The cross-party group, Parliament First, was set up seven years ago by Mark Fisher MP to campaign for major reforms of procedure to make the government effectively accountable to Parliament. It now has about 40 members drawn from all parties in the House and has an expanding programme of reform. Following the expenses scandal and the continuing saga of broken promises there has never been a greater need for radical change in the way Parliament conducts itself if it is to regain the public’s trust.
Over the last 30 years, instead of tightening scrutiny over executive excesses, Parliament has become less ideological, more tribally loyalist, more careerist. It failed utterly to hold the Thatcher-Major governments to account over arms to Iraq, the Blair government over the Iraq war, and the Brown government over capitulation to the City.
The recent reforms – setting up a Back-Bench Business Committee and electing Select Committees – scarcely begin to redress the balance of power which has been drained away largely by the assertiveness of No.10, by Thatcher’s dominatrix model and by Blair’s Napoleonic regime. Its power is continually seeping away to Brussels as the EU mandate spreads ever wider. And the judiciary increasingly encroaches on the Parliamentary prerogative, no doubt prompted by the judges’ view that if Parliament can’t hold the Executive to account, they will.
First, Parliament must drastically overhaul its existing procedures. The recently reported incident when Sarah Wollaston, a newly elected Tory MP with 25 years experience working in the NHS, was told by her Party whip that she could only go on the Health Service Bill committee if she didn’t speak and didn’t move any amendments illustrates why scrutiny of government bills is often a pure formality. It shows the need for the whole House to elect the Committee of Selection, currently controlled by the Whips, as well as chair and members of Select Committees.
At report stage when significant changes can be made by votes of the whole House, the government can prevent later amendments it opposes being reached by ‘talking out’ earlier ones, whilst Members who have not followed the bill on committee often vote in accordance with their whips without realising what the vote is about. There should also be a pre-legislative stage for bills where outside experts can give detailed evidence and where members of the public can make their views known.
Then there is a further range of reforms where Parliament can assert its authority as the elected voice of the people. On matters of overriding national importance (e.g. the Iraq war) Parliament should have the right to set up its own Commissions of Inquiry, not depend on the Executive or No10 to do so since it is usually the latter’s actions which are being investigated. The House should also be empowered to scrutinise and approve the appointment of the chair, members and terms of reference of Committees of Inquiry set up by the prime minister. Select Committees should also routinely carry out confirmation hearings (as in the US Congress) of leading quango appointments and perhaps also some ministerial appointments, with a vote on the question of approval at the end. Parliament also needs its own legal counsel if it is to be an effective check on executive power.
Since annual government expenditure of £650bn is such a key exercise of power, Parliament should establish a framework for contemporaneous monitoring and cross-examination of major expenditure programmes (not just after the event via the PAC), aided by a cadre of expert external advisers, whether through the existing select committees or a new specialist Estimates Committee. Since professional lobbyists have now hugely increased their influence over the political process, Parliament should require that a public register be kept, including the scope of their activities, the source of their funding and their meetings with Ministers. And to bring Parliament closer to the people it represents, petitions signed by a high threshold number of electors should be able to be debated and voted on in the House.
Beyond this revival of parliamentary power there is a further relevant agenda. For three decades the world has been ruled by the neoliberal capitalist model, the Washington Consensus, and the US hegemony. It requires great political courage to defy these forces, and Blair and Brown made the Mephistophelean deal with them not even to attempt defiance, but rather to go to endless subservient lengths to placate them. It led to a decade studded with Brown’s annual lyrical paeans to the high priests of finance at the Mansion House, Blair’s sycophantic efforts to win the approval of a Right-wing press and especially Murdoch, and a general glorification of bankers and FTSE-100 CEOs as the measure of all things. When this political-financial nexus was fissured irreversibly in 2008, the way was finally open for a new political and economic order. The measure for a resuscitated Parliament will be how far and how effectively it rises to the challenge of that fundamental debate.
Micheal Meacher is MP for Oldham West and Royton and the chair of the Parliament First Group.
The members of Parliament First are as follows:
Conservative: Peter Bone, Douglas Carswell, Bernard Jenkin, William Cash, Richard Shepherd, Sarah Wollaston, Roger Gale, Christopher Chope, Zac Goldsmith, Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie
Labour: Michael Meacher, Graham Allen, Natascha Engel, Robert Flello, Austin Mitchell, Fiona Mactaggert, Alf Dubs, Chris Bryant, Margaret Curran, Joan Ruddock, Stephen Twigg, Dale Campbell-Davours
Lib Dem: John Hemming, Jo Swinson, Paul Tyler, David Heath, Malcolm Bruce, John Pugh, Alan Beith, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy
Others: Caroline Lucas, Elfyn Llwyd
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