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Business of the House

The problem that has been presented by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) has been alluded to already in this morning's Westminster Hall debate secured by the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter). In the limited time available in that debate, we considered some of these questions. This issue is the effectiveness of government and who runs the House of Commons—and in turn the country. It is also about the imbalance that has been created as a result of the persistent degradation and diminution of this House's role in relation to the Government. There is a way of describing that in relation to the mechanics of this House—it is called "the usual channels" or the Whips. Of course there has to be a Whip system, otherwise there would be chaos. People join political parties, and when they vote for those parties, using their freedom of choice at the ballot box, they have the right to expect that there will be a proper and proportionate degree of support for the causes and political objectives that they supported in the general election. But—and this is a very big but—that does not mean that there is an unconditional requirement to do whatever the Whips, and therefore the Government, want. We talk about the Whips as though this is all because of them, but it is not—it is because of the orders that are given by the Government. This is about the patronage that the Government exert and the determination and the political will of having what they want. The Prime Minister says, "I will insist upon this; I will do what I want," and he issues the directions down through the system. That is how the Whips operate. Sometimes, criticising the manner in which the Whip system operates—I am one who does that—does not sufficiently explain the mechanics of the use of power that is exercised, but not on behalf of the people: once a person has been elected as the Prime Minister, the question is whether he is bound by manifesto commitments. The short answer, in relation to the European constitution, for example, is quite clearly no. Obviously, when it comes to having a referendum on the European issue, the answer is also no. The real issue before us, then, is this: we have to rebalance and recalibrate the manner in which the Whip system operates in practice, and the mechanism for that is the Standing Orders. It is impossible to imagine that somehow or other there will, by the waving of a magic wand, be a change in the way the Government and legislation operate in practice, so the Standing Orders themselves will have to be addressed. As I have said a number of times in the past few months, it is essential to return power to the House of Commons and take it away from the Executive. I have not the faintest idea whether you agree with this, Mr. Speaker, and it is not for me to suggest that you should agree to it, or whether you have any right to agree to it, as we are talking about the House of Commons and not about the Speaker. I believe that the Speaker's role, in historical terms, is, as was said on a famous occasion, to be a servant of the House. The Speaker might therefore want to give guidance and might have his own views, but when it comes to the application of the rules, the Executive in the 1880s were given the power to determine Standing Orders. I believe that many others would agree with me if they were aware of what was going on, and would want the running of the Standing Orders to be vested in the impartial role of the Speaker himself. That would be one way of ensuring that we did not have an omnipotent Government who were driven by political will, irrespective of the freedom of choice that was exercised at the ballot box, and through the party Whip system.