The reward for the victors of the 2010 general election was paid in a devalued currency.
The status of the job of a member of parliament had been stripped of its high prestige by the expenses scandal. The default press and public image was one of ridicule and contempt. The prime task of the new parliament was to rebuild the public’s confidence and trust.
We have not done well. For five years the reforming instincts remained ossified. Promises to jam the revolving door, clean up lobbying, democratise the electoral system, reform the House of Lords and end cash for peerages or for access to ministers were neglected or forgotten.
There was some progress led by the Speaker, John Bercow, and by the Wright reforms. The backbench committee carved out large slabs of parliamentary time from the control of the executive. The Speaker allowed more urgent questions per week than past Speakers allowed per year. The backbench debates were usually on quiet Thursdays and often tucked away from media notice in Westminster Hall.
Urgent questions are high visibility events occupying about an hour each in the Commons chamber at peak attendance time for MPs and the media. They have wrenched from the executive control of a vital segment of the parliamentary choreography. Matters that the government wishes to have hidden under the carpet are debated centre-stage and the agenda is determined by backbenchers.
The daring Wright reform experiment of allowing chairs of select committees to be elected by backbenchers has been a partial success. The whips cannot change their characters and they still interfere. They strive to bully backbenchers into electing docile chairs who will bend the knee to the whips demands. The committees chaired by whips’ stooges have underachieved. The Treasury and the procedure committees have performed well under their independent chairs, Neither Andrew Tyrie or Charles Walker would have had chance of a chair when the whips ruled.
Other chairs have allowed their strong political prejudices to determine committee conclusions. The public administration committee under Bernard Jenkin has been craven before the bullying of government ministers. A sad contrast to it under Tony Wright in the previous parliament when it was the most creative and innovative of all committees. The chair of the culture committee was asked in the chamber whether his neuralgic antagonism towards the BBC was so rooted in his first job in politics that the Sun called him ‘Maggie’s Toyboy’. It is frustrating and futile spending time on committees that are mere extensions of government propaganda.
Some channels of backbench influence are degraded. Prime ministers questions has gone beyond a joke. It is a demeaning, ill-mannered pointless spectacle where the leader of the opposition’s questions are not answered by the prime minister, who uses it as a bully pulpit for his own chosen issues. The poisonous bedlam of insult and hatred should be buried deeply under a slab of concrete marked ‘Never to be disturbed’ from its dishonored grave.
The mother of parliaments should no longer posture and preen as an exemplar to the world. Mother still deserves respect but she is now degraded by endemic neglect.
When confronted by crises, dogs bark, babies cry and politicians legislate. A colossal 77 bills were not implemented in whole or in part during the 2005-2010 parliament because they were overtaken, impracticable, or defective. Most were underprepared, underscrutinised or misconceived.
Little has improved. The signature bill of the current zombie parliament was mocked as ‘a major landmark in legislative futility.’ The social action, responsibility and heroism bill was described by a former Tory attorney general as ‘utter tosh’. It sets itself the impossible task of creating volunteers and heroes by legislation. Lord Lloyd contemplated moving against all three absurd clauses of the bill so that only the title would remain. It is a lamentable headline-seeking example of crude populism that exploits the defects in legislative processes.
The thinktank Reform produced a blueprint for A Parliament of Lawmakers with 13 practical, soundly based reforms. They include maximizing select committee talent, collaboration between the executive and committees on timetabling, widening the work of departmental committees and encouraging joint committee work.
The 2010-15 parliament did not get it. It was the lobotomised parliament: as unconscious of its weaknesses that will produce future scandals as past parliaments were of an expenses regime that invited corruption.
Without fundamental reforms, future dark days are certain.
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Paul Flynn is a member of the political and constitutional reform committee. He tweets @PaulFlynnMP
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