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

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Like everyone else who has spoken, one has to bow to the tenacity and insight of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), who has steered these proposals thus far. We can see consummation so close that we can almost touch it, and we can only hope that next week things will go as we all wish. Several hon. Members have spoken about the expenses scandal as if that is the origin of the decline in the esteem in which the House is held. In fact, the decline in esteem for Members of Parliament is a fairly long-term thing. I am very pro-European; none the less, the decline has come about because of power flowing to European institutions. It has come about because of power flowing to quangos. I came to this House in 1987, and questions that one would once have asked of a Minister one now has to write to a quango about. It has come about because of the decline in deference. Above all, perhaps, it has come about because of the spiralling power of patronage, which has undermined the will of the House to stand up for itself and undermined the role of the Back-Bench MP. The power of patronage has increased and is increasing. I do not agree with colleagues who have said that these proposals are sterile, meaningless and technical; I think they are probably among the most important things we will have the opportunity to vote for during this Parliament. I say that for a number of reasons. First, it is easy for hon. Members—beaten and battered by the media, dealing with a deluge of letters from constituents, knocking on doors in the run-up to what is going to be, on the basis of what we have seen so far, quite a bitter and unpleasant election—to forget that the public are in fact very interested in politics. I occasionally appear on the broadcast media, and I want to assure hon. Members that in my experience the public—not just party members and young people, but people of all ages and all colours—are interested in and want to talk about politics; they have views on issues such as Europe, what we should do about the banks, and so on. However, they are not so interested in Parliament. Our task is to make Parliament relevant to the public's concerns, because they do not see it as such. In particular, they do not feel that politicians say what they think. I want to say to hon. Members who may not have been here pre-1997 and in the '80s, as I was, that Select Committees are wonderful, and all their Chairs and members, without exception, are wonderful, but the role of Select Committees and the seriousness with which they are taken is not what it was. I came into Parliament in an era when we took seriously the notion of Select Committees being Committees of the House. That is not to say that parties did not seek to interfere. I served on the Treasury Committee throughout most of the '90s, with some reasonable success, in the teeth of the opposition of the party leader of the time. The Whips Office, which in those days saw its role as balancing the factions of the party, saw it as a triumph to put on an important Committee someone who in its view represented a particular current in the party. Now, lip service is no longer given to Select Committees being Committees of the House. In that era, it was accepted that Select Committees could elect their own Chairmen. I served on a Committee in the 1990s for which the Whips were suggesting one Chairman, but we all voted for another. We have gone from that position, in which it was accepted that Select Committees had to have that right, and it was accepted at least on paper that they were Committees of the House, to a position that I believe is outrageous, although no one else in my party seems to think so. Chief Whips appear before the parliamentary Labour party and read out who is going to chair Committees. That seems extraordinary and an abuse of the technical position of what Select Committees are about. Wonderful though Select Committees are, we have never fully explored their powers and their possibility to rejuvenate politics and make it relevant. Too much turns on their Chairmen, and, as was said earlier, Whips have weakened them by not looking for the most experienced, able or knowledgeable people but filling them with people they believe will cause no trouble. I speak to Select Committee Chairman after Select Committee Chairman who talks about the difficulty of simply getting a quorum, when there are many people on the Back Benches who would serve with distinction. Select Committees have been weakened, and the proposals before us would strengthen them and strengthen the House. I am giving away my age, but I started as an MP in an era when timetabling was the exception, not the rule, and Front Benchers had to apologise if they were going to timetable a Bill. Now nearly everything is timetabled. Hon. Members will say, "We have to timetable or we wouldn't get through the business." I entirely accept that we have to have Whips, order and procedure, but am I the only one who has noticed in recent months how important legislation is savagely timetabled because Front Benchers do not want discussion on it, and then we end up spending days on matters of no importance whatever? That is timetabling taken beyond what is rational. It is one thing to timetable to get business through, but when timetabling has reached the point at which we cannot debate important things and rely on the House of Lords to pick up on poor legislation, yet we come here day after day to debate matters that do not need to be debated, it has gone out of control. The proposals that I hope we will vote for in a very few days will enable timetabling to go forward on a rational basis. Everyone accepts that the Government must get their business and that Back Benchers must vote for matters that were in the manifesto, but the power to timetable at will has gone completely to the head of the usual channels. We are getting an arrangement of business of the House that makes no sense. Worse, legislation keeps going through that the Lords are not able to clean up, and we have to come back to the same subject again and again rather than put through sound legislation in the first place. Hon. Friends have talked in most baleful terms about the dangers of allowing Back-Bench MPs to vote for Chairs and members of Select Committees. "What will come," they ask histrionically, "of allowing Back Benchers to vote without the Whips telling them what to do?" I will tell them what will come of allowing Back Benchers to use their judgment without being whipped. Members may disagree about the choice of issues that I will refer to, but some of the most important moments in this House, such as the abolition of the death penalty and introducing the right to an abortion for women, were brought about by Members voting unwhipped, using their judgment. If any Member of this House has no confidence in Members of Parliament being allowed to vote and use their judgment, what they are doing as MPs? We are elected, but if we are not respected enough, even by our colleagues, to use our judgment on matters such as the composition of Select Committees, why would we become MPs? I am a great believer in direct democracy and I have a website of which I am very proud. Perhaps my constituency differs from others, but with direct democracy, one must be careful that one does not empower a small group of technologically literate people at the expense of people who are, for example, not educated, too old or simply uninterested. I am all for direct democracy, but not if it produces an imbalance in the forces in a constituency. I am very glad that the Government are coming forward on this matter and that they will help us to make these reforms—I will not go so far as to say that they have seen the light. Mystifying as it may be to Members of Parliament who know only the current regime, and annoying as allowing Back Benchers to vote and use their judgment may be to Front Benchers—and as traumatic as it is for the Whips Office—this House is at its best when Members of Parliament feel free to say what they wish and when they can use their judgment. Only if the public are allowed to see more of the House of Commons at its best and what MPs can be if they are not trammelled by the Executive will we restore confidence in this House of Commons, this Parliament and the politics of this country.