The Commons returns 1

WHAT'S WRONG WITH MPs

Bernard Weatherill, former Speaker, says there

are too many of them, and they should not let government bully them

A STEADY rumour spreading through the months has been that MPs who opposed the- government line on devolu- tion in Scotland and Wales were in danger of being knocked on the head — deselect- ed locally after a nod from the top. Llew Smith and Tam Dalyell had dissented from the leadership of party and government, and are thus alleged under a clause in the disciplinary code to have brought the game into disrepute. They were naturally liable to exclusion from a parliamentary arena which they have troubled with argument.

Llew Smith is a good old left-wing trou- blemaker; he argues back. Tam Dalyell is a heroic performer, whose name will be in the history books when 90 per cent of Cab- inet ministers are footnotes. But we have a cult of assent. What was the slogan in Orwell's Animal Farm about the boss of the animals? — 'Comrade Napoleon is always right.'

Remember Dunning's motion, that 'the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished'? Today, party heavies (Labour or Tory), spit- ting on their hatchets and quoting the disci- plinary code, are the Crown; threatening independent backbenchers with annihila- tion is influence all right. As for the last part of Dunning's motion, 'ought to be diminished', it is the most forlorn of aspira- tions. Today that influence stands before us, subtly and not so subtly enlarged into a potential monster, and the Crown or the party leadership (much the same thing) has such overmighty influence because Parlia- ment has dwindled, is dwindling and ought to assert itself. Parliament, in the presence of the executive, has become a matching accessory. The commonest matching acces- sory is a handbag of uncertain fabric, and Parliament today is made of real imitation politics. It is not just subordinate to party, it is distracted and wilfully diverted from the true parliamentary function of calling the executive to account.

I say it has dwindled, but not in size. The legislature has declined in influence as it has swelled in numbers. There are too many MPs, for whom things must be found to do, things to keep them out of mischief, out of the way of arguing with the government. Douglas Hogg has told us that there is no real point in being an MP except as the nec- essary interim before one becomes a minis- ter. I forbear to ask whether in Mr Hogg's case it was worth waiting. But he does describe Parliament as it has become: part waiting-room, part occupational therapy.

The chief consequence of a too large House of Commons is that the chamber is empty. The people who should be making trouble and cheeking the leadership are in their offices in the Norman Shaw building or the nicer Parliament Street accommo- dation, busy with constituency letters and problems. Put out of your minds, by the way, the common fallacy of so many strop- py voters that MPs are idle. That is as great a delusion as the notion of legislative life as a round of alcohol and adultery. Just as champagne and crumpet usually turn out to be tea and toast, so your sup- posed idle MP is a letter-dictating, council office-telephoning subordinate who is wearily employed from about eight in the morning. Do you recall the film The Apart- ment, where regimental rows of employees are drawn up before calculating machines, all dreaming of elevation to the 27th floor? Give or take a cubicle wall, MPs increasingly resemble them. And the allure of the parliamentary 27th floor — promo- tion to minor office — is another reason why the influence of the Crown has increased and is increasing.

These MPs are busy because the Com- mons has been converted over the last 30 years into a great humming citizens' advice bureau. I have checked some numbers here. In 1964, when I arrived, there were about 7,000 letters coming in and out every week. Last year, 40,000 letters came in and 30,000 went out per day! The reason why the Com- mons is empty today and there are no Dun- nings or John Brights or Laboucheres or Keir Hardies, Nigel Birches or John Biffens, and why soon we may not have a Tam Dalyell, is that in 600 cubicles, 600 earnest, hardworking, but perhaps not very critical- minded MPs run round their wheels. I have every esteem and all goodwill for members, so much so that I don't want their heads kept down on chores and their compliance won by the chance of minor office. Ernie Bevin made an apposite remark in another context about the 'terrible poverty of peo- ple's aspirations'.

The wheel they tread is constituency business, most of which is council business — housing and the like, matters belonging with a healthy, effective system of local government, which in our case we have not got. When the Crown or the executive or party command or Comrade Napoleon expand their power one way, they may find themselves expanding it through another, by the law of unexpected consequences. Lady Thatcher had her quarrels with local government. She found it left-wing, diffi- cult or expensive. But when she gathered to the centre new powers taken from local government, she did not plan to emasculate parliamentary opposition or to clog the awkward squad. She did, though, and she was only pushing further a process already well advanced.

Local government, staggering from rates to poll tax to council tax, capped, abused, hit around the head, surcharged, deprived of function, has ever less attraction to the intelligent citizen wanting to serve. Local government has lost power, lost authority and lost public knowledge of its existence. 40,000 letters into Parliament and 30,000 letters out every day are proof of it.

An MP doing work which a councillor should do and wants to do is an MP divert- ed from his proper function. The new dis- position of power turns him against all his instincts and talents into an involuntary drudge. A drudge cannot be a scourge. But his true function remains exactly as Glad- stone defined it. 'It is not your job', he told his own parliamentary party, `to run the country. It is your duty to hold to account those who do.' Does anyone feel, despite the occasional outburst of defiance from someone like Quentin Davies over the cash for questions affair, that those who run the country are held to account? I know a little bit about such trouble- makers. I once had the unofficial designa- tion of being the troublemakers' whip we used a brisker term. I had to cajole, threaten and get on side difficult, argu- mentative people who inconvenienced the party managers. And I tell you this, the troublemakers are the best people in Par- liament, Dennis Skinner, Ian Paisley, Dale Campbell-Savours, Nick Budgen, Tony Benn, Robin Maxwell-Hyslop — heroes all. They value Parliament and use it and call government to account as often as they can.

I used to keep a private list of the occa- sions when a difficult member, sticking unhelpfully to a point, changed something — as Tony Benn did during the Zircon affair in 1987 invoking the Commons authority to sustain the Speaker's powers over the right to debate from imminent executive encroachment. These are the People who hold the line against the insidi- ous doctrine of ministerial convenience.

In the process, some of them (never Tony) are sometimes disruptive, noisy, a little rude. I have, on occasion, had to ask one or more of them to leave the chamber. But parliamentary conduct a source for concern? Game being brought into disre- pute? Come off it. Compared to the par- liamentary eruptions of the past, recent ones are tiffs in a milk-bar. It was Mr Speaker Gully who in the mid-1890s dur- ing a to-do about Ireland had to send for the Metropolitan police. In 1913, on another Irish matter, the prime minister, Mr Asquith, could not obtain a hearing. eAh, the Irish,' people will say patronis- ingly, 'what do you expect?' Not a bit of it: the riot on that last occasion was conduct- ed entirely by Conservative MPs, so that a Labour Member, Will Crooks, observed of Lord Hugh Cecil who was screaming `traitor' continuously, 'Many a man has been certified for half of the noble Lord's conduct this afternoon.' As Roy Jenkins tells it in his Asquith: 'Thus rebuked by his social inferior, Lord Hugh collapsed.' Den- nis Skinner difficult? Ridiculous.

I don't advocate screams of 'traitor', but courtesy should not be confused with deco- null. And in a parliament of welfare work- ers doing a councillor's job there is a lot of decorum. A row is oxygen, and terracotta warriors don't need oxygen. Much of the decorum is career-based. The prospect of the 27th floor works wonders. Accordingly, government expands to accommodate the People who might otherwise hold it to account. There are more than 90 full minis- terial jobs today. Ministers during Harold Wilson's great inflation of titles became sec- retaries of state. Secretaries of state cannot get by, like Mr Attlee's plain ministers, on One parliamentary secretary apiece. They must have ministers of state who must have parliamentary under-secretaries. And below them, where back benchers of ability should be holding ministers to account, the PPSs accumulate like greenfly. There is now a great pyramidal empire of aspiration. The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing. What in heaven's name might we do to diminish it?

For a start, we should return local gov- ernment to its past powers. It must take back function and revenue; the council tax should make up a larger part of local gov- ernment revenue. As it is put up or down by councils, in time voters will notice and council elections will reflect the decisions of those councils.

Second, we must slash the membership of the House of Commons — 400 is plenty. Transfer the councillor's function — letter- writing and phone calls to the housing office — back to the councillor, and I who repre- sented one-third of Croydon could have represented all of Croydon. I wouldn't, under these rules, have had to respond to the man who said, 'I want a council house,' and then, when I demurred, said, 'It's what you're paid to do, mate.' Third, reduce the size of government and do not hesitate to appoint to it people from outside Parliament who would descend into the chamber, American-style, to answer. That will get you talent which John Major did not perhaps always find in his own ranks latterly. Give MPs fewer rewards for dumb assent, let them even feel the odd twinge of healthy resentment at jumped-up outsiders and we will have a more difficult chamber, a more interesting one, a chamber attuned to keeping watch and demanding account.

Finally, when it comes to the House of Lords, remember that while the hereditary principle is difficult to defend, the glorified quango is far more objectionable. Remem- ber that the Lords cross-bench tradition is a profound good, and that the Lords has 326 cross-benchers. Reflect also that a House of Lords so reformed that neat bat- talions of Labour appointees, Tory appointees and a little battalion of Liberal Democratic appointees march and counter- march will be one where the letter of the word 'democracy' is obeyed, not the spirit.

Remember 'the spirit giveth life'. The life I want to see in politics would involve more than this. It would involve devolution going beyond Scotland and Wales, serious thoughts about regional government, the possibility of the French system of alter- nates working with MPs. But taking things narrowly, the spirit of Parliament in West- minster remains the duty to hold to account those who run the country. In a parliament drastically smaller, divested of drudgery, reduced in promotional hopes, able to eye the executive without pre-emp- tive assent, that spirit might have a chance.

The author was Conservative MP for Croy- don North East 1964-83 (when elected Speaker) and MP for Croydon North East and Speaker, 1983-92.