CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

HOUSE OF COMMONS

REPRESENTATIONS

TAKEN BEFORE THE

BACKBENCH BUSINESS COMMITTEE

BACKBENCH DEBATES

TUESDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2011

MRS ELEANOR LAING, JOAN RUDDOCK, SHEILA GILMORE and MARY MACLEOD

MR ELFYN LLWYD and PAUL MURPHY

MR BERNARD JENKIN

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Representations

Taken before the Backbench Business Committee

on Tuesday 1 February 2011

Members present:

Natascha Engel (Chair)

Mr Peter Bone

John Hemming

Mr Philip Hollobone

Ian Mearns

Mr George Mudie

Mrs Eleanor Laing, Joan Ruddock, Sheila Gilmore, Mary Macleod, Mr Elfyn Llwyd, Paul Murphy and Mr Bernard Jenkin made representations.

Q1 Chair: Thank you for coming back today. We are taking you first because quite a few of you have said that you have a meeting at 1.15 that everybody has to go to. You were here last week to talk about International Women’s Day. I have to say at the outset that we don’t actually have a day to allocate, either in the Chamber or in Westminster Hall, so this is all very provisional. Normally, the Government give us a time slot, either in Westminster Hall or in the Chamber, which we don’t have at the moment. We’re anticipating something for early March, but there’s nothing definite. These are all provisional bookings, so if you could bear that in mind, that would be great.

Mrs Laing: Thank you, Madam Chairman. The basis on which we came to you last week was that, for many years, there has been a debate on women’s matters on or near International Women’s Day, 8 March. I think that I said last week that merely arguing that because something had always been done it should always be done in the future was not the way that I would put my argument.

However, Madam Chairman, I have changed my mind on that matter-it is a woman’s privilege to do so. That is because I have spoken to a lot of people during the last week. Many of us who were involved in giving you evidence at this time last week have been approached by many Members of Parliament from both sides of the House. The fact is that, since the debate has always taken place in recent times on or near International Women’s Day, to reverse that process now would be to say that for the last decade or so we have considered International Women’s Day to be worthy of attention in the Chamber of the House of Commons, but that the House now considers that International Women’s Day is not a matter worthy of attention. I put it to the Committee that that would not be a satisfactory result of its deliberations.

At the same time, we have a proposal to make further to the proposals that we made last week; those proposals last week were a general opening of the discussion. There is currently before the House early day motion 1318, which was tabled in my name on 20 January. It currently has 17 signatures and an amendment with a further 13 signatures. We want to propose to the Committee that that early day motion should be debated in the Chamber on or near International Women’s Day.

Shall I read early day motion 1318?

Chair: Yes, that would be great. Thank you.

Mrs Laing: It says:

"That this House recognises that around the world women continue to suffer discrimination and injustice simply because of their gender; notes that underlying inequality between men and women is the driving force that results in 70 per cent. of the world’s poor being female; recognises that empowering women will drive progress towards all the Millennium Development Goals; welcomes the launch of UN Women, the UN Agency for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, on 1 January 2011; recognises that the agency is an example of UN reform to improve efficiency and co-ordination; and calls on the Government to provide support to the new agency to ensure it has the resources required to end the discrimination that keeps millions of women in poverty."

That is a wide motion that we hope would allow debate on matters international, national and local that are of concern to women and that affect women.

Q2 Chair: Thank you. As you know from last week, we are looking at topicality. Clearly we understand the topicality of a debate on this subject. We are also looking at support from other Members. I have certainly had a lot of e-mails from other Members. Do you have some indication of how many other Members would take part and, most importantly, what kind of cross-party support you would have? We do not want this debate just to be for one side of the House or the other, or indeed just for one gender or the other. It would be good to get some indication of support from non-women.

Mrs Laing: We have that support, Madam Chairman. The amendment was tabled by Fiona Mactaggart and concerns promoting equality of women by democratic Governments. Shall I give you the amendment as well? It is relevant as it would form part of the debate. It says:

"at end add ‘and that in order to promote equality of women democratic governments should ensure they have effective mechanisms for parliaments to scrutinise policy and performance in tackling inequality and injustice; and to that end calls for a women and equalities audit committee in this House."

That is a matter of some substance, which I would argue deserves to be debated. It happens that I disagree with Fiona Mactaggart, but that is not the point. The point is that it should be debated.

Chair: It is a matter of debate.

Mrs Laing: In addition to the 30 signatures to the early day motion and amendment, we also have the support of the Green party in the form of Caroline Lucas. At the moment, I have eight Liberals, 10 Conservatives and 13 Labour Members. I think that Mary McLeod has more signatures.

Mary Macleod: I have another 20 names, half of whom are men, and I sent some names in this morning.

Q3 Chair: We had those forwarded, thank you. Does anybody want to add anything before I open it out to the Committee?

Joan Ruddock: I will speak if I may. I wasn’t here last time, but I have been asked to come as Heidi Alexander, who was here last time, couldn’t come on this occasion. Obviously, I have been in the House a very long time, and we have always had these debates. As Eleanor said, it would send a very poor signal if after a decade of such debates, we end up saying that this is not important any more. It is extremely important and I will, if I may, say a word on the amendment. We have in this House a financial and an environmental audit system. What we do not have is anything dealing with equalities. I believe that there are many issues-I remind the Committee that we are talking about not just women, but people with disabilities and people of different race and ethnicity. It would be extremely useful if we were, in time-not immediately-able to move to a position where we were, as a House, able to look at Government policies from the point of view of their impact on equalities. That would be cross-cutting and quite different from a departmental select committee.

Q4 John Hemming: I should like to make a couple of points, but not on the substantive issue-although I should declare the fact that I have signed the amendment. I want to make the point that fathers get a rum deal in the family courts and the proposed body could look at that as well. The question is whether or not the plan is to have the substantive motion and the amendment tabled separately, or to merge the two together to vote on those.

Mrs Laing: At the moment, the plan would be to have the substantive motion and the amendment separately.

Joan Ruddock: So, we would have one debate. Is that not what you are saying?

John Hemming: You would table the substantive motion, and then there is an amendment to create the Committee which is voted on separately.

Mrs Laing: Yes, in the same way as any other motion before the House.

Q5 John Hemming: So, that is the plan. We are not having one motion doing the lot.

Mrs Laing: That is correct. This has the merit of being a motion which is before the House and which has gathered significant support.

Sheila Gilmore: One of the things that can sometimes happen with this kind of debate is that everybody says, yes, it is a good thing, without necessarily having a chance to talk about some of the means and methods and actions that have to be taken. This would enhance the debate because there are differences of opinion, even among those who want the debate and share all of the goals, over whether that amendment is a good route.

Joan Ruddock: It would be a much more challenging debate. The fact that Eleanor and all of us are sitting together today illustrates that we would probably want to have a good argument.

Chair: On the matter of a good argument, I will bring in Philip Hollobone.

Q6 Mr Hollobone: With respect, I think some of the thinking here is a bit confused. There is no guarantee that the Speaker will select the amendment, so it could be that you lose that all together and then we are just debating the original motion. If the amendment is selected, it could then be that the debate focuses on the amendment, which is far narrower than the original motion, which has lots of good intent. The Committee might be more impressed were you to combine the two so that we know that we can talk about the motion, and you are either for it or against. I just put that to you as something to think about.

It is good that you are collecting signatures on an early day motion to try to show how much support you have for the debate. You should be aware of course that there are many early day motions before the Committee that have substantially more signatures than yours. There are 54 early day motions currently before Parliament with 100 or more signatures, so you are a long way adrift from that, and many of those issues have not been selected for a Back Bench debate.

Joan, you said that you felt this was a very important issue and that Parliament should debate it every year. Looking back at the last five years of debates and according to my amateur research, you have spoken once in those five years.

Joan Ruddock: I was a Minister in the Government.

Q7 Mr Hollobone: Ministers are not precluded from making a contribution.

Joan Ruddock: Yes, they are-from making Back Bench speeches.

Q8 Mr Hollobone: Don’t you think that is something that could be addressed in a motion before the House this time?

Joan Ruddock: To invite Ministers to speak on subjects outside their own Department would be a prescription for some considerable difficulty, and I certainly do not think that that is an issue that affects genders differentially, or indeed any other aspects of equalities. Governments need to protect their discipline and Ministers would only ever wish to speak on behalf of their Departments, however attractive some of the Back Bench debates might be.

Q9 Mr Hollobone: Eleanor changed her mind right at the start by saying that she felt it was important, that this is an issue that should be debated every year and, of course, it is perfectly okay to change your mind. In your evidence to the Committee last week, you said, from the transcript, that you expected more than half of the female Conservative MPs to take part in the debate, which, given that there are 49, would suggest 25. I think the numbers you read out at the beginning did not come to 25.

Mrs Laing: Mr Hollobone misunderstands my points. Perhaps I ought to put them more clearly. First, the early day motions before the House that have more than 100 signatures, in almost every case, are early day motions where there has been a campaign. MPs receive e-mails and letters from their constituents asking them to sign the motions and they sign them. Sometimes there are early day motions that state party policy, especially for Opposition parties. They use an early day motion as a way of stating a particular party policy, or to criticise the Government, in which case Members of that political party will be encouraged by their Whips Office to sign them. That is why some early day motions have more than 100 signatures.

This early day motion is of a completely different nature. Nobody from outside has asked anyone to sign it. Nobody from inside has particularly asked anyone to sign it. I sent it round in an e-mail yesterday, in a fairly casual fashion, to make sure that people had a chance of knowing it was there, but that was only yesterday. None of us has gone out and campaigned for people to sign this early day motion. If you want me to come back with 100 signatures, I can get you 100 signatures by tomorrow, but, quite frankly, I have been busy doing other things over the last week. When we say to you that there is considerable support-particularly among women Members, but certainly not exclusively-for this debate, that is the case. There are signatures on the early day motion. There are lists of people who have told each of our colleagues that they would like to speak in the debate if their diary allows. That is the evidence that we are putting before you. This is not a case of getting 100 signatures because it is a campaign.

Q10 Chair: We also have the issue that if people want to have early day motions debated they will have to bring them to the Committee, and we have not really had that. We have a good idea of topicality, the support from Members and the other avenues that you have tried, although that is not entirely relevant to this. I am quite happy that we know the substance of your debate, unless there is anything else that you wanted to add.

Mary Macleod: Briefly, there are a lot of people like myself who do not sign early day motions, so there is potentially a lot more support. What I was amazed at, when I went directly to people to ask about this, was the passion with which they came back to me, extremely quickly, saying absolutely, definitely. It’s really important that, as the United Kingdom, we show leadership in Parliament by saying that there are major issues that we do need to address, and this is a great way of doing it.

Q11 Mr Hollobone: What we have to do as a Committee is say that this is good topic for debate and people will turn up to debate it. There is a world of difference between people saying, "Yes, it’s a good idea to have a debate", and people actually turning up. In the last Parliament, there were 94 female Labour MPs. The maximum attendance at any of the International Women’s Day debates was 14. In the evidence last week, Eleanor said that half the female Conservative MPs would attend. I am just challenging that assumption. I am sure that everybody is enthusiastic about having this debate, but we do not want to schedule a debate if people do not turn up.

Chair: Okay, we had this last week, so we will take that all into account when we go into private session and we will let you know. Thank you very much for coming back to the Committee.

Q12 Chair: We have had some written representation from people about the Wales day debate, so we will take that next.

Mr Llwyd: Good afternoon.

Q13 Chair: May I take you very briefly through what we are after? You probably know all this, but we are looking for topicality and how much support you have from other Members. We would specifically like to know whether you are applying for a debate in Westminster Hall or the Chamber, how much time, what your reasons are, and so on.

Mr Llwyd: On a point of information, may I ask something? The impression that I was given was that an application for a debate on the Floor of the House would have to be on a substantive motion. Is that absolutely correct or not?

Q14 Chair: No, all it was is that the Floor of the House is the only place where we can debate a substantive motion. We cannot do that in Westminster Hall. If we have a choice between something that has a substantive motion attached to it and something that has not, and we have to choose when we have very little time to allocate to Back-Bench debates, we often prefer to have something that has a substantive motion attached to it.

Mr Llwyd: Before I hand over to my friend, Paul Murphy, I would like to say that we drafted this motion on the understanding that it had to be a votable motion. By tradition, the Welsh days have always been general debates, so if the Committee is saying that it would consider a general debate on the Floor of the House-as has been the case for the past 67 years-we would change the title to "The Welsh Day Debate."

Paul Murphy: Yes, I would very much support that, but we were obviously mistaken in our view that it was necessary to have a substantive motion.

At the moment, about 28 of the 40 Welsh Members of Parliament support the continuance of a St David’s Day, or Welsh day, debate in the Chamber of the House of Commons. Because of the misinterpretation that Elfyn just referred to, we e-mailed all Welsh MPs to get their views on whether there should be a debate. Most Members of Parliament from Wales would agree with that. However, at that stage, those of us who put our names to this indicated that we would prefer a debate on the representation of Wales in the House of Commons, which is obviously a very topical issue at the moment. But, as Elfyn has said, I think that it would probably be better if it was possible to have a general debate in which the issues could be debated.

Elfyn referred to the first debate that took place at 10 past 12 on 17 October 1944, some 66 years ago. It was opened by Lady Megan Lloyd George, who was then the Liberal Member for Anglesey. She said: "It is now some 400 years since Welsh Members were first returned to the House, and this is the first day that has been set aside for the discussion of Welsh affairs." There has been an annual debate for Back-Bench Members ever since. It is opened by the serving Secretary of State for Wales-I opened it on a number of occasions as Welsh Secretary-but, before that office was created in 1964, it was opened by the Home Secretary and other Members. It gives the opportunity not just to Welsh Members, but to Members from throughout the United Kingdom to speak on matters that affect Wales

The advent of devolution means that it could be argued whether we should continue this, but in fact the argument that we should is even stronger. I believe very firmly-this is not necessarily the view that you would hold, Elfyn-that there should be a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of which Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are integral parts, and that a debate on these matters ensures that the Union itself is protected because of the importance of getting Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish affairs debated in our Chamber here in Westminster as well as in the devolved Assemblies in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. That is a very important position for me personally. It is not necessarily the view of everybody who has signed up to this, but I believe that it is a very important issue.

I also think that to stop it because the system of Back-Bench debates has now changed would be wrong. I believe it is important that in your new role as a Committee dealing with these matters, you should obviously have regard to the points that we are making and those that the current Secretary of State for Wales has made to you by letter. She believes that it is "extremely important" that the traditional St David’s day debate on Welsh affairs continues to take place on the Floor of the House. She has added her voice very strongly.

Q15 Chair: If we have a general motion, we have often split the Chamber time into two halves. What about if you had a half-day debate in the Chamber-Welsh day and the International Women’s Day? That is not really a problem for the Government who have the whole parliamentary week available to them, but if we are given one slot in that one week would you look at that? Lots of people come to us and say that the status of Westminster Hall is much smaller than the Chamber’s, and that putting an issue into Westminster Hall is somehow doing it down. We are trying hard to see whether we can do something about raising the status of Westminster Hall by scheduling debates there that are important. For example, this week we have the debate on parliamentary reform, and we are hoping to attract a lot of people to that debate in order to ensure that Westminster Hall can start to grow in status. Could you say something about how you feel about those two issues?

Mr Llwyd: On the first point about sharing the day with International Women’s Day, I do not think that there would necessarily be any problem with that. On the second point, we do believe that the debate should be on the Floor of the House-that is the proper place for the Welsh day debate to take place. I should also add that in the past, the debate has been well over-subscribed each and every year, and even on a fuller day there have been hon. Members who were disappointed at not being called. That gives some idea of the usefulness of this debate. Any danger that it will not be fully subscribed to is not relevant. If it helps the Committee, it would be fine to take a shorter day this year. We were looking at some time towards the end of March. That is rather curious given that St David’s Day is 1 March. However, we have a little matter of a referendum during that week-on the day-and the following week there is something else. On 17 March, it is St Patrick’s day, which would be a strange day for a Welsh day debate, so we are probably looking at 24 March, if that were of assistance to the Committee.

Paul Murphy: I support that, and the point about the debate being well attended. I remember 23 years ago when I first spoke in a Welsh day debate, I had two and a half minutes at the end of the debate at half-past five. It was a crowded debate, and I am sure it will be again.

Q16 Mr Bone: Thank you for your excellent presentation. We have a real problem with the limited amount of time that we have. For instance, if the Government want to put this debate on, they could put it on. As the Back-Bench Business Committee, we are competing with others who want to get debates scheduled. Whether something is on a substantive motion is a key issue regarding whether it goes in the Chamber. If we put a general debate in the Chamber-which we can do-it means that somebody who has a substantive motion may not get their issue heard. For instance, if you had come to the Committee and said, "The motion is that there should be an independent Wales", that would probably tick all the boxes. There would be people pro and anti that idea. It would be a substantive motion; the Government would take a view and there would be a real debate. I am not suggesting that motion, but that is why we encourage substantive motions.

People should not look on Westminster Hall as some sort of substandard Chamber. One of the advantages with Westminster Hall is that we can guarantee you three hours. If the day was divided up as suggested and there was an urgent question and a statement on the day, you could find your debate squeezed to perhaps two hours. The other advantage of Westminster Hall is that if there is a debate closer to the date you want, there is nothing to say that in six months’ time we cannot have another Welsh debate. There is lots of flexibility, and that is what we have to try and balance as a Committee.

Paul Murphy: If the Government chose to give up Government time to have a Welsh day debate, there would be no one more pleased than myself, and I am sure Elfyn as well. That would be excellent. On the issue of the substantive motion-we do have one-our view is that we should try to attract as much consensus as possible among Welsh Members of Parliament. The motion that we would have-indeed, will have, if we think it will enhance the cause-is:

"This House recognises the importance of appropriate representation from Wales in Parliament"-

note that the careful wording there means that it is not specific to one side or the other of the argument-

"the impact on that representation under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill and acknowledges the particular importance of history, geography and community ties in the traditional formation of Welsh parliamentary constituencies."

The Secretary of State herself has acknowledged that issue in the last few weeks.

Q17 Mr Bone: That sort of motion attracts me more to the argument to put the Welsh day debate in the Chamber.

Mr Llwyd: May I add to what Paul is saying? That was our preferred option, but pleading the alternative as lawyers do, we also introduced the other one. Of those Members whom we canvassed across the spectrum, this was the burning issue that they would have addressed probably in a Welsh day debate anyway. The substantive motion has been drafted. It is designed to draw in as many Welsh Members as possible and it is supported by 28. If we take those who are Ministers and Front Benchers out of the 40, we are only left with about two who have not shown an interest. That is how much interest there is in this particular motion.

Q18 Mr Hollobone: I have a couple of issues. You could say that the issue about Welsh representation has been debated in the Bill going through Parliament and could well be debated again, depending on what amendments come from the other place. I put it to you that there is an argument here that parliamentary time has already been spent on the issue.

Paul Murphy: You could say it, but it would not be true because the Welsh clauses of the Bill were never reached, so there was no opportunity to discuss those under the current situation. There was an attempt to have the Welsh Grand Committee discuss it, but it was not possible-it was not called by the Secretary of State. In fact, the only place where it has been discussed is the House of Lords. The matter has not been discussed in the Commons at all.

Q19 Mr Hollobone: Do you have Conservative support for your motion?

Paul Murphy: I think that we have Conservative support for the idea of a general debate. I think it is unlikely that there would be support, although the motion that I have just read to you is something that we rewrote yesterday on the basis that we think it will attract more general support than the previous one would have done. Did you notice how carefully we worded it? We refer to "the appropriate" representation. Of course, there are different views on that.

Q20 Mr Hollobone: The issue of cross-party support might be important to this Committee because otherwise the issue might fall into the category of an Opposition day debate. There is a half day coming up for the Welsh and Scottish parties that could be used for this.

Paul Murphy: That is not a matter for me.

Mr Llwyd: Can I just address that point very briefly? We have not actually canvassed more than two or three Conservative Members because, up until now, the Secretary of State has not agreed to any debate on this issue. We are in favour of every Welsh Member having his or her say on the issue, whether in favour or against the Bill. That does not really matter, but there should be a forum for such views to be aired.

Q21 Mr Mudie: I would prefer a debate with a motion. The basis-the starting point-for your claim raised by Paul that it has been going on for 40 years. [Interruption.] Maybe more he says. Power has been given to the Backbench Committee on behalf of Back Benchers to choose subjects. Since joining the Committee, I am tired of people coming and saying, "Well, we’ve always had it." Even in Government time, we are finding the Government are very nicely knocking them over to us. If the matter is not on a motion, you’re saying and you’ll say next year and the year after, "We’ve always had it." We’ve just heard it from the women. We’ve always had an International Women’s Day debate. Topicality just goes out the window. You do it by calendar. If you come with an issue that is so topical, as this is, and involves such wide feeling, I am totally with you, but I would mark my card now in terms of Wales day. You will have to find another good excuse next year if I am sitting here, because I do not think that once you get in the calendar, you’re in the calendar for life. We don’t have a Yorkshire day, and I take a dim view of it.

Paul Murphy: No, indeed you don’t. I understand that. However, it is an important issue generally, as I said earlier, that the business of small nations represented in the Union-

Mr Mudie: Yorkshire again.

Paul Murphy: Well, it is the Duchy of Yorkshire, I suppose. If you take it as an important principle that small nations in a Union have the opportunity to have their affairs discussed-that has been the case, as I said, for half a century now-it is an important issue. I take the point, though, that things move on. If it is necessary to have a motion, we have taken a lot of trouble in the past day or so to try and ensure that the motion, although topical, would be sufficiently wide in its remit to attract all-party support. We could have put it in a way very different from this, but we did not. We put it in such a way that people could talk about their points of view as they wished. It would also give an opportunity for English, Scottish and Northern Irish Members to come in and make their points of view if the issue was debated on the Floor of the House.

Q22 Mr Hollobone: Is your submission today separate from or together with the submission we’ve received from the Welsh Affairs Committee for a debate?

Paul Murphy: I didn’t realise the Welsh Affairs Committee had submitted a resolution to you.

Chair: Thank you. That was very clear. We’ll discuss that in our private session. Thank you very much for taking the time to come in. Is there anybody else after Bernard Jenkin? You’re very welcome, Bernard. You’ve not been before, have you?

Mr Jenkin: No.

Q23 Chair: Thank you for coming. We’re looking for a pithy representation on bids for time either in the Chamber or in Westminster Hall and an indication of what you want to debate. Do you have a motion, why now and which other Members support you?

Mr Jenkin: In a nutshell, the Select Committee on Public Administration decided to do an inquiry with the title "Who does UK national strategy?" as its first report. We took a wide range of evidence from academics, civil servants, the Foreign Secretary, the Minister for security and some military people. Apart from the Government spokesman, we had nobody who commended the Government’s ability to do strategy. Particularly, we had the then Chief of the Defence Staff, who explained why he had made a speech explaining how Whitehall had lost the art of making strategy and strategic thinking.

This was at a topical moment. We released our report just before the national security strategy and the strategic defence and security review. Our evidence sessions and subsequent report have excited a strong interest across Whitehall and have started a considerable debate about how the National Security Council operates, what its remit should be and how different Departments interact with each other.

We supported the contention made by the Chief of the Defence Staff that Whitehall has lost the art of strategic thinking. Our principal recommendation was that the Government should nurture a community of strategic thinkers across Whitehall in different Government Departments. There needs to be a common language and a common understanding of what strategy actually is. One of our key findings was that the word "strategy" itself has become overused and bastardised by management-speak and being included in jargon.

Since we produced our report, there’s been quite a considerable reaction about its importance. The Chief of the Defence Staff has himself set up a strategic advisory cell. I’ve been personally invited to talk about the report at the National Defence academy at Shrivenham and the Royal College of Defence Studies. Unfortunately, however, the Government has rather pushed back our findings. The Government’s response to our report was itself controversial. We have produced a second, supplementary report responding to the Government’s response, which was published last week.

There is considerable interest across the House of Commons in giving this subject an airing. I believe this is one of the first times that a Select Committee has come before you en bloc, represented by me, to ask for a debate on a Select Committee report- [Interruption.] The second time. Our initiative has cross-party support, and I have the support of the Chairman of the Defence Committee and former Secretary of State for Defence Bob Ainsworth-

Q24 Chair: What is it that you’re after?

Mr Jenkin: We are after a day in the House of Commons on a substantive motion. If you like, I’ll quickly read the motion to you.

Chair: Yes, please.

Mr Jenkin: I hasten to say that it may be subject to revision. I have not canvassed this motion about-it is not tabled as an early day motion-but it has been approved by the Committee:

"This House commends the PASC’s First Report of Session 2010-11 ‘Who Does UK National Strategy?’; notes the report’s central findings that Whitehall has lost capacity to think strategically and should adopt an on-going and overarching process for national strategymaking which is articulated constantly and updated regularly; recognises that the National Security Council (NSC) represents potentially good architecture for the development of national strategy, but that it cannot operate effectively without comprehensive analysis and assessment capacity; and supports PASC’s central recommendation that the Government should recruit, train and promote a community of strategists from across Whitehall and beyond with different experiences and expertise, to provide the NSC with such capacity."

The motion is an opportunity to debate the report, but one of our central findings was that strategy-making needs to be held democratically accountable, and this debate would be the first step in terms of making the process of strategy-making accountable to Parliament by giving an opportunity for Parliament to hold a debate on how Government make strategy and to press the Government to improve their procedures and their capacity to think strategically.

Q25 Mr Bone: Very briefly-I think Mr Jenkin answered my question in the final bit-you are talking about a substantive motion and a whole day in the House of Commons. I was going to say that this is something that could be done, effectively, by way of a statement from yourself in the Commons. We’re looking at a method whereby Select Committee Chairmen effectively make a ministerial statement, although it’s done slightly differently. But that would be for a limited period, and I’m gathering from what you’re saying that that wouldn’t be long enough and that there would be, obviously, no substantive motion to vote on at the end.

Mr Jenkin: That is correct. Also, the report was produced back in October. It took the Government a long time to produce a response. They only produced it just before Christmas. I think the urgency and topicality of this debate are visible in the way that the strategic defence and security review continues to develop, but I think it’s important to point out that the SDSR is only one aspect of strategy-making in Whitehall. There’s how economic strategy is developed, how our trade strategy is developed and the whole identification of our national interests.

If I may digress for just a second, the Government regularly cite our national interests as the basis of their strategy, but they have never defined our national interests beyond our freedom, security and prosperity. When invited to do so, they say, "This is too complicated." We are dealing with parts of Whitehall, in particular the Foreign Office, that have-off the record, but consciously-said that not having a strategy is a virtue because it gives more flexibility and capability. I do not suggest that we have all the answers, but this is a debate that Parliament needs to have. It goes to the heart of what the direction of our Government is.

In the response, the Government say that if there is a national strategy it is reflected in the coalition agreement. A coalition agreement is not strategy, and we are concerned that with things such as the banking collapse, which were foreseen by some people, even in the Government, the warnings were ignored because there was no mechanism by which to incorporate that kind of horizon scanning and forward thinking into the day-to-day process of government. So, it is extremely important, and goes to the heart of our national interest.

Chair: Thank you very much. That was really interesting, and we will take it into our private session. Sorry, Philip wanted to ask something.

Q26 Mr Hollobone: I think that it is fair to say that the Committee is still feeling its way with regard to how to handle select committee business. We had a representation from another Committee-the Public Accounts Committee-and a debate was held on a motion. But from this Committee’s point of view, it wasn’t a success because it was basically just the members of the Committee who turned up, and despite all the good work that Committee does, and its excellent reputation, the Chamber was more or less empty. I know that this is an important subject, that you’ve gone right to the heart of it and that everyone else should be interested, but how much support do you really think there would be, with people actually turning up and spending a day in the Chamber to debate and possibly vote on this?

Mr Jenkin: As you will understand, it is impossible to get cast-iron guarantees that people will turn up for a debate if they don’t know when it’s going to be, but I have had very strong interest expressed by, for example, Jack Straw, Bob Ainsworth and James Arbuthnot. I think that members of the Defence, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence and Security Committees would be interested. I have not got a vast list of names of people who guarantee to turn up, and I don’t think that I could do that until I knew the date, but I am confident. There used to be five debates a year on defence matters, and they have been regularly well attended and have usually filled up, quite often with time-limited speeches. They have been matters for debate on the Adjournment, and on a substantive motion I think that this debate would attract substantial interest.

Chair: Thank you very much for coming in. If there is no one else, we will go into private session.