Parliament (Joint Departments) Bill
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Helen Goodman): As my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), said when he introduced the Second Reading debate on the Bill, the Parliament (Joint Departments) Bill is unusual in that it is neither a Government nor a Back-Bench Bill, but a parliamentary Bill, concerned with the machinery of Parliament. The Bill has its origins in the decision of the House of Commons Commission and the House of Lords House Committee to set up a joint Department to manage information and communications technology on behalf of both Houses.
We have a tradition in the House of making decisions about the services that we all need in a non-partisan spirit. I am pleased to say that the Bill enjoyed all-party support in the House of Lords, and that was apparent again when the Second Reading debate was taken Upstairs in Second Reading Committee. I am grateful in particular to the hon. Members for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) and for North Devon (Nick Harvey) for their support. I am pleased also to see my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Doran) in his place. I know that as Chairman of the Administration Committee, he has taken a particular interest in parliamentary ICT and in the Bill.
Clause 1 establishes the key principle that there can be joint Departments of both Houses of Parliament. Although the two Houses have long since shared the building, they have always maintained separate administrations and staff. To some extent that must always be so, because there are occasions when the two Houses take contrary positions on the issues before them and require separate procedural support and advice.
In recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that it makes sense for the two Houses to share the management of much of our infrastructure. Until now, that has been achieved more or less satisfactorily by one House employing the staff to deliver a particular service and the other agreeing to make an appropriate financial contribution in exchange for a share in the service. For example, the House of Commons has managed the staff who maintain the buildings for both Houses while the House of Lords has managed the staff of the joint parliamentary archives.
Over the past 20 years, Members of both Houses and the two administrations have become increasingly dependent on ICT services. In response, during the 1990s the two Houses created a combination of joint and separate functions to meet the new requirements. In addition, most of the specialised Departments and offices of the two Houses acquired their own computer applications and staff, all under separate management arrangements. The consequence was that at the beginning of the present decade we had acquired myriad overlapping IT systems and teams. That is why, in 2004, the House of Commons Commission and the House of Lords House Committee accepted the recommendation from the Clerks of both Houses that there should be a single strategically managed ICT service functioning, for the first time, as a joint Department. It was agreed then that the new service called the parliamentary information and communication technology service—PICT—should be set up on an interim basis.
As parliamentarians, we all know that our dependency on ICT can only increase—a point tellingly made in the excellent report by the Administration Committee, “Information and communication technology services for members”. High-quality ICT services are essential for all members to fulfil their responsibilities to their constituents and in Parliament. That requires careful strategic management on our behalf, and it eminently makes sense for them to be managed on a joint house basis. PICT is already operating in a shadow form, but for the longer term it needs a stable framework for joint employment, which is what the Bill is designed to achieve. Clause 1 therefore establishes the principle of joint Departments, and the remaining clauses flesh out the details.
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