§ The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping)I beg to move,
That, for the remainder of the present Session of Parliament, Standing Order No. 152 (Select Committees related to government departments) shall have effect subject to the following modification in line 48, at the end to add—
`(4A) Notwithstanding paragraphs (2) and (4) above, where more than two committees or sub-committees appointed under this order meet concurrently in accordance with paragraph (4)(e) above, the quorum of each such committee or sub-committee shall be two.'.
I am pleased to move a short, practical and time-limited motion. It has been brought to the House following a request from my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands). He has the unique distinction of being the first Member to chair a concurrent meeting of four Select Committees. The four—Foreign Affairs, Trade and Industry, Defence and International Development—are considering the first annual report on strategic export controls, which was published by the Government last year.
Each of the four Committees has a quorum of three and a membership of 11—12 in the case of the Foreign Affairs Committee. When they meet, at least three members from each Committee must be present—a total of 12—if they are to take evidence. The absence of one member debars his colleagues from the same Committee from asking questions of witnesses. Not unnaturally, it has not always been possible to get all 12 members together at the same time.
The Chairman suggested a temporary amendment to the Standing Orders to provide, in those circumstances, for the quorum to be two from each Committee, making a total of eight. That is for the process only of evidence taking and deliberating. If the Committees decide to produce a report, it will still need to be agreed by each Committee in turn, while fully quorate.
The Select Committees have combined in an innovative way and have come across an unforeseen difficulty. It is an issue that may become increasingly common as Select Committees pursue cross-departmental concerns. The House may need to consider the matter again at a future stage.
I understand that there have been difficulties with quorum in two Select Committee meetings jointly to consider single gateways. The motion as it stands will not help them, but I am willing to look at that matter again in consultation with the relevant House Committees, if necessary. With that, I hope that the House will approve the motion.
§ Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire)Yet again this evening, I find myself in agreement with Ministers. The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office made the case clearly and cogently. It is one with which we are entirely happy to concur.
I make two brief points. First, Select Committees are always at their best if they are rather more than quorate. I hope that the motion will not be taken as any encouragement for Members to stay away. Secondly, it behoves us all to look carefully at the structure and 431 timetabling of Committees in the House to make it easier for Members to fulfil both their Committee commitments and their responsibilities in the Chamber.
With those two minor caveats, I am happy on behalf of the Opposition Front-Bench team to support the motion.
§ Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office for moving the motion. The motion arises from an extraordinarily unique situation in which we are trying to develop a joint Committee—comprising four Select Committees, which is in itself a pretty formidable exercise—to inquire into the annual report on strategic export controls.
We have already met, and I believe that the position will be fully protected, so that every member of every Committee will be entitled to attend. When the joint Committee's reports are prepared, the whole Committees will be able to participate.
We feel that, in dealing with the nitty-gritty of the Committee's work, a quorum of three members per Committee would be not only onerous, but difficult for us in dealing with our business from one minute to the next. The motion contains a very modest request on an experimental matter, and I think that the House should support it and give the arrangement a chance to work.
The joint Committee is the first one in which four Select Committees have been combined in this way. It will be very interesting to see how the Committee proceeds, especially as we shall have to proceed by consensus. We shall have to wait to see how well we do in that.
We believe that the Committee has the job of scrutinising the Government's very important initiative on a joint inquiry into the first annual report on strategic export controls, and I really do believe that the House should give us the chance to try to make that process work. I am making the request on behalf not of one side of the House or one Committee, but of both sides of the House and all the Committees—who asked me, as Chairman, to write to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to ask for the motion to be tabled and moved. I hope that the House will support it.
§ Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome)There is a consensus on the issue on both sides of the House. I concur entirely with the comments of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), who is my Chairman on the joint Committee on strategic arms exports. I also note that, if this were a sitting of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we would be quorate.
However, there is a real difficulty in the way in which the quadripartite Committee has been established—which is not to say that Liberal Democrat Members do not welcome its establishment or are not determined to make it work. The sad fact is that the House's Standing Orders do not make it easy for joint Committees to operate. I suggest to the Minister, in commending the motion to the House, that that matter should perhaps be considered, either in the Modernisation Committee or elsewhere, so that we might establish an apparatus enabling an ad hoc joint Committee— as this one is—to work effectively.
432 I do not think that the matter dealt with in the motion is the only procedural problem that the Committee will experience as we do our work. However, I am sure that we shall find ways of avoiding the pitfalls that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney has described. Nevertheless, I foresee all sorts of difficulties, such as when the various Select Committees, having agreed one of the quadripartite Committee's reports, propose different and various amendments to it in their own Committees. We shall have to determine how to resolve those differences, should they arise.
I hope that the Committee will be able to work by consensus. I have some confidence that, under the able chairmanship of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, we shall be able to do so. However, we shall have to find an apparatus enabling the system to work.
§ Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington)I should like to make a somewhat different speech on the matter by dealing with an issue that I do not think the House has yet fully considered—the implications of the joint Committee for the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee. Perhaps I should explain that that Committee is not quite a Select Committee of the House of Commons, but was established under the provisions of the Intelligence Services Act 1994. It is essentially a Committee that is appointed by the Prime Minister, although it is not a Committee of Parliament.
When I first heard about the establishment of the joint Committee—chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands)—on the annual report on strategic export controls, it seemed to me quite obvious—
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord)Order. The hon. Gentleman is slightly off the mark; he must restrict his remarks precisely to the matter of the quorum.
§ Mr. Campbell-SavoursI thought that, although the Intelligence and Security Committee is not a Committee of Parliament, it should have been represented on the Joint Committee—which deals specifically with issues that are relevant to the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I should have thought that, in ideal circumstances—were the Intelligence and Security Committee a parliamentary Committee—we should ourselves want to have a quorum of at least two people from that Committee on the joint Committee, to ensure that its proceedings are properly reported back to our Committee. Regrettably, however, that is not to be the case.
I am taking this opportunity simply to flag up once again the principle that the Intelligence and Security Committee should be a fully parliamentary Committee.
§ Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East)I am tempted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) along the path of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the particular problems in relation to intelligence that were raised in the Foreign Affairs Committee's inquiry into Sierra Leone, but I suspect that, were Ito do so, I should be properly cut off very quickly by you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
433 I was also tempted to intervene in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), if only to allow him to get his breath back. However, I shall just make a general point—in what is, essentially, a very quorate Foreign Affairs Committee—on the peculiar problems highlighted by the quadripartite Committee.
The fact that each Department is monitored by one House Select Committee creates a certain inflexibility. We have come across that problem in dealing with Europe, for example, as we have no European Select Committee with our continental partners.
Some of us attended the joint Committee's first meeting, at which my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil did extremely well in steering us through some of the pitfalls that became readily apparent. Clearly, the normal concept of one Department, one Committee cannot easily be adapted under our current Standing Orders to accommodate this new creation of a quadripartite Committee. Everyone accepts that it would be absurd if the same Minister had to appear before four separate Select Committees—the Select Committees on Trade and Industry, Foreign Affairs, Defence and International Development—to go over, in total duplication, the same ground.
It was therefore quite proper that the new creation should somehow be grafted on to our system. However, in that first meeting, it became apparent that—as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said—we shall have to consider very carefully the inflexibilities that have arisen in the Select Committee system. I should hope that, after a due period of experience, we shall return to a consideration of ways and means of adapting our Standing Orders to the new creation.
Let us proceed as best we can. If people of ill will wish to make life in Committee very difficult for my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, they will certainly be able to do so, particularly in the relationship between the newly created Committee and the other Committees, and in the agreement—or non-agreement—of its subsequent reports.
Today, however, let us give the motion a fair wind. The matter will have to return to the House—so that our Standing Orders may be reconsidered, and so that we may, through experience, ensure that the new Committee is established properly within our Standing Orders to work and to avoid duplication.
§ Mr. John Healey (Wentworth)I welcome the motion, but regret its limitation in applying only
where more than two committees or sub-committees appointed under this order meet concurrently".Two Select Committee inquiries in which Select Committees have combined forces are currently under way. The first is the joint Committee on strategic export controls—which has given rise to the motion—and the second is the joint inquiry into the single work-focused gateway by the Select Committee on Social Security and my own Employment Sub-Committee. While the Social Security Committee has the standard 11 members, the Employment Sub-Committee has only eight and in 434 practice has only seven, because the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) has been promoted to the Front Bench and we have been waiting many months for a replacement.Some may feel that we are slacking if we are unable to find three of our seven for meetings of the joint Committee, but we are also pursuing a joint inquiry with the Education Sub-Committee on access for all to further and higher education and on the barriers to employment and education for disabled people. The Sub-Committee is also concluding an inquiry into the future of the Employment Service. Tomorrow we start taking evidence from the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England on the labour market and employment implications of economic and monetary union.
Despite that work load, we were determined to undertake a joint inquiry with the Social Security Committee into the single work-focused gateway, because it is potentially the most radical step forward in welfare reform and could result in very radical changes to the way in which people experience the welfare system. It seemed proper to combine our expertise on the issue.
However, both Committees are frustrated by the Standing Orders under which we have to operate. At one of our first evidence sessions there were four members of the Social Security Committee, but only two from the Employment Sub-Committee. We had to take evidence not as a joint Committee, but as the Social Security Committee. That meant that the two of us from the Sub-Committee had to sit through the evidence session and were not allowed to ask questions. In the following evidence session there were four members from the Employment Sub-Committee and three from the Social Security Committee, but one was likely to have to leave 15 minutes before the end of the evidence session, so we were obliged to take evidence as the Employment Sub-Committee, and the three from the Social Security Committee were unable to make a contribution to the proceedings.
I appreciate that there may be a danger in reducing the quorum of a Select Committee to two, particularly as the Chairman generally has only the casting vote, which may allow the other members present to drive through whatever they want. However, that need not be a problem because most Select Committee work proceeds on the basis of consensus. It is feasible to reduce the quorum for evidence sessions only, leaving it at three when the Committee is making decisions or considering a draft report.
The predicament that has given rise to the motion is a symptom of a wider challenge for the Select Committee system. As the Government increasingly do business across Departments, the departmental Select Committees will become increasingly ill-suited to the job of scrutinising what the Executive are doing, unless we can also work more effectively across departmental boundaries. Joined-up government requires joined-up scrutiny.
The problem will recur. Any inquiry that Parliament might wish to undertake on the work of the social exclusion unit would involve contributions from the Committees on Home Affairs, Social Security, Health and Employment. The same might be true of scrutinising the work of the women's unit, drugs policies and, arguably, anything that falls within the remit of the Cabinet Office, for which Parliament has no Select Committee.
435 I welcome the motion, but I urge the Government to consider a wider review of the work and Standing Orders of Select Committees through the Liaison Committee or the Privileges Committee so that we can do our work more effectively and scrutinise the Government's business properly.
§ 8.35
§ Mr. TippingIn my opening remarks I made it clear that with increasing cross-departmental co-operation there would be a need for Select Committees to work more closely together. That would necessitate a further look at the Standing Orders. That has been reinforced by hon. Members from both sides. We will look again at the issue.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That, for the remainder of the present Session of Parliament, Standing Order No. 152 (Select Committees related to government departments) shall have effect subject to the following modification in line 48, at the end to add—
`(4A) Notwithstanding paragraphs (2) and (4) above, where more than two committees or sub-committees appointed under this order meet concurrently in accordance with paragraph (4)(e) above, the quorum of each such committee or sub-committee shall be two.'.