Plans to modernise Parliament could mean a spring Budget, backbenchers scrutinising senior appointments and shorter set-piece debates on annual Bills, Leader of the House of Commons Ann Taylor revealed yesterday.

Mrs Taylor, who is to head a new committee aimed at bringing the Commons up-to-date, stressed that there was no ''blueprint'' for the process.

But she did not rule out the notion of transferring more power to backbench select committees and make more Parliamentary time available to debate their reports.

''I think you can only have more time on one item if you have less on another, but I do favour looking at the balance of the Parliamentary timetable,'' she said.

Mrs Taylor told BBC TV's On the Record: ''Part of the purpose of having a committee to look at modernisation is to try to get some agreement on where we should be going and I am not going to sit on that committee with a blueprint of what is going to happen in the future.''

The reforms, Mrs Taylor said, were an attempt to make better legislation.

''A lot of legislation that has been passed in the past few years has not been of a very good quality,'' she said.

''We want to acknowledge there are areas of straight forward political disagreement . . . but there are some problems where if we had a different approach to legislation, if we have Government Ministers listening to try and develop some consensus towards a problem, then we are more likely to get that legislation right.''

Mrs Taylor also expressed her backing for calls to ensure that Ministers were accountable to Parliament.

She said: ''I think they have to be accountable. They have to answer reasonable questions and we need a new framework to decide what happens in practice.''