House of Commons Modernisation Committee
My written evidence submitted to the committee in December, reproduced with its permission
Introduction
On 25 July 2024, the House of Commons agreed to the establishment of the Modernisation Committee, “tasked with driving up standards and addressing the culture of the House, as well as improving working practices” in order “to make Parliament more effective”. Like its predecessor which existed between 1997 and 2010, it is chaired by the Leader of the House of Commons, currently Lucy Powell, and consists of 14 members: nine Labour (though one, Mike Amesbury, has had the Labour whip suspended ), three Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats.
In October 2024, the committee invited submissions on any aspects of its work, with a closing date of 16 December. This written evidence has yet to be published, but the committee decided to grant permission for those who had submitted memoranda to make them publicly available if they so wished. I therefore reproduce the paper I submitted below.
Memorandum of evidence
1. I was a clerk in the House of Commons from 2005 to 2016. I worked for a number of select committees, in the Public Bill Office and the Overseas Office, and served as Private Secretary to the Chairman of Ways and Means, Lindsay Hoyle. I was also an Associate Serjeant at Arms.
The role of the House of Commons
2. To identify ways to reform and improve the House of Commons, we have to understand what the House is for. It has three main roles: to grant confidence and supply to the government; to scrutinise legislation; and to hold ministers to account for government expenditure, policy and administration. In all of these roles, Members of Parliament act as representatives of their constituents, and therefore the House is the representative of the electorate as a whole.
Public perception now and in the future
3. The House of Commons suffered a catastrophic reputational blow as a result of the exposure of abuse of Members’ expenses in 2009. Five Members were convicted of criminal offences and sentenced to imprisonment, and the Speaker of the House, Michael Martin, was forced to resign. Public trust in Parliament and in politics and politicians more broadly plummeted to unprecedented lows, and I have frequently argued that the House will never fully recover in reputational terms.
4. A lack of public trust in democratic institutions is corrosive and robs them of legitimacy, which renders them worthless. Government must be by consent and it is essential to address this lack of trust and confidence. Equally, the House cannot be a truly effective scrutiny body without improving its reputation.
5. Part of restoring public trust must be demonstrating that Members are hard-working, responsible and maintain rigorous standards of propriety. At the same time, the House must better communicate to the public its role within our constitutional settlement, what it can and cannot do, and where the limits of its responsibilities lie.
The executive v. the legislature
6. Because the UK does not have strict separation of powers, relations between the executive and the legislature are not always clear-cut: the government is drawn largely from Members of the House of Commons and has to retain its support or it will fall. So although His Majesty’s Government and the House are separate entities, they cannot be regarded as wholly separately or expected to act separately in all circumstances.
7. Equally MPs can fulfil several simultaneous roles. Almost all have a formal party allegiance, and around a sixth will be government ministers or whips (the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 sets a maximum of 95 paid positions for MPs and there are currently four additional unpaid ministers in the Commons). Others will be part of the “payroll vote” as parliamentary private secretaries (currently 32) or holding party political roles. This means an effective government vote of 130-140, or 20 per cent of the House.
8. Mr Speaker and the three Deputy Speakers do not vote or participate in the business of the House except from the chair. In addition, the Official Opposition has 77 shadow ministers and whips and there are 33 Liberal Democrat spokespersons. Thirty-one MPs act as chairs of select committees, for which they are paid, and many more serve on those committees. There are seven Sinn Féin MPs who do not take their seats for reasons of principle.
9. Nevertheless, all MPs have constituency duties and responsibilities. These overlapping roles underline the fact that the House’s existence as an institution separate from government is qualified (and it has no legal personality).
10. In practice this means it is impossible to expect the House to act fully independently of government, any more than government can act independently of the House. Under Standing Order SO No 14(1), government business has precedence with limited exceptions and it would be impractical for it to be otherwise. The ministry has a general right to expect to get its business through.
11. Although the government will not, for these reasons, usually be defeated on significant issues, MPs collectively still have a right and a duty to hold ministers to account, by tabling oral and written questions, participating in debates and serving on legislative select committees. The government, because it has an institutional advantage over other parties and over the House, must expect robust and sometimes uncomfortable scrutiny of its policies and administration.
More effective legislative scrutiny
12. The greatest weakness of the House’s current scrutiny of legislation. The previous Select Committee on Modernisation recommended in its first report in 1997 that programme motions should be introduced for most government bills: these are regulated by SO No 83A-I and set out strict limits on the time available for the various stages of a bill’s consideration. Before 1997 there were no such limits unless a specific allocation of time motion (or “guillotine”) was moved. The government’s expressed hope at the time was that programme motions would be agreed by cross-party consensus but that has not generally proved the case.
13. Programme motions now serve to constrain debate often to unacceptably short timeframes and make it impossible for Members to carry out proper and thorough scrutiny. If the committee is serious about “reforming working procedures to make the House of Commons more effective”, it should abolish programme motions and return to a presumption that Members are able to spend as long as they feel is necessary considering legislation. In exceptional circumstances it would still be open to ministers to move an allocation of time motion but this should be seen as an exception.
14. There is also a persistent problem with the quality of bills introduced to Parliament and the extent to which the government has to amend its own measures during the legislative process. In addition, too much “tidying up” is left to the House of Lords, to the extent that many Members regard its role as a revising chamber as far too broad. One antidote to this is more rigorous and widespread pre-legislative scrutiny.
15. Successive governments have declared a commitment to publish bills in draft and allow pre-legislative scrutiny “wherever possible”. This can be done in a number of ways: a joint committee can be established to consider a draft bill at length, it can be referred to the relevant departmental select committee, and drafts of only specific complex or controversial clauses can be published. However, with the exception of the 2017-19 Parliament, the number of bills subject to pre-legislative scrutiny has fallen dramatically, and there were none at all in the first (2019-21) session of the last parliament.
16. The government should be required to publish all bills in draft form, with a mechanism for this to be waived in cases of emergency and pressure of time (a waiver could be in the gift of Mr Speaker, for example). It should then commit to establishing a joint committee to examine the draft bill or allowing the relevant select committee to take on that responsibility (and it would be open to the select committee to make the case that pre-legislative scrutiny was not necessary). The joint committee or select committee would then take evidence on the draft bill, consider its contents in detail and produce a report in the usual way.
17. This process would make the passage of legislation slower and therefore for the government more inconvenient. But speed and convenience cannot override effective scrutiny and good legislation. Much more extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and the reflection of its conclusions in bills subsequently introduced to Parliament would allow Members to carry out their responsibilities in more depth and over a longer time period, with the benefit of evidence from experts, interested parties and the public. Fundamentally this would assist the House in discharging its functions more effectively and with greater influence and would lead to better, more considered and workable legislation.
Effectiveness and conduct in the chamber
18. Another factor which has inhibited the effectiveness of the House is that, simply, Members’ participation in debate is not good enough. There is too little engagement in argument, too much reading of pre-prepared speeches into the record and too little attendance in the chamber by Members participating in the day’s business.
19. Members taking part in a debate, whether on legislation or a general subject, should regard that as their primary duty for the day, and expect to spend the majority of their time in the chamber, listening to speeches and asking questions as well as making their own remarks. It reflects one of the House’s core functions and Members’ principal responsibilities.
20. Erksine May already sets out most of the expectations on Members. Chapter 21 makes a fundamental observation:
“In principle, a Member is not permitted to read a speech, or a supplementary question, but may make reference to notes… The purpose of this rule is to maintain the cut and thrust of debate, which depends upon successive speakers meeting in their speeches to some extent the arguments of earlier speeches; debate is more than a series of set speeches prepared beforehand without reference to each other.” (Paragraph 4)
21. It also sets out clearly the expectation of and need for attendance in the chamber:
“A Member wishing to speak in debate should plan to be present for most of the debate and in particular should be present for the opening speeches, should remain for at least the next two speeches after their own, and should return for the winding-up speeches.” (Paragraph 5)
22. This guidance should be widely understood, accepted, abided by and, when necessary, enforced. If the House is to have a purpose in considering legislation, debating matters of public interest and holding ministers to account, Members must debate with each other, exchange opinions and arguments and deal with other viewpoints. Reading prepared remarks into the record and leaving the chamber as soon as possible is unproductive, feeble, a failure of responsibility and a discourtesy to the House.
23. The House absolutely must not introduce speakers’ lists. Members often complain that they do not know when they might be called to speak: it does not matter. The working assumption should be that for the duration of the debate they are in the chamber. Participation by Members is not limited to making their own speeches, nor is the business of the House an inconvenience to be accommodated around other commitments. It is a basic responsibility of Members of Parliament.
The public face of the House of Commons
24. There is broad agreement, which I certainly saw from the vantage point of the House Service, that the reputational element of the expenses scandal was handled extremely badly by the House authorities. From Mr Speaker downwards, they were slow to grasp the extent of public revulsion, defensive, secretive and grudging in almost every response. More generally, myths and misconceptions about the House, its patterns and weight of business and the conduct and privileges of Members too often go unchallenged in the media; and the public mood means that voters are more than ready to think the worst.
25. Mr Speaker, while he has a role as a figurehead and ambassador for the House, cannot be expected to engage too extensively in public debate over the House’s business, practices and procedures. Nevertheless, it would be of enormous benefit if there were a senior figure who was able, empowered and trusted to speak to the media, both formally and informally, to explain the business of the House and correct errors of fact and representation.
26. This could be the Leader of the House. Although she is a cabinet minister and therefore a senior member of the government, it has long been recognised that the office carries wider responsibilities to the House as a whole, as reflected in proceedings on the weekly business statement. Alternatively the role could be given to the Member who answers questions on behalf of the House of Commons Commission (currently Nick Smith). In any event, the House needs a spokesman who can be non-partisan but proactive, creative and flexible in promoting what it does well and correcting factual inaccuracies about and misrepresentations of its work and procedures.
Overall culture
27. Individual reforms can only ever be elements of a wider culture: that being a Member of Parliament is a privilege and a responsibility; that it requires extremely hard work and dedication; that it is serious, intellectually rigorous and demanding; that its core is in the chamber of the House and in its committees; that exemplary standards of ethics and propriety are a prerequisite; and that because of all of these elements it is worthy of acknowledgement, respect and appropriate remuneration.
28. There is a cycle which can be virtuous or vicious. If Members take their responsibilities seriously and carry them out well and diligently, they will deserve respect and they will be more effective scrutineers of the government and representatives of their electors. In turn this will empower them to perform that scrutiny. On the other hand, if Members focus solely on preferment and courting the favour of their party leadership, if they neglect proper and meticulous engagement with the business of the House and carry out their duties in a perfunctory way, they will make themselves more peripheral and ineffective, ignored except as lobby fodder and regarded by the public as careerists.
Conclusion
29. There are some changes to procedure which, as I have suggested here, could be introduced to make the House more effective in carrying out its main constitutional and representative roles. To a large extent, however, the future of the House, its effectiveness and reputation lies in the hands of Members. It sounds trite and sweeping to suggest that Members must simply “do better”, but the experience of the past 15 to 20 years demonstrates this, and it is a sentiment which would resonate with voters.
30. If we want Parliament, and the House of Commons in particular, to be a functioning and influential part of public life, we need to renew its focus on what it does, find institutional and cultural ways to help it do that better and advertise its importance to a deeply and bitterly sceptical electorate. This will be very hard work, for Members and the staff who support them. But there is no alternative unless we want the legislature to be reduced to an occasionally troublesome cipher.