Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House — House of Commons, 2017-10-10
Topic: Government Operations
Alexander Morrison Carmichael (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I beg to move, That this House has considered the Government’s policy in relation to the proceedings of this House I thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing today’s debate to take place, and I thank hon. and right hon. Members from other parties who were in the Chamber yesterday to demonstrate the will of the House in the manner required under Standing Order No. 24. I should also like to acknowledge the role of Government business managers in extending our sitting hours today to accommodate this debate alongside the other business of the day We have already had two statements, an urgent question and a ten-minute rule motion, and there remains important business to follow, so I want to come as quickly as possible to the substance of the matter. But it is worth briefly reminding the House why this matter is considered to be both urgent and important, as required by Standing Order No. 24 As I explained to the House yesterday, the House had its first day for Opposition motions on Wednesday 13 September, on which the two topics for debate were public sector pay and student tuition fees. Ministers and Back Benchers spoke vigorously in opposition to both motions, but when the questions were put, no voices were raised in opposition and both motions passed unanimously. The next day, the political commentator Paul Waugh—we would say his name slightly differently in Scotland—described the situation thus in the Huffington Post: "Crucially, that meant there was no vote recorded other than unanimous approval, and no way to say how individual MPs voted." He went on: "And this was no one-off. In a significant shift in the way the Government treats the Commons, Tory sources told me they have decided not to oppose any future Opposition Day motions. In other words, MPs can say whatever they like but as long as there’s a non-binding motion, the PM will tell her troops to give a collective ‘meh’. Government whips will instead focus on turning out the numbers for ‘votes that matter’, ie on legislation such as Brexit bills." That position, he later says, "reduces all Opposition Days to mere debating society events, with no consequence." Mr Waugh is quite right in his assessment of the policy—if it is, in fact, Government policy. It was for that reason that I sought to raise the matter with the Leader of the House at business questions on 14 September. Her answer, I confess, was slightly less than reassuring: "The right hon. Gentleman should not believe everything he reads in the press." That is good advice, and it is a lesson that we probably all learned some time ago, but it is something less than, or short of, the full-throated denial that one might have hoped for in the circumstances. The Leader of the House went on to make some comments about the debates that were not really relevant to the question, but she finished by saying: "There is no question but that this Government continue to fully engage in Opposition day debates."—[Official Report, 14 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 997.] The House needs to hear from the Leader of the House today what was meant by her words "fully engage". Does she mean that the Government will do as their predecessors have done—engage in debate, agree where they agree, oppose where they do not and bring amendments where they wish to—or does she mean that the Government will, as Mr Waugh so memorably puts it, tell the troops to give this House "a collective ‘meh’"?