The Michael Ryle Memorial Lecture 2024 was delivered by Liam Laurence Smyth CB on Tuesday 23rd July. The theme for this year’s lecture was Liam’s reflections on a 47 year career in the House of Commons as a Clerk, a career which spanned twelve Clerks of the House and six Speakers.
A transcript of the lecture follows.
Introduction
1. Select Committees
2. Inter-Parliamentary Work
3. Clerk of Legislation
Conclusion
Introduction
I am greatly honoured to have been invited to give the 2024 Michael Ryle memorial lecture. This is the tenth anniversary of the first Ryle lecture given by Speaker Bercow in 2014. This is an unaccustomed experience for me: to speak publicly about a career that for the most part has been in the background. It’s a particular pleasure for me to be asked to give this lecture since Michael Ryle was a significant early influence on my career.
My career as a Clerk spans a period of more than 46 years during which time I have served under twelve Clerks of the House (Barlas, Gordon, Bradshaw, Boulton, Limon, McKay, Sands, Jack, Rogers, Natzler, Benger and Goldsmith); and six Speakers (Thomas, Weatherill, Boothroyd, Martin, Bercow, Hoyle).
There have been five significant electoral turning points—
- 1979: the defeat of the Labour government as described in James Graham’s play “This House”, ushering in the Thatcher era which among other things re-cast the select committee system;
- 1997: modernisation of the House of Commons under the Blair government;
- 2010: coalition government, following the expenses scandal;
- 2016: the Brexit referendum; and
- 2024: bringing in a majority of Members new to the House.
In what follows, there are some gaps, loose threads and hints of topics which I might be able to discuss in Q&A once the recording has stopped, or possibly in conversations after drinks afterwards—or perhaps not at all. Copies of my CV are available in the room, in case you wanted to raise anything I don’t mention.
Our calling as Clerks is to serve the central institution of our democracy to the best of our ability and not to use our privileged inside position to advance our own political opinions. Michael Ryle was inspirational for many of us in combining high standards of service to Parliament with a commitment to reform based on a deep understanding of procedure, as exemplified in the Study of Parliament Group, which he co-founded with Professor Bernard Crick and which brings us all here today.
My talk comes in three parts: select committees, inter-parliamentary relations and legislation.
1. Select Committees
Select Committee on Nationalised Industries
When I joined the House in 1977, entering as a PPE graduate through the Civil Service Selection Board competition (now branded as the “fast stream”), Michael Ryle was Clerk of Select Committees, heading up a small outpost of the Committee Office on the third floor of 3 Dean’s Yard. In Dean’s Yard I took over the glamorously named Sub-Committee B of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, just as it was embroiled in a row with the Department of Industry over the financial forecasts relating to the British Steel Corporation. The Select Committee ordered the relevant documents to be handed over by the BSC Chairman Sir Charles Villiers MC. The actual order was delivered not by the Serjeant at Arms in person but by Mary Frampton, Warrant Officer of the House and Clerk in Charge of the Serjeant at Arms Office, who acquired an unsought notoriety as the House’s enforcer.
A more fruitful and innovative venture by Sub-Committee B was the pre-legislative scrutiny of plans to re-organise the electricity supply industry. The publication by the Secretary of State for Energy of an entire draft Bill for which (owing to the Lib-Lab pact) he was denied Cabinet clearance was an instance of Tony Benn’s willingness to break the mould.
Other examples include disclaiming his hereditary peerage, issuing thematic postage stamps and securing the suspension of collective responsibility for the 1975 EEC referendum, in which I had voted as a student.
In the case of Benn’s proposed recasting of the nationalised electricity sector, what emerged was an utter lack of support for the Liberals’ alternative approach, on which David Penhaligon’s veto of Benn’s bill had been based.
Agriculture Committee
Although I was rather sorry to see the demise of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries in 1979, I rejoiced in taking up a post in the Palace as Assistant Clerk of the departmentally-related Agriculture Committee, charged with monitoring the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Owing to divisions within both parties over Europe, we soon learned to steer clear of debating the merits of the Commons Agricultural Policy whenever possible.
Domestic Committees
While I was in the Journal Office in the mid-1980s, I was the Clerk of a Select Committee on Standing Orders (Revision), which brought about the withholding of salary during a Member’s suspension. I also had part-time duties as Clerk of the Select Committee on Sound Broadcasting (in those pre-televising days) and a Sub-Committees of the Select Committee on House of Commons (Services) on Computers—we wondered if email had a future.
I also clerked the New Building Sub-Committee under John Silkin, which produced the Design Brief for the buildings from 1 Parliament Street to 1 Derby Gate, and which made a start on plans to redevelop the tube station site which ultimately resulted in the building we are in now.
Channel Tunnel Bill
A career highlight for me in the Private Bill Office was the Select Committee on the Channel Tunnel Bill. A series of sittings in the summer recess of 1986 based at the Imperial Hotel in Hythe got through a very large number of individuals, helpfully outnumbered by the no-shows.
Social Security Committee
Almost 20 years after Sub-Committee B had examined Tony Benn’s draft Bill, I conducted another pre-legislative inquiry, after Harriet Harman as Secretary of State for Social Security published clauses on pension-sharing in divorce, which were scrutinised by the Social Security Select Committee. I had become Clerk of that committee in 1994, just after the criminal case had commenced against the Maxwell brothers, which fortunately meant that its chair Frank Field had to turn his attention to other matters.
Among my successes in that role was persuading Frank to travel—initially a Committee trip to Switzerland in March 1995. I knew we’d get the funding because the Liaison Committee was keen to reduce its underspend before the end of the financial year, and I could promise him that he would not miss any important votes because we would be travelling in a week when the Whips were focussed on the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
We went on a longer comparative study visit to Australia, New Zealand and Singapore in November 1995, where the Members laid wreaths on a lovely summer Remembrance Day in Canberra.
The following year, the BBC foolishly attempted an undercover exposé by secretly following the Committee to Chile in September 1996. They should have known that Frank would have been the last person to go on a boondoggle—examining the privatised state pension reforms forced through by General Pinochet, and similar less draconian state pension policies in Argentina, played a large part in the evolution of Frank’s thinking on how to re-build the UK’s national insurance system. His mandate from Tony Blair to “think the unthinkable” as Minister of State for Welfare Reform foundered on scepticism from Gordon Brown’s Treasury: both Harriet Harman and Frank Field were dismissed after just a year in office.
Education Committee
Of all the Chairs I worked with, Barry Sheerman on the Education Committee was the only one who ever actively sought my feedback on his own performance. Before what one former Prime Minister described as the “rigmarole” of September sittings introduced to show the public that MPs were earning their crust, the Education Committee attempted to use a non-sitting week in September for a residential week in Birmingham combining visits, formal evidence hearings and open forums covering all the education sectors. I’d like to report that this was a successful experiment, but it was weakened by the indifference and absence of Opposition members of the Committee.
Police searches on the Parliamentary Estate
As Clerk of the Journals, I had the uncomfortable experience of being Clerk to the committee chaired by Sir Menzies Campbell holding to account almost all of those involved in the Damian Green case: the Clerk of the House, Speaker’s Counsel, the Serjeant at Arms and the by then former Speaker Martin, as well as the Cabinet Secretary, the Metropolitan Police and Damian Green. Only the last-named escaped criticism by the committee.
Parliamentary Privilege
In the aftermath of the expenses scandal, the incoming coalition government produced a green paper on parliamentary privilege in 2012. Eventually a Joint Committee was appointed, for which I was the lead Commons Clerk, to consider the Green Paper. The weight given by the committee to the opinion in favour of a Privileges Act by the authoritative figure of Sir Malcolm Jack, the former Clerk of the House, might have been greater were it not for the diametrically opposed and equally authoritative view of the incumbent Clerk of the House, Sir Robert Rogers (now Lord Lisvane). The Joint Committee came out in July 2013 against a privileges statute, and the matter was quietly dropped, at least for a while.
Draft House of Lords Reform Bill
Another Joint Committee which came my way was on the draft House of Lords Reform Bill. A great opportunity was lost with Labour’s refusal to vote for the Bill’s programme motion in July 2012.
Select committee Clerks need—
- intellectual curiosity;
- the ability to master a subject sufficiently to explain clearly to MPs what the experts are arguing about;
- drafting skills to present evidence clearly and to express conclusions on which the Chair should be able to reach a consensus in the Committee;
- an underpinning of procedural knowledge not just to keep the select committee within its remit but also to able to exploit opportunities when they arise.
2. Inter-Parliamentary Work
Michael Ryle was a great internationalist and an enthusiastic supporter of links with Clerk colleagues in the Commonwealth. Unusually, I had three spells in the Overseas Office:
- from 1981 to 1982 arranging to host the European Speakers and North Atlantic Assembly (NATO PA) conferences in London, when Michael Ryle was Clerk of the Overseas Office;
- from 1987 to 1990 as Secretary to the UK Delegations to the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe, Western European Union, NATO and the OSCE;
- and as Clerk of the Overseas Office (now more prosaically called Director of Inter-Parliamentary Relations) from 2005 to 2008.
Encouraged by Michael, I took up opportunities to learn about other parliaments, such as being a note-taker at annual Westminster Seminars of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Acquiring the technique of reported speech stood me in good stead for working as part of the temporary teams in support of plenary sessions in Strasbourg, Paris, various NATO or OSCE capitals and even once in Santiago for the IPU.
I was fortunate to be Delegation Secretary in the dramatic period from 1987 to 1990, which saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was in the Strasbourg hemicycle for Mikhail Gorbachev’s landmark declaration in July 1989 ruling out any use of force between or within alliances in “our common European home”.
PACE 40th anniversary
At the following September sitting the UK delegation planned to host a Reception to showcase the best of British food and drink and to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Council of Europe. The centrepiece of the event was to be a Sunset Ceremony with Beating Retreat by the Royal Marines. A few days before the Band from the Royal School of Music was due in Strasbourg, several bandsmen were murdered by at their barracks at Deal by a Provisional IRA bomb. Rather than call off the event, the Commandant General ordered another Royal Marines band, from the Commando Training School in Lympstone, to drive through the night to fulfil the Marines’ commitment. The event celebrating the UK’s role in the parent organisation of the European Convention of Human Rights was all the more moving and memorable for its defiance of the enemies of democracy.
In later years, I took on more senior procedural roles in the temporary teams, ending up as Procedural Adviser to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. In connection with the latter role, I am grateful to the House for supporting me in learning Russian, including a daily one-to-one beginner’s course at the Diplomatic Service Language Centre during the 1997 election and a residential course in St Petersburg during the election of 2001.
Russia
Around the turn of the century, I took over from Helen Irwin a part-time responsibility as Director of our Parliamentary Co-operation Project with the Russian State Duma. This series of professional development seminars in the UK and Moscow was administered by the British Council and paid for by the FCO’s Know-How Fund, a forerunner of the Westminster Fund for Democracy. It is rather melancholy to look back now on how we welcomed the advent of Vladimir Putin as a figure of promise in Yeltsin’s Presidential Administration, who might bring a degree of discipline into the Duma’s legislative programme, which was rather chaotic at that time.
Myanmar
My life changed in July 2013 when I accompanied Speaker Bercow’s delegation to Burma where he introduced me to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as someone who could help in making a democratic reality of the Burmese Parliament. The tricameral Pyidaungsu Hluttaw was something of a Frankenstein’s Monster or Potemkin village, having been cobbled together by the military regime in order to persuade the international community to lift sanctions.
Edward Wood, from the House of Commons Library, and I worked together with Moira Fraser, an inspirational former Parliamentary Librarian from New Zealand, to foster the development of an impartial research service for the fledgling parliament.
Oliver Bennett MBE took up a year-long residential position in Naypyidaw as the pathfinder of what grew into our most sustained bilateral parliamentary development programme, with up to half a dozen UK parliament staff posted there for full-time on-site training, coaching and mentoring. As the project matured, we moved into supporting committee work and human resources.
I visited Myanmar more than a dozen times over the life of the project, which was approaching its end as Covid struck in 2020 and was irrevocably terminated with the military coup a year later.
It remains one of the great privileges of my life to have known Daw Suu, who remains under house arrest. It was very inspiring to work with a new generation of Burmese officials striving to foster a democratic culture as their country emerged from decades of brutal, incompetent and corrupt military dictatorship.
Today is the anniversary of the execution of Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former hip-hop artist and National League for Democracy MP, who would always stop to chat with us in the refreshment area just outside one of the Hluttaw’s three Chambers.
The Westminster Parliament is widely admired and respected which give us the opportunity and responsibility to assist in breathing life into democratic institutions. A Clerk has to really understand Westminster procedures in order to engage internationally, as well as having the communicate at the right level, but even more important than expertise or communication is a certain modesty or even humility in understanding how closely connected specific national cultures and contexts are for sustainable democratic development.
3. Clerk of Legislation
In 2014, I became Clerk of Legislation, in which post I continued up to the end of May this year. As the number of private bills has declined since the advent of the Transport and Works Act 1992, the Private Bill Office is now merged with the Public Bill Office. We still have a trickle of hybrid Bills on large rail infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and HS2. The Government was rather put out when as Clerk of Legislation I caused their Holocaust Memorial Bill to be referred to the Examiners, who decided that it was a hybrid bill.
My duties included corresponding in confidence on Government bills with the excellent Office of Parliamentary Counsel, giving confidential advice to the Speaker and Deputy Speakers on the application the Parliament Act and the interpretation of Standing Orders, and advising Members and the Chair privately on the orderliness of Amendments.
My term spanned a decade from James Wharton’s European Union Referendum Private Member’s Bill through the actual Referendum, meaningful votes and post-Brexit bills up to the recent superfast spin cycle in the pre-election washup.
The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit has been delineated superbly by Meg Russell and Lisa James.
I was personally very glad to see the back of English Votes for English Laws Standing Orders, which were suspended for sheer practicality during hybrid sittings in the pandemic and then quietly rescinded. The preparation with Speaker’s Counsel of EVEL certificates and checking the Speaker’s Chamber script (“dossier”) for the ensuing choreography of Legislative Grand Committee stages used to take up a lot of my time. I can’t think of a single change made to a Bill as a result of a vote being held under the EVEL Standing Orders.
In my time we had several fast-track Northern Ireland Bills. On one occasion I helped the Northern Ireland Members to amend an otherwise extremely narrow bill postponing Assembly elections yet again by letting the Government know that the Speaker was minded to select an “Instruction” allowing the Bill to be used to bring into force un-commenced Northern Ireland legislation on organ donation — “Daithi’s Law”. Northern Ireland MPs were similarly successful in getting the quashing of sub-postmaster convictions in the Province included in what was expressly designed to be an England-and-Wales only Bill.
Not long after he retired, Michael Ryle served as secretary of the Hansard Commission on the Legislative Process, chaired by Lord (Geoffrey) Rippon, who acknowledged the “momentum and vision” Michael had brought to the drafting of their Report. The Hansard Commission’s proposals in 1992 included—
- publication of Explanatory Notes on bills, which is now the norm;
- referral of complex government bills to a first reading committee to take evidence and report observations before second reading, which personally I think still a good idea;
- oral evidence-taking after second reading in special standing (public bill) committees, which is now the norm for programmed Government bills—except (for reasons that beat me) in the case of Finance Bills and bills originating in the Lords;
- more extensive and routine programming of all legislation.
As far as general committees go, it seems to me that it is not the rules of procedure but the adversarial political culture that makes them such a waste of time, as least as far as government backbenchers are concerned. Particularly on delegated legislation committees, the attendance of Government Members serves no purpose other than to over-fulfil the quorum, since any divisions on the technical “has considered” motion have no effect. An instant reform would be to reduce the quorum for a delegated legislation committee to no more than three.
In these days of modernised sitting hours, deferred divisions and a parallel debating chamber in Westminster Hall, we could surely devise less cumbersome machinery for debating affirmative statutory instruments, perhaps even returning more delegated legislation debates to the floor of the House after the main business of the day has concluded. The Backbench Business Committee should be permitted to table debates on “prayers” against statutory instruments.
Programming works pretty well in my view in public bill committees, certainly by comparison to the bad old days of clocking up 100 hours to force the Government into tabling a guillotine motion. Over my decade as Clerk of Legislation, the logic of programming has resulted in the norm for report stages now being a single miscellaneous debate, often with time limits on backbench speeches, and ending in no more than a handful of divisions on amendments selected for separate decision by the Speaker.
Empathy is the most valuable quality for a procedural Clerk. It’s not sufficient just to rule something out of order—that just leads to frustration at supposedly “arcane” rules. If we take the time to explain how things work, most Members will accept that what we have are actually perfectly sensible ways of doing business.
In Study of Parliament Group circles, we have tendency to slip into the fallacy that Parliament is on the other side from Government. In the elusive ambivalence of the Westminster system of blended parliamentary government, both main parties share a common interest in winning power so that they can get stuff done. Clerks help to ensure, as Robin Cook put it, that good scrutiny makes for good government.
Conclusion
Later this week the House will debate the terms of reference of a Modernisation Committee tasked with driving up standards, improving work practices and reforming procedures. That seems a good point on which to bring this lecture to a close, with a quotation from Michael Ryle (Commons in the Seventies, 1977, page 32):
“Personally, I am convinced that the House of Commons, provided it develops effective and critical procedures to match the power of government, and provided it always speaks for and to the people, will continue to be a lively effective and influential body which our system of Parliamentary democracy requires”.
Thank you.