Dangerous secrecy
Patrick Cosgrave
Listeners to the Parliament show on radio (or television) may have got the quite false impression that any old MP may get up at any old time and ask any old minister any old question; and perhaps even get an answer. He (or she, if we include Miss Jo Richardson) may even be able or so the listener might think to blurt out more or less anything that comes into his or her head without fear of retribution; or at least the kind of retribution which would immediately be visited on me if, in this column, I named the members of the Parliamentary Labour Party I believe to be in cahoots with the KGB. In reality, and as always, the ,matter is a bit more complicated.
While it is perfectly true that any MP lucky enough to catch the Speaker's eye Can, during Question Hour (from 2.30 to ,3.30) ask ministers just about anything, the Member who hopes for a serious answer to a ierious question must submit his query to 'the Table Office fourteen days before he actually gets up on his hind legs; and that on a Tuesday; and always before four o'clock in the afternoon. The Office says that their selection of questions for oral answer (that is, during question hour) is entirely random; but some members clearly work a system, as is witnessed by their turning up again and again during the hour; and certainly more often than the laws of probability or chance would suggest that they should. Now that some at least of the proceedings of the House of Commons are being broadcast the number of members wanting to appear, especially in one of the two fifteen-minute sessions each week in which the Prime Minister responds to questions, has become
enormous: three times the pre-broadcasting number of questions are now being tabled each Tuesday.
Broadly it can be assumed that anybody whose question is not reached during the hour will nonetheless receive a written
reply, printed at the back of Hansard. But there are important qualifications to that
Statement; and it is the qualifications which introduce a discussion of most of the problems surrounding the whole business of parliamentary questions.
For one thing the Prime Minister's office Makes every conceivable effort to pass every buck -or every question to another minister. For another, there are a number of Ways in which departments, anxious to protect their minister from the embarrassment of actually having to answer a question, can avoid the issue: the current favourite is to state that the amount of time and money it would take to collect the information required to provide an answer is inordinate. Finally, and as a result of an agreement arrived at through the agency of a Select Committee back in
1972, there are a whole host of excepted subjects, on which questions may not be asked.
Some of these excepted subjects are obvious enough; some are reasonable enough; and some are peculiar. It seems obvious that ministers should not be required to answer often and in detail questions about the daily doings of independent public bodies over which they are not supposed to exercise any day to day control, like the Arts Council or the Scottish ferry services. It seems fair enough that security arrangements at Chequers should not be broadcast to the country simply because some backbencher wants to be tiresome; and the same point applies more closely to security matters in Northern Ireland. But 1972 is a long time ago, and given that the political world has changed since then I would think it fair to suggest that the list of prohibited subjects is worth revising.
For example, despite the thalidomide scandal, purchasing contracts for the National Health Service are not something on which members may question ministers. Again, although the whole argument about major nationalised industries (such as the steel industry) now focuses in large part around the viability of particular plants, ministers, under the 1972 agreement, are not required to furnish any statistics other than those for the nation as a whole. Finally (and these are but three among many examples) the consistently and ludicrously inaccurate Treasury forecasts of economic trends, though they may be debated from time to time, are not subjects on which questions may be asked.
Some members have expressed disquiet about this current state of play. Mr JeffreY Rooker, the Labour member for Perry Bar, and Mr Neil Marten, the Tory member for Banbury and a past master at smuggling his usually pointed and embarrassing ques" tions on to the Order Paper -are two among them. One does not, of course, take verY seriously those left wing Labour MPs or, come to that, the Tory Mr Graham Page who recently made a fuss over their (and the Press's) right to name an officer of the security services about or likely to appear as a witness in court. For none of those who made that fuss is prominent among the individuals who are concerned about the extent to which the Commons's right to information about the activities of goy'
ernment is being constantly eroded.
The question hour itself is wholly about making fools of ministers. That is almost its sole purpose, and it is not an unworthy one It does no end of good for the pompous, the evasive and the incompetent minister Or Prime Minister) to have to come before the House from time to time and be subjecteu to a barrage of insults and a raft of trick)/ inquiries about his activities. Backbencheø. who do not want to be gladiators in this arena, however, also use the question sYs. tern to acquire -by way of written answers' an enormous amount of information about what goes on in government departments; and they may use the information thus acquired in speeches within or outside the House; in newspaper articles; or in the course of campaigns. Since 1972 ministers and civil servants alike have tried as hard as they can to give as little information us possible in response to such probings, and to the extent that they have succeeded -arw are succeeding more and more they offer proof that British government is trulY, wrongly, and dangerously secret. From time to time, of course, a fuss is made about the operation of the Official Secrets Act, almost ,. invariably in the context of some military 0' security matter. But those who shout most loudly about the Nigerian war or the idea: tity of Colonel B or the issue of what kind oi privileges the Press enjoys in reporting the, proceedings of Parliament are rarely, I.; ever, to be found in the van of the snail army that wants 'to compel ministers to disclose on the floor of the House the truth about the mismanagement of the economy, the chaos of the National Health Service, at the daily increasing ddicits of most of the, nationalised industries. An examination what ministers should answer is overdue' but! am not optimistic that the body of MP: really wish to address themselves to sue.;', matters, rather than enjoy the cheap thrill of getting trivial questions broadcast or reported. Many a civil servant must be deliciously contented that the House gets into a state only when, and again in matters of security or Press reporting, its anloarf propre is offended; and that the majoritY a its members seems well content with a Stater of affairs in which they are kept ignorant 43' the main body of government business.
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