NOMINATION OF SELECT COMMITTEES (Hansard, 30 October 1980)

§ Mr. George Cunningham
I rise merely to draw the attention of hon. Members to a change that I believe we have effected unintentionally and certainly contrary to the intention of the Procedure Committee. The effect of the motion, which only repeats and consolidates what we did a few months ago, is to remove from hon. Members the right to use Standing Order No. 13 in respect of the nomination of hon. Members to a Select Committee.
Although it is not generally realised to be so, Standing Order No. 13 is available to hon. Members not only to introduce a Ten-Minute Bill but also to propose changes to the composition of Select Committees. However, when we brought the Committee of Selection into the process of nominating people or suggesting names for the new family of Committees—that is, the new departmentally related Committees and the Scottish and Welsh 851 Committees—we cut out Standing Order No. 13 facilities. The Procedure Committee report anticipated that possibility and clearly stated that we should not entirely remove the right of an hon. Member to use Standing Order No. 13 to propose changes to a Select Committee.
I particularly want to point this out to hon. Members tonight, and especially to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch), who at an earlier stage in our proceedings today was complaining of his non-nomination to a Committee. In the normal way of things, one could have told him that he had a right under Standing Order No. 13. Unfortunately, we removed it a few months ago. We are confirming the removal of that right by the motion.
It is a matter to which hon. Members should give their minds at some time in the future, so that that right under Standing Order No. 13 is restored. It is an important right, although I believe that it has been used only once by a private Member. It is something that we should look at again. If the Leader of the House were good enough to recommend that we should set up a Sessional Procedure Committee next Session, I hope that this little, but important, matter is one which it will pick up.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas
I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. He has mentioned a small point, but it is not unimportant and I shall certainly consider his suggestion sympathetically.

§ Mr. English
I hope that the Leader of the House will consider the big point that was agreed by both Front Benches as a change in the Procedure Committee's recommendations. The Committee proposed this procedure through the Committee of Selection for all Select Committees. By a somewhat nefarious compromise with the Leader of the House, the two Chief Whips rescued their power of patronage over existing Committees, so that all the Committes that existed before the new Select Committees were set up are still subject to motions put to the House in the name of the Government's Deputy Chief Whip. That is not what the Procedure Com- 852 mittee proposed, and that needs to be made plain.
We proposed that the Committee of Selection should have some say in the selection of all members of Select Committees. The matter becomes peculiarly important on the Committees dealing with the Ombudsman and public accounts. There is already considerable criticism from the Expenditure Committee, the Procedure Committee, the Treasury and Civil Service Committee and the Public Accounts Committee of our archaic system of audit which is almost totally under the control of the Treasury, which is supposed to be audited. Few people in the United Kingdom have the power to chase off their auditor, but section 3(3) of the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1921 provides that the Treasury's decision is final in any dispute between it and the Comptroller and Auditor General.
In the same way, the Treasury, through its Whips, determines the composition of the PAC. That must be wrong. Our audit is bad enough without jurisdiction over it being subjected entirely to Treasury control. I hope that the Leader of the House, whom I do not blame for changing the resolution, will consider the original recommendations of the Procedure Committee in all respects when he is considering the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South. and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham).
The way that the Committee of Selection has so far exercised its powers also needs consideration. The official position of the Government Chief Whip is that he had no say in the composition of the majority side of Select Committees and one must accept his word, but, by a mysterious process of osmosis, all PPSs have been kept off Select Committees—not only, in the normal traditions of the House, kept off those relating to the Department in which they are PPSs, but kept off all the Committees. All officers of the Conservative Back-Bench groups have been kept off Select Committees. It is not for me to point out that that rather weakens the Government's case on Select Committees or weakens the calibre of those 853 applying to be officers of the Conservatives' Back-Bench groups.
Those are not matters for me in a party sense, but in a House of Commons sense we must protest that by some process, whatever it may be, there has been a deliberate reduction in the calibre of Conservative Members on Select Committees. It is extremely unfortunate.
There is scope for the review of the original recommendations of the Procedure Committee, both because they have not been carried out and because their implementation seems to have defects.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas
I shall add that matter to my reflections.