Modernisation of the House of Commons
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What the Committee does
Chaired by Jack Straw MP as Leader of the House, the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons considers how the practices and procedures of the House should be modernised. The Committee currently has two seperate strands to its work: the legislative process, and connecting Parliament with the public.
Relevant inquiries and publications
Below are a selection of the inquiries and reports published by the Committee that relate to the work of Charter 88 and the New Politics Network. For a complete full details of the Committee's work please see its website.
Strengthening the role of the backbencher
The Modernisation Committee announced a new inquiry into Strengthening the role of the backbencher on 23rd November.
Backbenchers have many roles, from constituency representative and advocate to legislating and holding the government to account. In recent years, the public has pressed Members to devote more time and energy to their constituency role.
However, their primary role is at Westminster and the Committee intends to examine how backbenchers might be helped and encouraged to participate more effectively and productively in the work of the House.
The inquiry will therefore address such questions as:
- What can be done to strengthen the role of the backbencher in Westminster?
- What induction to Parliament do new MPs receive? Do new MPs feel that they are given an adequate induction into the workings of Parliament?
- How can House induction programmes best explain the procedures and conventions of the House in ways that Members would find useful?
- Would Members welcome greater guidance on best practice on setting up an office, serving on committees, and dividing time between parliamentary and constituency work?
- Do current practices and procedures encourage or discourage backbenchers engaging in the work of the House? Are Members excluded from participation by the procedures and conventions of the House?
The Legislative Process
 Our View There is much to be welcomed in this report. The proposals for more pre-legislative scrutiny and reform of standing committees will both enable more people to participate in the legislative process and in all likelihood improve the quality of the resulting legislation. The use of expert witnesses at the standing committee stage in particular will encourage stakeholders to engage directly with the legislative process. Inevitably however it will favour the more organised and active groups. However we would be concerned that the proposed legislative gateway is missing the point. Sites such as public whip and they work for you are already connecting people with Parliament in more effective and innovative ways than are likely to emerge from a parliamentary inquiry, however well intentioned. The public don't need a gateway, they have search engines, they need clear and concise information about the Bill and how they can influence the process. These proposals will undoubtedly help those already aware and active to participate more effectively in the legislative process but they also demonstrate how slowly the wheels of parliamentary reform turn - the possible introduction of laptops and PDA's to committee meetings is not going to set the world alight! |
The Modernisation Committee published its report on 7th September 2006
The inquiry considered issues such as:
- How we can improve on communicating the content of bills to a wider public.
- How Parliament informs the public of the legislation it is considering.
- What measures need to be put in place to encourage the public to contribute to procedures such as pre-legislative scrutiny.
- Has pre-legislative scrutiny resulted in better legislation?
- Is there scope for modernising the work of standing committees, making them more effective in scrutinising the detail of bills and more accessible to the wider public (including organisations with an interest in the legislation)?
- How could more systematic use of post-legislative scrutiny contribute to improving existing legislation?
The report recommends replacing the current standing committee procedure with new ‘Bill Committees’ which would
- be able to hold public hearing and call expert witnesses and;
- would be called by the name of the bill allocated to them (e.g. 'Health Bill Committee')
The report also calls for greater use of pre-legislative scrutiny stating that
- "Parliamentary scrutiny at the pre-legislative stage can play an important role in improving the law, even where there has already been lengthy and extensive external consultation by Government"
- "We welcome the Government's progress in increasing the proportion of legislation published in draft between 1997-98 and 2003-04. We are however concerned by the reduction in the number of draft bills since then, and we urge the Government to increase further the proportion of legislation published in draft."
Other recommendations include making more information about Bills available, in particular routinely handing out a copy of the Regulatory Impact Report out with copies of Bills.
Regional Accountability
In 2007 regional ministers were created by the Prime Minister in order to act as 'regional champions within the Government, and to represent the Government on parliamentary debate and other forum focussed specifically on regional issues.' In July 2007 however 'The Governance of Britain Green Paper' followed the appointment of these ministers of the English regions for the first time. Within this paper the Government argued that these ministers should be held accountable to Parliament and suggested that this could be achieved by nine regional select committees scrutinizing their policies. The Modernisation Committee announced its inquiry on the 24th October 2007 in order to discuss ways that regional accountability and scrutiny could be achieved. On the 10th July 2008 they published the Third Special Report on Regional Accountability.
Is there an accountability gap?
The Modernisation Committee drew attention to the Regional Development Agencies (RDA). Although they were responsible for a collective budget of £2.3 million there was found to be no clear democratic mandate. The committee argued that there is a clear accountability gap at regional level and that many of their activities in the regions are not subject to regular, robust scrutiny. The Modernisation Committee therefore proceeded to consider what model would be most likely to achieve the aim of improving regional accountability to Parliament.
Regional Committees
The committee looked at the two main types of scrutiny committees within the House that could be implemented: select and grand committees. A select committee is made up of a small number of parliamentary members in order to deal with a particular topic, whereas in contrast a grand committee is made up of many parliamentary members who can then debate the Government issues. The committee noted that there was ‘no unified view amongst our witnesses on the possible structure of any new parliamentary committees.’ The Modernisation Committee therefore aimed to evaluate the relative advantages and disadvantages of each type of committee before recommending an option.
Select Committees
The committee argued that the existing select committees are 'robust and effective at providing scrutiny of government policy’.
The Rt Hon Hazel Blears MP agreed with this claim by saying that, ‘the select committee can be an extremely powerful tool in exposing information, in calling people to account.’
This was further supported by Mr Mike Farrar CBE, Chief Executive of NHS North West who said that regional select committees: ‘allow for some more in-depth discussions because we think that some of the issues we would want to be talking about and discussing with our politicians are quite complex.’ In order to strengthen regional accountability the majority of select committee meetings would be held in their regions rather than at Westminster.
However the committee were concerned with the risks of the use of regional select committees. They were particularly worried about the, ‘‘possibility of interfering with the existing scrutiny functions of departmental select committees by cutting across or seeking to duplicate their work.’
Grand Committees
This option would avoid the select committee risks of ‘overstretch and overlap’, Rt Hon Sir George Young MP commented:
However there was concern that the grand committees would not provide effective scrutiny. This is because they ‘would not directly involve individuals from RDAs or other regional and sub-regional bodies through evidence taking.’
Recommendations
Taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of the select and grand committees the Modernisation Committee ‘considered calls to establish a new type of committee, with features drawn from both models, as an alternative solution.’
They decided that Select committees were deemed necessary as they ‘provide a focus and a consistency of effort that would not be present if regional accountability were purely dealt with in grand committees, which are primarily forums for debate.'
They therefore proposed the following structure:
- That there should be eight new regional select committees and they should initially be aligned with the administrative regions.
- The risks of select committees will need to be taken into consideration and the number of meetings held will be limited. A transitional period will also be necessary.
- The select committees should consist of a small membership of ten, with no more than a quorum of three.
- This membership should reflect the political composition of M.P's in the relevant region rather than party balance.
- The select committees would meet less than departmental committees, with a large majority of meetings held within its regions.
- One of the chairmen from the eight regional select committees will sit on the Liaison Committee.
As this system of regional select committees can only offer a minority of members the opportunity to scrutinise, two regional grand committee meetings are also recommended to take place in each session for each of the eight regions.
- These grand committee meetings should take the form of a general debate with questions to the relevant regional minister in order to ensure his or her accountability to Parliament.
- The membership should consist of all members of parliament from a given region, plus any relevant members of the regional select committee.
- It is important to note that London will need to be dealt with differently due to the aspect of devolved government and accountability that is already in place.
- The estimated cost of the annual cost for eight regional select committees meeting six times a year each and eight regional grand committees meeting twice a year is £1,406,912.
The committee concluded that although they have created a model that they believe is most likely to achieve the aim of improving regional accountability to Parliament, they caution however that there is no ‘magic bullet’. They argue that
