---

Report from the House of Commons Reform Committee on Rebuilding the House

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for calling me to speak in this hugely important debate. May I say, as a member of the Public Administration Committee, what a marvellous Chairman we have in the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright)? He has brought his brilliance on the Public Administration Committee to bear on the Wright Committee report. Yes, it is a small step, but it is a fundamentally important step, and a very brave step that he has taken. During this debate we have asked ourselves what is the role of a Member of Parliament. Of course, a Member of Parliament must be here to scrutinise legislation. We have a duty and obligation to ensure that our constituents are governed by good legislation, not just by any legislation. We have failed at times to ensure that. We must also hold the Government to account, regardless of whether or not they are drawn from our own party. Beyond that, we must be courageous and true to ourselves. We must be representatives of the people who elect us, not delegates. It is interesting that over the past 30 years, the more we have done for our constituents and the more visible we are in our constituencies, the more people despise us. Gone are the days, 50 years ago, when a Member of Parliament would make a twice-yearly regal visit to the constituency to meet the mayor or go to a fête. We are now mostly based in our constituency for more than half of our time, and many of us make our primary home in our constituency. I am very concerned when I hear hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber talking about direct democracy. Have we lost faith in our own ability to be the effective representatives of those who elected us? We have representative democracy in this country, and by and large it has served us well for 350 years. If we get it right, it will serve us well for the next 350 years, but radical changes need to be made. The current constitutional settlement is not working. We know and the public know that it is not working. If any good has come out of the expenses scandal, crisis, nightmare of the past nine months, it is that at last we will have a healthy distance between us as Back-Bench Members of Parliament and the Executive. Our interests are not the interests of the Executive of this country. We have been led up a dead-end road over the past 30 years. We willingly followed and we should not be forgiven for that, but the Executive were prime movers in getting us into the position that we found ourselves in. We should not forget that. We have a presidential style of government in this country. Do we have government by Cabinet any more? Of course not. We know that. Secretaries of State in the current Government would go to No. 10 to talk to the Prime Minister about policy, and he would turn to them and say, "Funnily enough, my special adviser disagrees with you on that. We're going to do something different." So we do not have government by Cabinet. We do not have a Prime Minister, a first Minister of the Cabinet: we have presidential government, and it is driven by 24-hour media. We in this place know that only three people in any political party matter. They are the ones who make the weather. In the Government, it is the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and Lord Mandelson. In my party there are many people better qualified than I who will make that judgment, but I am convinced that only three people in each party make the weather.