POLITICAL COMMENTARY
PETER PATERSON
The kind of reform to be most suspicious about is the one that seems to please every- body, which is why one should be permitted a certain scepticism over Mr William White- law's re-casting of the specialist committee system of the House of Commons.
With all the excitement and drama of Mr Heath's policy blitzkrieg this week, the Lord Privy Seal's Green Paper (white in colour, of course, as all Green Papers seem to be) might have been left aside for contemplation at some quieter moment. The role and pur- pose of the specialist committee is, however, one of the subjects over which mes seem to get excited so it is as well to have a look at it before public politics and the arguments over the new Tory style of government swamp everything else. The issue, basically, is how to make backbench mes feel that they have a real purpose in life other than troop- ing into the voting lobbies when told to do so by their parties, or acting as an adjunct to the welfare services in their constituencies. Broadly speaking, Mr Whitelaw—an astute manipulator of the House of Commons— had to decide between two theories of back- bench participation, each of which has its own persuasive extremists. The two factions could be described as the Chamberists, who believe in the supremacy of the floor of the House of Commons as a forum and resist and resent activities which draw members away from debates, and the Committeemen, whose arithmetic convinces them that only a limited number of people can ever make speeches in the Chamber and that backbench influence can best make itself felt on the executive through the investigatory work of specialist committees: The future of specialist committees was left hanging at the end of the last Parlia- ment, the balance of the argument tilted against them. Mr Whitelaw could even have abandoned altogether the system introduced by Mr Richard Crossman in 1966. That system was the result of intensive lobbying by the Committeemen, who were delighted to be given a Science and Technology Com- mittee and an Agricultural Committee (which later came to a sticky end after a row with the Foreign Office over the Common Market). The Education Committee was the next to be established, soon involving itself in farcical punch-ups with university students when it decided, under the influence of Mr Christopher Price, that committees of the House of Commons should go where the action is rather than skulk in the safety of the Palace of Westminster. The Committee on Scottish Affairs was set up later, together with the Overseas Aid Committee, and the pattern was completed with committees to keep an eye on the activities of the Ombuds- man and the Race Relations Act.
Mr Crossman displayed patience and fore- bearance of a high order in pursuing his reform in the face of a torrent of criticism. Civil servants, naturally enough, disliked being questioned by the committees and stub- bornly stuck to departmental briefs outlining the policies of their own Ministers rather than revealing much of their own thoughts. Nor did they relish the publicity. Ministers on the whole were more tolerant towards `subject' committees like Science and Tech- nology, and undisguisedly hostile towards `departmental' committees, like Agriculture. The crimes attributed to the system included the increased workload on Departments— comparable to an extension of Question Time —a certain stubborn independence on the part of some committee chairmen amount- ing to a cult of personality, and, most galling of all for the recent administration, the ammunition the hearings provided for the Opposition. It is difficult now to recall, taking only one of the rows provoked by com- mittees, whether the Treasury was even more outraged than the Bank of England over Mr Ian Mikardo's suggestion that the Nationalised Industries Committee (on which the Crossman committees were to a large extent modelled) should investigate Lord Cromer's Threadneedle Street domain.
All the while, the Chamberists showed their disapproval of the Committeemen who, they felt, would be better employed listening to the brilliant speeches of Mr Michael Foot than sitting upstairs in some stuffy committee room poking their noses into things they did not understand and subordinating party differences to the clouded qualifications of the civil service world. And the Committee- men noted the tendency for Chamberists to earn money pursuing professional and business interests which left them little time for anything except the occasional oratorical flourish in debate.
Nearly two years ago the Select Com- mittee on Procedure delivered its own sug- gestions on the future of the specialist com- mittees. They thought that the Estimates Committee, the granddaddy of them all, should be transformed into an Expenditure Committee, a sensible change made neces- sary by the complete inability of the Estimates Committee to come to grips with the Treasury's new system (no doubt devised to give work to a computer) of forecasting public expenditure five years ahead at a time. So in future the Committee would be able to look at actual expenditure and see
whether it squared with the Treasury's to cast, and question Ministers on any parity between projection and performan. But this Expenditure Committee was spawn eight 'functional' sub-commit including as a sop to Tory committeem one with the chillingly Gaullist title of La and Order and Public Safety.
Treading delicately between the hi factions, Mr Whitelaw has now pronoun (for to imagine that there is room for co sultation in his Green Paper is to igno both the rigid workings of the 'usual cha nets' that govern the business of the Hou and this Government's" distaste for pub argument). The Expenditure Committee has been adopted, but without the eight su committees. Three committees from Crossman era will be retained—Science an Technology, Race Relations and Scottish Affairs, plus the Nationalised Industri. Committee. Overseas Aid and Education 4 be killed off, the latter somehow ben equated with the forthcoming inquiry in teacher training.
The Chamberists are pleased because then have at least two scalps, and the number of people elected to all committees will be by eighteen. The Committeemen are pleased that the system has survived, but anxio that the Green Paper says little about th biggest grievance,- the lack of adequat expert servicing for their committees. With out this, MPS are at a disadvantage m questioning outside experts. And they have been given more security of tenure: the committees will be elected for a Parliament instead of a session.
How far will Mr Whitelaw's change achieve an improved standard of scrutiny of the activities of government? Will the changes enhance the status of backbencher• and are they fundamental enough to remain without further tinkering for a number of years? My suspicion is that we have been given a neat and tidy and temporary settle- ment of an internal House of Commons quarrel. The increasing power of the executive will not be checked--indeed, as powerful member of the executive Mr Whitelaw could hardly be expected to coo- tenance any such thing. The Lord Privy Sol wants the machinery to tick over smoothly and quietly: he is the kind of mechanic who prefers to give the engine a wipe with as oily rag rather than strip the- whole thing down to rebuild it.
Disquiet over the inadequacies of the parliamentary system remain, right back to the selection methods for would-be MPs a the unfairnesses of the electoral laws. Within the Chamber the precedence given by Speaker to Privy Councillors will continue to make the debates more boring than the! need be, and upstairs in the committee ro the Committeemen will still doodle musedly as they listen to lectures by finan' and economic experts they are not equip'• to understand, let alone challenge. With expensive facilities in the form of a sec tariat for each committee the cosy biParli'l ship of the ignorant will make every day field day for government, so no one imagine that Mr Whitelaw has acted some kind of fifth column for benchers. Maybe it all works on the th that access to official information stulti and handicaps Oppositions: it is certain true of information that cannot sensibly challenged or sensibly questioned. So, e though the specialist committees sure and Mr Whitelaw's popularity rating n even higher, the House of Commons looks remarkably unreformed.
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