The House: Urgency Gives And Urgency Takes Away

Phil
Smith, Editor: The House

Parliament had
some interesting select committee hearings scheduled this
week. But when MPs got down to business on Tuesday the
committee hearings schedule largely went out the window when
the House voted to invoke urgency.

Urgency allows the
government to move bills through the House more quickly, by
enabling longer days of debating with no stand-down period
between each of a bill’s stages of consideration. Select
committees, which usually meet in the mornings, get benched
during urgency, since the House takes precedence.

So
when urgency starts committees, stop. Urgency must cause
chaos for the schedules of committees and submitters alike.
RNZ’s The House asked the Clerk of the House of
Representatives, David Wilson about the rules and history
around this. You can listen to the audio version of this
story at the link below.

The Clerk, David Wilson, says
that there are a few specific times that Parliament’s rules
say committees cannot meet, including during Oral Question
between 2pm and 3pm on sitting Tuesdays, Wednesdays and
Thursdays. All MPs are expected to be in the debating
chamber during these times.

“[Select committees] can
meet at other times when the House is sitting, but only with
the leave of the committee, which is unanimous
agreement.”

So, if committees can give themselves
permission to meet and continue business when the House is
sitting under urgency, why don’t they agree to
meet?

“If there are people coming from out of town to
give evidence, they might agree to meet,” says Wilson. But
they tend not to, other than squeezing into the gaps around
the House schedule. “Committees during urgency tend to meet
either before 9am (before the House convenes), or in the
[lunch] break between 1pm and 2pm… but it’s pretty unusual
for committees to meet while the House is sitting under
agency.”

The reason permission is seldom given, as
Wilson indicates, is “mostly political
considerations”.

You could see this as a tit-for-tat
response by an opposition – a direct retaliation to a
government deciding to use urgency.

“I think the
feeling is, it’s a political decision really that they’re
not going to assist the government further by progressing
its business in the House and in committees at the same
time… and that is common regardless of who the government
is or who the opposition is. That’s just the way it’s played
out over many years.”

In summary, a government can
choose to speed up progress of its legislation in the House,
but doing so will slow down progress on other bills in
select committees.

There is a second, slightly easier
option for gaining permission to meet – the Business
Committee. The Business Committee is a cross-party committee
that arranges many aspects of Parliament’s business.
Unanimous consent is not required in the Business Committee,
but it’s pretty close. Agreement requires what the committee
calls “near unanimity”, which means most of the parties,
including both major parties, have to be on board. In
reality that is similarly unlikely.

Background,
history and exceptions

Parliament’s mornings weren’t
always preserved for committee meetings. Until the 1980s the
House met on Thursday mornings. That was altered to give
more time to committees, which Wilson says “coincided with
the growing importance and prominence of committee
work”.

The House and committees can now
(theoretically) operate simultaneously because, in the MMP
parliament, very few MPs attend the debating chamber for any
one debate. Those present are predominantly party whips, and
MPs rostered to speak by those whips. In this Parliament
there tend to be more National Party backbenchers in
attendance than necessary.

Parliament’s rules for a
quorum require both a presiding officer (eg a Speaker), and
a government minister. That’s it. Interestingly, no
Opposition MP is required for the House to meet and vote.
This prevents oppositions from stymieing parliament by
refusing to attend.

Prior to MMP, MPs had to be ready
to attend the chamber with only a few minutes’ notice, in
order to vote in person.

“When all votes were personal
votes”, says Wilson, “[they were] cast by going into the
lobbies. And also when there tended to be fewer time
restrictions on debates, [debates] were longer, more members
spoke in any one debate than they do these
days.”

There are a few committees that don’t need
permission to meet when the House is sitting. They are not
the subject select committees (those that inquire into
governments’ performance and legislation). Instead they are
specialist and technical committees.

David Wilson
lists them.

“The Offices of Parliament Committee, the
Petitions Committee, The Privileges Committee, the
Regulations Review Committee, [the Business Committee], and
the Standing Orders Committee can all meet during a sitting
of the House without leave… These are specialist
committees, and they often need to meet at times when the
other committees are not meeting. They’ve got senior members
on them. They’ll often meet in an afternoon on a sitting
day… They’re generally happy to get together and work
through their business, which is not doesn’t seem to be
contentious like the bills and scrutiny in front of subject
committees.”

While select committees meet on both
Wednesday and Thursday mornings, each committee only meets
on one of those days. Parliament has so few available MPs
that some must double-up and serve on two committees. To
enable that, only half the committees can meet at
once.

RNZ’s The House, with insights into
Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding
from Parliament’s Office of the
Clerk.

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