Servant of the House? The role of the leader of the Commons
The leader of the House of Commons holds a cabinet role unlike any other, with responsibilities which range from the passage of legislation to the welfare of staff
“Tell me,” an entirely imaginary friend invented for the purposes of this essay said t me recently, “what exactly does the leader of the House of Commons do?>”
“Well,” I didn’t respond because the friend doesn’t exist, “sit comfortably, and I’ll explain. This is quite complicated.”
Of course no-one’s asked me that (thought I’ve had to answer more absurd and abstruse inquiries than that, including—and this was when I realised there was a niche in being able to explain parliament—when my late mother asked me why it was so important what “forthwith” meant. (Ah, indicative votes and the Grieve amendment. What days.) Nevertheless, it’s something that I think most people don’t understand, and, indeed, in a Rumsfeldian way, don’t know that they don’t understand, so it seemed worth a short essay to put some things on the record for those who read this compendium or may yet be pointed in its direction.
Oddly, for a country and an institution with such a rich and recorded history—the clerk of the House has in his office a board on which are painted his name and those of his 50 predecessors—it is difficult to say when the position of leader of the House was first established. Wikipedia, which may not be infallible but is a useful guide on consensus opinion, regards Robert Walpole, the first prime minister, as the first leader of the House too, which is not unreasonable. It was certainly recognised as part of the constitutional furniture by 1828, when Sir Robert Peel held it in conjunction with being home secretary in the Duke of Wellington’s Tory ministry.
Until 1942, the leader of the House was always the prime minister, if he was an MP. If the government was led by a peer, then the leader of the Commons would be the most senior designated minister in the lower house; for example, under the Marquess of Salisbury’s third premiership (1895-1902), his nephew A.J. Balfour was leader while holding the office of first lord of the Treasury (the last person to do so while not being prime minister). During the wartime coalition, however, in a never-ending quest to balance out duties and commitments, Churchill relinquished the office of leader of the House to Sir Stafford Cripps, the lord privy seal and (at that point) independent MP for Bristol East. He only held it for 10 months before it was taken on by the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. In fact, Cripps’s formal appointment was the recognition of what had become established practice since the formation of the government: Churchill, as prime minister and minister of defence since May 1940, had been nominally leader of the House but the actually work had mostly been undertaken by the lord privy seal, Clement Attlee.
So what does the leader of the House do? Essentially, she (I will use that pronoun as the incumbent is a woman) has responsibilities in two areas: first, as the minister responsible for the scheduling and passage of government business in the Commons; and second, for internal House matters, in which respect she is to an extent the representative of the Commons in cabinet. These two duties can be held in a certain degree of tension, as they require different attitudes, and for that reason the role, while seen as less desirable than running a large or high-profile department, is often given to a senior or able member of the cabinet.
The management of the government’s business through the House is probably the most important part of the executive’s job which is least seen by the general public. This is, after all, the principal way in which governments make significant changes, rather than just the everyday maintenance of the organs of state: passing legislation and securing the supply of money from the House. All of this must be carefully and painstakingly planned, from the King’s Speech, which sets out the broad legislative programme for the parliamentary session, through the various stages of consideration by both Houses, resolving any disagreements between Commons and Lords, and then to Royal Assent. And the clock is always ticking: unless a bill has an accompanying carryover motion, it will fall at the end of the session if it has not become law, and the timetable in the last few weeks of the session becomes incredibly tightly packed and very hectic.
The engine room of this planning is the cabinet committee for parliamentary business and legislation, which the current leader of the House chairs. It also includes the leader of the House of Lords, the chief whips of both Houses, the secretaries of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the chief secretary to the Treasury, the attorney general and the advocate general for Scotland (who deals with Scottish legislation on reserved matters). Previously, it also included the minister without portfolio, Sir Gavin Williamson. Officially the committee’s terms of reference are “to consider matters relating to the Government’s parliamentary business and delivery of its legislative programme”, which in practice means deciding what bills will be included in the King’s Speech (the list of not exclusive; bills not mentioned may be introduced at any time); which bills will start in the Lords and which in the Commons; what order they will be introduced and considered in; and how much time will be allocated to consideration of each one.
This kind of timetabling is a major logistical challenge. The leader must approximate how much time each bill will require, which depends on the length and complexity of the bill; the scale of any likely resistance; whether its timing is dependent on any external factors like deadlines or the conclusion of consultations; whether it will have a carryover motion attached or whether, like most bills, it will have to be passed in one session; and how many of its provisions could, in extremis, be sacrificed to rebels. In addition, any timetabling must be provisional, given the degree to which politics is seriously threatened by, in Macmillan’s phrase, “events, dear boy, events”. Some bills may also be published in draft form for pre-legislative scrutiny, usually conducted by a joint committee of both Houses, in which case the schedule of that process must also be managed.
To give you an idea of the scale of this task, the current session of Parliament was opened by the then-Prince of Wales on behalf of the Queen on 10 May. The date of prorogation, which brings the session to an end, is at the discretion of the government but sessions tend to last around a year so it is expected that the 2022-23 session will be concluded in early May 2023. So it’s roughly halfway through. The government currently has 17 public bills (and a hybrid bill for High Speed Rail 2) waiting for their next stage of consideration by the Commons, and 11 waiting in the Lords. The consideration of bills in the Commons is generally governed by a programme motion, which sets out a very clear timetable for scrutiny, but the Lords does not have programme motions and proceeds at its own pace. So there are a lot of moving parts.
The leader of the House must also arrange all of the House’s business. It is one of the axioms of British parliamentary business that the government controls the order paper: that is, the government decides what is on the agenda for every day the House is sitting (except when, by convention, they allow the business to be partially or wholly scheduled by others, such as on opposition days, or on Fridays when private members’ bills take priority). This vital power is enshrined in the very short Standing Order SO No. 14(1), which reads simply: “Save as provided in this order, government business shall have precedence at every sitting.”
As a result of this standing order, it falls to the government to arrange everything on the order paper, from bills and consideration of amendments to general debates, ministerial statements, approval of secondary legislation and more administrative, housekeeping motions like the membership of select committees or business of the House motions. The detail of this work is conducted by the government whips, with whom the leaders must work in very close cooperation, but the product is overall her responsibility.
The details for the forthcoming week are announced every Thursday. After the usual episode of departmental questions, and after any urgent questions and ministerial statements (so usually around 10.30 am), the leader of the House will give the business statement, prompted by her shadow asking “Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”
Business questions are a curious part of the parliamentary week. Because they involve the technicalities of scheduling debates, they are often light-hearted, and the leader and shadow leader must have a workable relationship as they will have to deal with each other so often. It is also no coincidence that it is nearing the end of the week: Thursday rarely has whipped business, so Members will often start to leave for their constituencies during the day. However, as the subject of the questions is the business for the following week—which can be taken to mean both what is included and what is not—those Members who turn up can have virtually a free-for-all.
Yesterday, for example, the shadow leader of the House, Thangam Debbonaire, was able to make some gently partisan points about the Online Safety Bill, currently awaiting report stage in the Commons. The legislation, designed to compel online platforms to police their sites for harmful content to protect children as well as ban non-consensual explicit images, is noble in its intent, but it has attracted some criticism for being overweening and overprotective; its consideration was delayed by Boris Johnson and both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have been lukewarm in their support. This presented Debbonaire with an easy target.
Since I became shadow Leader of the House, I have had a ringside seat for the chaotic way in which the Government have dragged the Online Safety Bill through Parliament with the grace and decorum of a reversing dump truck. It was first mooted a decade ago and it has been four years since they promised it. In that time, online crime has exploded, child sexual abuse online has become rife and scams have proliferated. I now hear that, in a bizarre move, the Government want to send the Bill back to Committee to try to remove a crucial section that deals with legal but harmful content. The Bill was designed to deal with legal but harmful content, self-harm, suicide and racist content, so why are they trying to take that out? If the Bill does not come back soon, it risks falling entirely—it will run into the end of the Session. The Leader of the House knows that there is no option to carry it over in those circumstances. So will we have Third Reading on Monday 5 December? Will it come back to the Commons in time to finish remaining stages before the end of the Session? Will she guarantee that there will be enough time?
The leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, who is an exceptional and agile performer at the despatch box, realised there was nothing to be gained from anything but the most minimalist of replies.
I will make an announcement on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill and the Online Safety Bill in the usual way. They will still be making progress through the House. I hope that Opposition Members will support those important Bills.
However, another Labour Member, Chris Elmore (Ogmore), returned to the subject, lamenting that the bill had been delayed for three years. He regretted rumours that the government wanted to make such significant changes to the bill that it might, exceptionally, be recommitted to a public bill committee.
We were making significant progress with the Bill. I am glad to see that it is coming back on 5 December, but I ask the Leader of the House to answer two straightforward questions put to her by the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West [Thangam Debbonaire]: will the Bill go back into Committee—something without precedent in this House in the past 20 years—and will it have a Third Reading on 5 December? People who have lost children because online platforms have not dealt with the harms found on them really need an answer. The delays have gone on for far too long.
The leader continued to stonewall but clothed her words in reassuring clothes.
Let me reassure the hon. Gentleman and all Members of the House about how seriously the Government—particularly the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who is steering the Bill through the House—take these issues. I know that she will have met many of the affected individuals and organisations and will be very aware of the tragic consequences of the content that is sometimes pushed towards children and vulnerable people. The Bill’s focus is very much on protecting children. I am proud that the Government are bringing it forward; I hope that all Members of this House will support it when it comes back to the House. As the hon. Gentleman will know, it is coming back very soon.
A cynic might note that her answer actually contains no precise commitments, certainly nothing which could be used in evidence against her if the bill meets a less-than-healthy fate.
The tenor of business questions, of course, relies heavily on the personalities and styles of the leader and her shadow. Leaders come in many types. Often, they are senior ministers coming to the end of the cabinet careers and given a gentle trajectory into retirement: this category includes William Hague (2014-15), George Young (2010-12), although his retirement proved to be a false dawn, and John Biffen (1982-87).
Others are ministers who have reached a certain seniority but, for one reason or another, no longer warrant a senior executive post from the prime minister, but are sufficiently influential and popular that they cannot be let go altogether. Into this category would fall Andrea Leadsom (2017-19), Andrew Lansley (2012-14), Robin Cook (2001-03) and Geoffrey Howe (1989-90). Generally these leaders are in the waiting room of retirement, often from frustration rather than fatigue, but it is also true that they sometimes end up preempting fate. Of those mentioned above, Howe, Cook and Leadsom all resigned over some point of principle (and two saw the downfall of the prime minister not long afterwards).
The leadership of the House can also be used as a sort of holding pen for people who have neither impressed enough to merit significant promotion, nor committed a sin heinous enough to warrant dismissal. They tend to be forgettable, like Mel Stride (2019), Geoff Hoon (2005-06) or John MacGregor (1990-92).
There is a small and select fourth category, those given the job because they are expected to be good at it. This is a consideration which is all too rare in ministerial appointments, but one could point to, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg (2019-22), who adored the arcana of procedure and the heavy weight of history on the palace; Norman St John-Stevas (1979-81), a constitutional obsessive to whom Margaret Thatcher extended unusual tolerance for disobliging remarks; or Michael Foot (1976-79), a brilliant orator who loved the radical history of the Commons and was an outstanding parliamentarian.
The now largely forgotten Tony Newton, leader of the House from 1992 to 1997, was also highly effective, maintaining a stoical fatalism through the difficult parliamentary management of the John Major years and earning widespread respect and trust. Jack Straw, who was in post from 2006 to 2007 between major departmental jobs, also seemed to enjoy being leader of the House more than he might have expected; he was given two major issues to deal with, party funding and House of Lords reform, and had anyway always been a Member who liked the Commons (and was a 27-year veteran when he was appointed).
If that covers the ‘government-facing’ responsibilities of the leader of the House, there are also important duties relating to the management of the Commons itself. She sits on the House of Commons Commission by statute, under the provisions of the House of Commons (Administration) Act 1978, which is responsible for the overall supervision of House of Commons staff and administration. The Commission has been unusually prominent in recent years, having to take difficult decisions on issues like restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, bullying and harassment of Commons staff, and the practical arrangements for hybrid working during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The leader also sits on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which exercises general oversight of IPSA including the appointment of senior officials, and the Public Accounts Commission (distinct from the Public Accounts Committee, a select committee of the House), which supervises the National Audit Office.
More generally, she has a responsibility for the working of the House and any major changes to the way it operates (although reform of the Commons has very much taken a back seat to Lords reform in recent years). Perhaps the most influential leader in this regard was Norman St John-Stevas, who, accepting the recommendations of a 1978 report from the Procedure Committee, created the system of departmental select committees which we have today. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the leader chaired the Modernisation Committee which reviewed various procedural and administrative matters of the House from 1997 to 2010.
In one respect, the post of leader of the House of Commons is a peculiar one: it is not statutory, it is not appointed even formally by the Crown, and no salary attaches to it. In a sense, then, it actually has almost no constitutional existence (although it is mentioned, for example, in the House of Commons (Administration) Act 1978). For those reasons, it must be combined with another, official cabinet position. Since the 1960s, the post has been combined with one of the sinecures available to the prime minister: lord president of the Council, lord privy seal, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and paymaster general. These have only vestigial duties attached to them which require minimal input, so leaving the occupant’s time free for her substantive job of leader of the House. The current leader is also lord president of the Council.
Last year, there was a quirky attempt to change the way the leader of the House was appointed. Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough), who, improbably, served three months as deputy leader of the House this year as the Johnson premiership disintegrated, had, last summer, presented a bill, the Leader of the House of Commons (Election) Bill, which would require the leader of the House to be elected by MPs from the governing party. It had no hope of success, as it was merely a private member’s presentation bill, but it reflected an interesting thought experiment which encapsulated one of the leader of the House’s roles as a representative of the Commons within government.
This has, I hope, answered some questions people may have entertained about the post of leader of the House of Commons, or clarified some points which were unclear. It is a peculiar office, unlike any other in government (except, broadly, the leader of the House of Lords), and its prominence and influence depends to a large extent on the influence and personality of the holder. It remains to be seen what Penny Mordaunt makes of the job she has had since September; I make no bones of the fact that I am a fan and I think she understands the possibilities and the limitations of the role better than a lot of recent leaders have done. She also has a more dominant presence at the despatch box than some of her predecessors. There are issues which will need to be addressed, including the ongoing handling of complaints of bullying and harassment and what the future is of the restoration and renewal project to modernise the Palace of Westminster. But the leader of the House is, like any cabinet minister, at the mercy of events. All I can say definitely is watch this space…