—CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY—

Good evening and thank you to all of you for being here tonight.

I want to thank Unlock Democracy for the important work you do, and in particular for your work campaigning for lobbying reform during the recent passage of what I can only think was the ironically named ‘transparency of lobbying bill’.

One of the founding partners of your organisation, Charter 88, was formed twenty six years ago, just five years before I entered parliament, with the explicit objective of challenging establishment complacency about the health of our democracy. Today I think that despite important reforms over the last three decades, the need for action to improve the workings of our democracy has never been more apparent.

Engagement in our democratic politics today is challenged by unprecedented levels of disengagement and cynicism. Indeed outright hostility is a growing feature of public discourse. Voter turnout had been in decline for sixty years. Trust in politicians I think now might hover reassuringly above that of journalists but is below virtually everyone else - and is now languishing so low it threatens the very health of our democracy. Fewer and fewer people see Parliament as relevant let alone effective, and the power of the legislature is faltering in the face of a seemingly unassailable Executive and the ever growing influence of transnational unaccountable yet powerful global corporations.

For many it seems like we are in an era of powerlessness.

In lots of ways this anger and hostility is entirely understandable. People have been hurting ever since the financial crash, but they have had to watch those who caused the crash walk away scot-free. They’ve had to watch as the country remains gripped by the neoliberal dogma which got us here. And they’ve had to watch this government give a tax cut to millionaires while their real wages fall. It is no wonder that people are losing faith in the power of politics to change anything for the better.

I’ve spent the last year listening to disengaged voters through my people’s politics inquiry. Listening to people who don’t vote has given me pause for thought but it has also given me real heart. People are passionate, they care about their families and their communities - but they just don’t see how that connects with the formal democratic system which has developed in this country.

Those are the people we have to win over if we are to solve the crisis of legitimacy in our democratic politics. We have to convince them that it is only through active involvement in our democracy that they can help to articulate and deliver the change they want to see.

I’m going to be talking more in the coming weeks about the Inquiry and what I’ve found, but this evening I want to focus my remarks on how we can reform our House of Commons as a route to helping people who currently feel powerless to feel that their active engagement can actually make a real difference. The changes I will outline are far from a comprehensive blueprint but I do believe they will go a long way to reinvigorating the Commons and making it more effective and relevant as a legislative Chamber.

The House of Commons - our only elected house - should be the beating heart of our democracy, but during my twenty two years in parliament I have watched as its power and effectiveness in scrutinising the Executive has deteriorated.

There are complex reasons for the decline of the Commons: The way in which the programming of Bills has come to be used in practice by Governments, an increasing tendency for Whitehall to introduce Bills which are barely adequately drafted with the intention of amending them substantially during their Lords stages, the exploding constituency workloads of MPs and the increasing demands placed on them in the era of the 24 hour rolling news cycle. This affects decisions about whether to spend up to seven hours sat in the Commons chamber hoping to be called to speak for a few minutes in a debate. It also contributes to a reluctance to serve upstairs on Bills in Committee where long and hard detailed work often receives no media coverage and therefore no credit with their constituents at all. 

There was a particularly troubling finding from the public engagement work which the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority did as part of its review into MPs’ pay and conditions. And that was the almost total lack of any public understanding whatsoever of the job that MPs actually do when they are representing their constituents at Westminster.

It would be all too easy to blame MPs themselves for this but in a digital media age when the only Parliamentary occasion which receives much media attention is the weekly theatrical joust which is Prime Minister’s Questions, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that what goes unreported goes unnoticed and unappreciated.

 David Cameron's government has treated the Commons with a remarkable lack of respect. Too often Ministers behave as if they would rather govern much as Charles I did - with Parliament in permanent recess. This may be because David Cameron runs scared of his own mutinous backbenchers, but they have already discounted his leadership and are firmly concentrating on the futures market for the next Conservative leader. And in the meantime they content themselves with inflicting any humiliation on him that they can especially where the European Union is concerned. 

We’ve got a third less legislation in this zombie parliament than the last and since the new year we’ve spent just thirteen days on government business.

This Government have ignored votes in the Commons on backbench business on over 20 occasions.

They consistently present us with legislation which is ill thought through and unworkable in practice.

And they seem to think it is appropriate to move any serious amendments to their half-baked Bills in the unelected chamber.

Just look at the Lobbying bill. It was brought before the House in a disgracefully partisan rush after no consultation with those it affected be they the regulators or those it seeks to silence. It was rammed through the Commons in double quick time as if it was emergency legislation despite being condemned by three all party Committees of the House. And then the government made a raft of panic concessions in the Lords because they finally realised that it was practically unworkable. When we remember that Labour had first legislated on electoral law by all party agreement this behaviour was grubby beyond measure.

The Banking Bill is another example. It was rushed through the Commons before the joint committee on banking which the Chancellor has specially set up to look at the issue of regulation, was even allowed to complete its work. It left the Commons as a shell of a Bill at only 29 pages long before being ladened with previously undisclosed content in the Lords and returning at over 200 pages in length. The amendments that were added fundamentally changed the nature of the legislation. It is hard to argue in any meaningful way that the Banking Act has actually been though the House of Commons at all. Whatever the Commons did with the Banking Act it cannot be called scrutiny.

 Nick Clegg entered government making vainglorious promises about the ‘biggest shake-up’ of British democracy since the Great Reform Act of 1832, but what have we actually seen?

A failed attempt to reform the Lords and a massive and partisan increase of nearly a hundred Conservative and Liberal Democrat unelected peers.

A Lords Chamber which is so large it is now the second biggest in the world - outdone only by the Chinese Peoples’ Congress.

A broken promise to cut the cost of politics.

A shelved plan for the recall of MPs.

And a lobbying bill which is so bad that it ought to be described as a charter for lobbyists. 

In fact all we’ve had successfully introduced is an e-petitions process which whilst welcome is a very minor modernisation, and a fixed five year Parliament Act which altered our constitution for the convenience of the current coalition government and has just left MPs twiddling their thumbs.

The Wright reforms which suggested new procedures in the aftermath of the reputational damage done by the MPs expenses scandal, have brought some welcome change but have also had some regrettable consequences. The election of Select Committee chairs by the whole House has been a success. The Backbench Business Committee has given MPs and some petitioners more of a chance to have their voices heard but has paradoxically contributed to a weakening of the power of the House. Votes on backbench business with which the Government disagrees are regularly ignored and the lack of whipped business on Thursdays has seriously disrupted the Parliamentary week. The failure to set up a House business committee is predictable and unlikely to change in a context where the Government of the day must have the time to get its business before the Commons. Even if it did come into existence it would either be a Committee with a Government Majority and hence a rubber stamp or it could cause serious gridlock and prevent an elected Government being able to deliver its legislative programme. Neither of these outcomes is desirable. The Speaker’s determination to modernise the House and make it more relevant, especially his propensity to grant urgent questions, has had more effect on the relevance of the Commons than all the Wright reforms put together.

I am clear that the time has come to move on from the Wright Reforms. We need a new programme of reform to enable the Commons to do its day job much more effectively. And tonight I want to outline why I think the focus of that reform should be improving the ability of the House of Commons to scrutinise legislation.

If Labour wins the next election we will introduce a new stage to the scrutiny of all legislation in the Commons so that we can strengthen the ability of MPs to hold the government to account and so we can give the public a real voice on legislation that affects them. 

An entirely new ‘Whole House Scrutiny Stage’ will be introduced. It will come after the second reading of a Bill but before the Committee stage. It is modelled on the current procedure for European Scrutiny but it should take place on the floor of the House rather than in Committee. It should consist of a free form question-and-answer session with the relevant Minister which should last for up to an hour after which there will be a debate for no longer than an hour and a half followed by a vote on the programme motion. If carried this would enable the Bill to go into Committee where the existing committee process of line by line examination would begin. I also think that subject to programming constraints, we should try and ensure that the committee are able to discuss all parts of the Bill and I am attracted to the Hansard Society’s suggestion of an injury time provision for when the Bill is in committee.

This new scrutiny stage would also allow for a more formal public evidence stage after second reading and prior to the new scrutiny stage to ensure members of the public and experts are heard. This would provide MPs with additional information before they question the Minister during the Whole House Scrutiny stage. This formal public stage would replace the public evidence component of the public bill committee, and would leave the Bill committee to just focus on line by line examination. There would be a fixed interval between second reading and the scrutiny stage to allow this public evidence stage to happen in a timely fashion 

There is a debate to be had about how this stage works, but I am clear that a formal committee of some sort will be expected to take evidence from the public and experts on the Bill. I am also clear that public bill committees have been an important innovation and this change aims to strengthen the role of the public in the process and not undo any of that progress. I am keen to explore whether we can use this new stage to create a role for Select Committees and other expert MPs who do not have a chance to sit on the Bill committee. I also think that we should examine how the bill committee will be advised by those who gathered evidence during the public evidence stage.

This new process will make it much harder for half written Bills to be presented to the Commons and it would subject Ministers to a much more searching and timely examination of the content and intention of the legislation they were piloting through the Commons at a time when exposing inadequacies will actually make a difference. It will also encourage Whitehall Departments to be much more thorough in their preparation of legislation before it gets to the Commons.  Most importantly, this new stage would give backbench MPs a greater role in the scrutiny of legislation, and it would give a louder voice to the public as legislation is progressing through the Commons.  

In addition to this new stage, we will also reform the scrutiny of secondary legislation which has been left unreformed for too long. The procedures for handling it in the Commons are so arcane and obscure that they limit public understanding. There has also been an ongoing tendency for Parliamentary Counsel to draft primary legislation to contain increasing numbers of general order making powers. This means that the details of the new law only really become clear when the statutory instruments are written months after Royal Assent has been granted. It is then impossible to change the detail as SIs are not amendable when they are considered by the House.

We will consult on how to modernise the scrutiny of secondary legislation. I am keen to explore how we can better use primary legislation to specify the intention of any subsequent statutory instrument and therefore narrow its scope. I am also interested in making sure that important SIs are issued in draft form and, in certain circumstances, allowing amendments to the most important of them. I look forward to hearing views on this question. 

The National Audit office and the Public Accounts Committee do an impressive job in ensuring that past government expenditure achieves efficiency and value for money and it is right that they are adequately resourced to do so. However their job is essentially retrospective. It is equally important that future government spending plans are scrutinised by the Commons too. Currently this is done far less effectively. The process for scrutinising government estimates is therefore also in need of reform. 

We will introduce a ‘whole house scrutiny stage’ for the estimates as well, so that the Chancellor or the Chief Secretary has to answer detailed questions from MPs on the priorities for spending which have been agreed in Government. This will be separate from the set piece budget speech. We will also implement a yearly budget questions for each Government department on the floor of the House where the relevant Secretary of State must answer questions about their proposed spending within their own departmental budgets as set out in their Departmental Annual Reports. Whilst Select Committees can look at this not all of them do and it is right that all MPs should get a chance to question Ministers whether they sit on a particular select committee or not. I would be interested to hear from Select Committee colleagues if they thought it would be appropriate for the Select Committee to provide a report to the House prior to these question times to inform members.

We are also considering reforms to the way that estimates are selected for debate, and the content of the debate on the estimates. I am keen to ensure that Members are as engaged as possible with the process.

These reforms to scrutiny in the Commons will I think go some way to strengthening the voice of backbench MPs, and therefore help to restore public confidence in the ability of the House to hold the government to account. But they are only a first step.

Last year only 2% of people said that they were ‘very satisfied’ with the way that parliament works, and a recent report from the Hansard Society on PMQs said that it makes only 12% of people proud.

Our parliament works on an adversarial system testing arguments and sustaining an opposition as well as a government. Many people now appear to be put off by the adversarial nature of our system so we must consider whether this arcane way of testing a government is fit for purpose.

The Speaker has asked for views on Prime Ministers Questions and I agree with him that we need reform. Part of that is trying to bring about a culture change in the chamber, but it may also be about some structural change as well. We’ve heard a lot of ideas in recent weeks and I’m interested in examining them.

There have been a lot of important, but piecemeal, contributions to the debate about parliamentary reform over the years, and often those contributions come in the wake of scandal or incident. I think the time has come for a more holistic look.

Charter 88 used that word complacency in their plea for action in 1988. And it really is a word that is very relevant now. We can’t afford to be complacent and simply assume that the way the House of Commons has always worked is fit for purpose in the twenty first century.

We are fooling ourselves if we think that that an e-petitions system is all we need to reconnect people to their parliament.

We need a new accord, a new effort and a new commitment to explain, educate, inform and report.

And I hope that we can all work together to achieve it.

Ends