§ 35. Mr. Rhodri Morgan (Cardiff, West)What evidence the Government have submitted to the Modernisation Committee in its examination of the working hours of the House. [36291]
§ The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Ann Taylor)The Government plan to submit a memorandum on the parliamentary calendar to the Modernisation Committee shortly after the Easter adjournment.
§ Mr. MorganI thank the President of the Council for that reply and assure her that she will get support from virtually all quarters of the House in her efforts to modernise the House and its working hours. The recent all-night sittings may or may not be wondrous examples 16 of antediluvian, macho, arm-wrestling exercises, but they certainly do not provide high-class parliamentary legislative scrutiny.
§ Mrs. TaylorI thank my hon. Friend for his support and for his remarks. I think that there is a great deal of support for the idea of improving House hours, but when it comes to working out the detail of the changes, there is not yet complete agreement.
§ Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire)When the right hon. Lady submits evidence, will she give some idea of what the Government think is a proper allocation of time for Ministers to spend in the House? Is she aware that there is considerable concern in the House and outside about the rare appearances by the Prime Minister other than on Wednesdays and about the fact that he has voted in about 12 Divisions—5 per cent. of the Divisions that have been held since May of last year? He has treated the House with scant regard and has attended it far less than any of his predecessors this century. What does she intend to do about that?
§ Mrs. TaylorI have no intention whatever of including such items in my memorandum, and I do not recognise the concerns that the hon. Gentleman says exist outside or, indeed, inside the House about the attendance of Ministers. The hon. Gentleman asked about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I should have thought that hon. Members in all parts of the House would realise that he is leading a Government who are making important decisions. At this time when many Ministers are involved in reaching settlements on delicate situations, such as the one in Northern Ireland, it is quite right that the Prime Minister should spend his time on such a matter.
§ Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North)I do not remember many Tory Prime Ministers attending the House much over the past 18 years. Does my right hon. Friend find it understandable that people outside cannot understand why we spend many hours in the evening and sometimes during the night, yet break up for a long period, sometimes for as much as three months or more during the summer? Would it not make much more sense to have a working arrangement under which the summer break was six weeks at most? Under such an arrangement, it would not be so necessary sometimes to work through the night.
§ Mrs. TaylorI am not sure that the relationship between the length of the recess and the length of our individual sittings is quite as simple as my hon. Friend suggests. To perform our responsibilities of scrutiny, it is important that we strike a balance between sitting days, sitting weeks and the passage of legislation. We could examine recess dates, which I should like to make more family-friendly. I think that all hon. Members realise that, as soon as we consider changing the hours or weeks that the House sits, there will be knock-on consequences throughout the legislative process. We have to be aware of those consequences.