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Legislative Process

Well, the hon. Gentleman worked out that people who were spending £25,000 a year on postage were sending out 600 letters a day. I cannot believe that all those letters were individually signed, and if they were not, they were circulars. It is expenses more than anything else that brings us into public disrepute, which is a reason why the communications allowance should be stopped quickly. The only comfort that I can take from the situation—I say this to the hon. Member for Hendon—is that there is considerable statistical evidence showing that such local efforts make absolutely no difference to the election result whatsoever because the seat experiences the national swing. I had planned to speak about the sub judice rule, but since I have had to sit through three and a half hours of a somewhat Alice in Wonderland debate about all sorts of introspective issues, I thought that I would chuck some of my prejudices in as well. There is an illusion, or perhaps a delusion, that what we do is hold the Government to account and that if we were here more often, we would do it better. If we were serious about holding the Government to account, we would do two things that are never on the agenda at all. First, there should be a rule in ““Erskine May”” that Ministers have to give proper answers to written questions, which they do not do at the moment. Secondly, Select Committees should have the power of their own volition to summon particular officials and ask to see particular documents. A Select Committee cannot do that at the moment because it has to go to the House for a resolution, which it never gets because the Government whip their troops against it. We do not have the power to hold the Government to account. We have the power to drag Ministers down here every so often and make them listen to the moans of Back Benchers, but that is not holding the Government to account. We had the opportunity to do that yesterday and we saw what happened. Holding Ministers to account is not to do with September sittings or how much of our allowances we spend on our staff, but proper answers to parliamentary questions and proper powers for Select Committees.