Points of Order (Hansard, 23 November 1994)

§ Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton)
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. On 25 October, I put an oral supplementary question to the Prime Minister in which I asked him to provide me with a list of the salaries of the chief executives of the next steps agencies, together with those of the civil servants whom those chief executives have replaced or succeeded. The Prime Minister replied to me on 15 November, providing me with the material about the chief executives of the agencies, but informed me that for the salaries of the civil servants I should table questions to Ministers. The Prime Minister's letter stated: This information will only be available from the Minister concerned. As the Prime Minister suggested, I therefore tabled questions to all the Ministers with responsibility for the next steps agencies, including the Secretary of State for Defence. My question to the Secretary of State is listed on page 133 of the Votes and Proceedings for last Friday and it asks if he will list the salary and other emoluments of the civil servant who did the work of or work comparable to that of the chief executive of each next steps agency established by his Department before the agency was established. Yesterday afternoon, I received a letter from a person called G. H. Wilson, headmaster and chief executive of the Duke of York's royal military school. It stated: The Secretary of State for Defence has asked me to reply to your parliamentary question. By the second post this afternoon, since I gave notice of my intention to raise this point of order with you, Madam Speaker, I received a letter from the headmaster of Queen Victoria school, Dunblane, Perthshire, stating: I have been asked to reply to your Question". I ask you to rule on two matters, Madam Speaker. The first is that persons who are not Members of this House have no right or status to answer parliamentary questions, should not purport to do so, and should be directed not to do so.
Secondly, whatever the role of a chief executive of a next steps agency may be, it is not to account for the salaries of civil servants, who are directly employed by Ministers who are responsible to the House; that the only people who are properly equipped and have the duty to answer those questions are Ministers; and that it is therefore unacceptable for Ministers to hive off to these deplorable agencies not only the work that they have done, but responsibility which the agencies do not have and on which they have no right to answer questions by a Member of Parliament.

§ Madam Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman raises not only a point of order but matters of a debating nature which I cannot enter into. For all that, I am grateful to him for giving me notice, to some extent, of his point of order. I have made inquiries into the matter, and have been informed that the letter to which he refers was sent to him in error. The headmaster was asked to provide information so that the Ministry of Defence could put together a comprehensive reply to the right hon. Gentleman. Instead, the headmaster misunderstood the 598 request and wrote directly to the right hon. Gentleman. I understand that a full reply to his question will be given by the relevant Minister tomorrow.

§ Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton)
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. May I seek your guidance on whether it is improper for an outside body to influence the appointment of an adviser to a Select Committee? It is clear from a letter I have here that Unison has attempted to force Labour members of the Select Committee on Health to appoint a Unison member as an adviser to that Committee. That is exactly the sort of behaviour by the Chairman of a Select Committee that was condemned in the House yesterday by the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon).

§ Madam Speaker
I have not seen the letter, and I am not aware of the matter. [Interruption.] There is no point in waving it at me; I have good eyesight, but I cannot read it from that distance. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will let me have the letter, and I shall see what I can do about it.

§ Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax)
Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. My question to you yesterday was whether it was normal practice for the Chair of a Select Committee to report on such a sensitive issue when she had a one-to-one meeting with the manager of a advertising agency, and when the Committee had previously conducted a report into tobacco advertising—a very sensitive issue. On the issue raised in Committee, I, along with other Members, suggested that a member of Unison could advise us on a particular inquiry. It was openly done, and agreed unanimously by Conservative Members on that Committee.

§ Madam Speaker
I think that two points arise from points of order yesterday. The first concerns whether a Chairman or Chairwoman of a Select Committee should report to the Committee any approaches that relate to the work of that Committee. As I told the House yesterday, there are no rules that are relevant to the issue, but let me give the House my own views and a little guidance, if I may. It would be a matter of common sense and courtesy for such approaches to be reported. I am not seeking for rules and regulations to be engraved in tablets of stone. We have to apply common sense to our dealings with each other in the Chamber and in Committee, and I leave it at that.
The second issue is the notification that should be given by hon. Members who intend to refer in the Chamber to other hon. Members. It is a clear convention, again based on courtesy, that notice should be given where such reference is intended to be made, but clearly there will be cases where the reference arises on the spur of the moment—during a point of order or at Question Time, when advance notification is unlikely to be practical. Of course, hon. Members should consider whether reference to a colleague without notice is fair. We all understand when it is on the spur of the moment, but we must consider whether it is fair to behave in that way.

§ Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey)
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek your guidance on a serious matter. As you know, yesterday the Select Committee on Members' Interests met to consider the very sensitive and important matter of a complaint against the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton). As a member of that 599 Committee, I was astonished when I realised that a Government Whip was present as a member of the Select Committee. Of course, it would be wrong to me to reveal anything that went on in the Committee hearing, but I think that he made an influential—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady should be very careful about what she is reporting to me. If she has something to report about a Committee, she should come and see me and not report it in this way. I would be glad to see her, but at the moment she is reporting something that took place in a Select Committee of which I have no knowledge.

§ Ms Eagle
With respect, I want to ask you whether there is any precedent for a Whip, who is a member of the Government and takes the Crown payroll, to be a member of a Select Committee. I have been approached since the meeting by journalists who know of this, and they are astonished. This has set a very serious precedent, which threatens to breach the independence of the Select Committee system.

§ Madam Speaker
Perhaps the hon. Lady has not considered the matter carefully enough. I do not know the individual the hon. Lady is talking about. That is why I would rather she came to discuss the matter with me. It could well be that the House appointed the individual.

§ Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington)
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) is of immense constitutional importance. A Government Whip has been appointed to the Select Committee on Members' Interests at a time when a series of sensitive inquiries are under way.
There is a precedent of which you should be aware. The Leader of the House of Commons is a member of the Broadcasting and Privileges Committees, but he has a remit, in that he has to steer changes through the House. The Attorney-General gives legal advice to the Committee on Privileges. That is his remit. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury is a member of the Public Accounts Committee, although he has never attended it. I was a member of that Committee for 11 years, but the Financial Secretary did not attend.
What we have here is a precedent where a Minister, because that is.what.a.Treasury Whip is, is attending a Select Committee meeting—

§ Madam Speaker
Order.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
—with a view to fixing its findings—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his.seat—[Interruption.] Order. I have heard sufficient to know that it is what I first suspected. This House has appointed the hon Member concerned. The hon. Member for Workington, (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and anyone else who wished to object to that should have done so at the time.

§ Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham)
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Yesterday, with the support of several hon. Members, I sought to table an early-day motion which contained reference to the famous Maples 600 memorandum and the word "yobbos". The Table Office has informed me today that you might object to an early-day motion containing the word "yobbos".
I would like your ruling on three points. First—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. Perhaps I can give the hon. Gentleman guidance now. There is a procedure by which, if early-day motions are refused by the Table Office, they come to me. I am therefore waiting for the early-day motion to come to me, and I will look at it in that light.

§ Mr. MacShane
indicated assent.