountcy of Mr. Speaker to be challenged or undermined. I am particularly glad that the Report leaves the position of Mr. Speaker not only unscathed but reinforced in many ways. I believe, therefore, that it is absolutely right that it is the Speaker who should be the Chairman of a reinvigorated and revived Commission.

Personally, I welcome as a very sensible measure the idea of a Management Board. I also agree with all those who have spoken in favour of our recommendation of a unified staff. This must be good, in so far as it offers increased opportunities and a genuine feeling of unity among the staff. On the other hand, it is right that we should recognise that unification is easier to talk about than to achieve, because the functions and services with which we are dealing are of such a diverse nature.

I do not wish to detain the House for long. I very much hope that all the Officers of the House and members of the staff who serve us so well felt that they got a fair hearing and sympathetic and courteous consideration from the Committee. I hope that the Report which we have produced will be a help to them and to individual Members of Parliament. I particularly hope that the Report will do something to help preserve Parliament from being sucked into the maw of Whitehall, for no better reason than that the Executive today is achieving increased domination over our affairs. I believe that the independence of Parliament from the Executive is something that we must guard as being of particular importance at a time when personal liberties are very much under threat.

As I have said, I do not intend to detain the House. In conclusion, I should like to say how glad I was personally to have the privilege of serving on the Committee. I end as I started by saying to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, who has had a very long career in Parliament and one that is far from closing now, that he can be particularly proud of this contribution.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Spriggs (St. Helens)

I associate myself with hon. Members who have paid their compliments and extended their thanks to Officers of the House and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley), who was the Chairman of the Committee which had what I would regard as a thankless task. Had hon. Members appreciated his services and those of his colleagues on the Committee, I think many other hon. Members would have been present today. I regret that the Chamber is almost empty—although there may be a reason of which most of us are unaware—on an occasion when we are debating a matter which concerns Parliament as a whole.

My experience in meeting the staff and asking for co-operation is that there has been an ever-ready enthusiasm to help my colleagues and myself wherever possible. I hope that my short criticism will be regarded as constructive. It may be said that I should have sent my complaints in writing, but there is a certain lack of efficiency in various parts of the House and I regret that this is my only opportunity to raise these matters. I do not believe that matters of this sort should be raised in public, but because they go on to the public record they become public knowledge.

I regret to have to say to my right hon. Friend and his colleagues that the services in the Upper Corridor, where many Members are fitted into those prefabricated rooms in the roof over another place, require some attention. I hope, without going into detail, that the toilet facilities will be considered. I believe that from the point of view of personal hygiene and health there is a case for the provision at various strategic points of shower baths for Members who arrive in this building fairly early in the morning and often do not leave until midnight or later. I appreciate that there are some facilities of that sort, but they are inadequate.

We ought to consider the airing of such matters in such a way as to avoid the use of parliamentary time in this Chamber, and I believe that there is a case for bringing Members together elsewhere in the building instead of using scarce parliamentary time. I believe that an all-party meeting could be called in a Committee Room, and if the attendance in the Chamber this evening is anything to go by we need not ask for a larger room than Committee Room No. 10 for an hour or two.

My next point is probably more important. I should like the Committee to consider particularly the facilities provided for our constituents who come to Westminster to lobby their Members of Parliament. That, after all, is part of democracy. When the unemployed came last week from the Merseyside and the North-West, however, I went outside to look for my trades council delegates and I found many hundreds of people who had been standing for hours shivering in the cold. I then found that the Grand Committee Room in Westminster Hall was empty, and with the co-operation of the police I managed to fill that hall. But we were unable to get any more of our constituents into the Central Lobby.

We all know why, at great expense and time, people come to lobby Members of Parliament. They do not expect to be shoved into some Committee Room, away from the centre, which is their objective when they arrive here. Still less do we as Members of Parliament expect men and women of all ages to stand outside in the bitter cold. This is a very important point. It has been raised before to my knowledge, and while my right hon. Friend is, I trust, taking special note of these observations, I hope that it will not be necessary to raise this matter again, because if it does become necessary we shall raise "holy hell".

5.35 p.m.

Mr. Giles Shaw (Pudsey)

I had not intended to intervene in this debate, and I do so only because of the speech of the hon. Member for St. Helens (Mr. Spriggs). I deeply regret that the hon. Gentleman saw fit to raise these matters in the House rather than with the Services Committee, of which I am a member and of which there are many members from the Benches opposite.

In relation to the specific point to which the hon. Gentleman attaches so much importance—namely, the handling of mass lobbies—he should be aware of the several hours during which the Services Committee was in session trying to design, with the help of the Serjeant at Arms and his staff and the police and their representatives, a method whereby in safety and security within this building a massive demonstration of that size could be held.

We must recognise, as I am sure the hon. Member will recognise when he considers the matter, that the presence within this building of 5,000 persons would be a total and complete disaster, however orderly such an intrusion might be. We have problems with the security of this place. We have very real problems with the handling and the legitimate right of those who seek to lobby their Members. Nevertheless, I wish to pay my tribute to the way in which the Government Deputy Chief Whip handled this issue and the care with which he personally saw to it that this matter was tackled in very difficult circumstances. I suggest to the hon. Member for St. Helens that he should discuss that matter with his right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley), and possibly he will learn from him the circumstances which gave rise to the procedure adopted.

I wish to turn briefly to the Report which we are discussing. I recognise that the Committee, under the chairmanship of the right hon. Gentleman, has provided what I could call a half-way house in dealing with the various problems. I recognise that there are inadequacies in our present procedure, and I think that there are inadequacies in the Services Committee and in the way in which it seeks to respond flexibly. It is on this issue that I seek the advice of the right hon. Gentleman or of the Minister of State, Privy Council Office.

I am concerned that the structure of a Commission and Board of Management and, indeed, the Services Committee, in an advisory capacity, sounds to me like a fairly long channel of communication. It seems to me that the need for quick, simple and effective decisions on so many matters of administration is one of the criteria we should seek to apply in revising our administration of this House. I should like an assurance that the Government, if they accept these recommendations, as I hope they do, will regard the flexibility and speed with which decisions can be taken and consultations can be carried out as one of their main objectives.

The formality of our Committee proceedings is no longer suitable for many of the matters which come up for discussion. Reference has been made to the Select Committee procedure. The reams of evidence with which we have been faced no longer provide a sensible way of discussing matters of real importance. Therefore, I hope that in the matter of improving the services the need for speed of decision will be paramount.

5.39 p.m.

Mr. Gerry Fowler

The hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Shaw) asked for an indication of the Government's attitude. This is the first occasion on which I have spoken from the Dispatch Box when I can say that, in general, I can speak not only as a member of the Government but as a parliamentarian. Almost for the first time, I am also able to agree with every word uttered by the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton). As parliamentarians we are all concerned about the administration of this House and we want to improve it.

I am grateful to the Committee for its hard work on a Report which takes us a long way towards getting efficient administration in the House of Commons. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Harrison) for their work on the Report.

This is where we see Parliament at its best—when its interests are at stake. We are all concerned not with comfort or ease but with efficiency, and not in the sense that it might be understood in Whitehall. I agree that we do not want Whitehall spreading its tentacles into the House. Whoever is in Government will, I am sure, take the same view.

We have a special need here for an administration which can service what is essentially an all-party 635-Member Chamber where everyone counts as equal. It is a very difficult art. We do not have the pyramidical structure that one finds in central Government or private industry. We are not talking about the Prime Minister as a managing director. Servicing 635 equals is exceedingly difficult, but if we implement the broad lines of the Report's recommendations we shall be more on the way to getting something that is attuned with the needs of the late-twentieth century in this House.

Mr. Peyton

My observations lead me to believe that, in so far as we are all equal, it is very much an Orwellian quality and some are very much more equal than others.

Mr. Fowler

Since this is a friendly debate and we are not being Government and Opposition, I can say that I agree entirely with the right hon. Gentleman and that it is about time we changed the situation. There are times when I am more equal than he and other times when he is the more equal. I would be happy if we were all totally equal all the time.

The Government's interest in this matter extends only to the repeal of the 1812 provisions and the establishment of a new Commission. The other recommendations would fall to the new Commission when appointed, so I shall not go on at any length about the details of the Report. As an hon. Member I have strong views on some of them, but I shall suppress those views.

There are problems, including one to which the Report gives great attention—whether housekeeping, security and ceremonial functions can be properly amalgamated within the Serjeant at Arms' department and whether it is desirable that the Deliverer of the Vote should be part of the same department as the Librarian. There are a host of problems of that kind concerned with the organisation of particular departments and the administration of the House. These are essentially for resolution by the new Commission when it has been set up.

My task is simply to welcome the Report and to say that we hope it will be possible to make progress fairly rapidly on the broad lines of its recommendations. Once again, I express my gratitude to all those who have taken part in the production of the Report.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House takes note of the Report on House of Commons (Administration) (House of Commons Paper (1974–75) No. 624).