One rather encouraging aspect of this summer has been the number of parliamentary select committees that have been meeting. Some have held evidence-taking sessions – some quite high profile, as with the Governor of the Bank of England – and a number have issued reports. I have not noticed such use made of the summer recess before by select committees and it is something I very much welcome, as will be apparent from my earliest posts on the use of time over the course of the year.
One committee that is making use of the recess is the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons. This was appointed just before the summer recess and has to report in November, so time is of the essence. It is chaired by Dr Tony Wright, who is also the energetic chair of the Public Administration Committee. The committee held its first meeting last week in order to hear from a panel of witnesses. I was one of them, wearing my academic hat.
One of the points I was keen to get across was that we tend to look at the relationship between Parliament and Government and Parliament and public as separate, if not quite distinct, relationships: it is important to see them as related and to enhance the opportunity for the public to have more of an input, through Parliament, to the legislative process and scrutiny of the executive.
One example of what can be done is in relation to public bill committees. These replaced the pretty limited standing committees, the principal difference being that most public bill committees can take evidence when examining government bills. This is an extremely welcome change. The only problem is that the timetable for bills tend to be so tight that there is little time to arrange for witnesses to give evidence and little time for MPs on the committee to digest the evidence in order to make use of it in considering amendments to the bill. The result is that the witnesses tend to be the usual suspects – interest groups who are able to appear at short notice – and bills that emerge in the form government wants. Members of the public are, in effect, shut out from the process. They are not aware of the parliamentary schedule and, even if they are, there is too little time to put in comments. Creating more time is not that difficult, especially now that bills can be carried over from parliamentary session to another. Allowing more bills to carry over – with a cut-off point of fourteen months after introduction, rather than twelve months – enables more time to be factored in to the legislative timetable.
This, to my mind, is just one way that the process can be improved. Another would be through the use of petitions. The Procedure Committee came up with innovative proposals for ePetitions. The authorities seem have gone cool on the idea, but it is well worth pursuing. It entails a significant commitment of parliamentary resources – raising expectations that are not met is arguably worse than not introducing the provision at all – but in facilitating engagement with the public, perhaps even enabling some issues to be the subject of parliamentary debate as a result of petitioning, it has considerable potential.
I appreciate I am writing about reform of the Commons, where arguably the need for change is greatest. I believe the House of Lords does a good job, but there are ways in which we may improve our performance. The Commons, for example, has stolen a march on us by the introduction of public bill committees. I would favour sending bills that are introduced into the Lords to evidence-taking committees before the normal committee stage. That, in my view, would enhance our scrutinising capacity.
There is the potential for both Houses to engage more with people outside Parliament and outside the domain of the usual suspects. I am very keen that we exploit that potential.
What I think needs to happen for the voice of the people to be genuinely heard is for one government or another to reverse a particular policy when the public is overwhelmingly of a different mind. They could, in the least, come out and directly defend their own positions on such issues.
For example, if the PM announced tomorrow that due to overwhelming public support, the government was going to reverse its policy on rail franchising and would bring the railways back into public ownership, he would certainly recieve an increase in support. Maybe enough to save Labour from complete extirpation at the next Election.
What it takes is for parliament to show that it is listening by actually moving on an issue on the basis of what the public wants and a clear policy reversal might be just the trick.
All very good suggestions Lord Norton and good examples as how improvement of our democracy does not come through the usual arguments of referenda and election, but through improved use of our already tried and tested institutions.
“Vox populi vox Deo est!”
This was not the axiom of the French Commune, the (minority of classical polises which were)republican democracies or of the USA under the Articles of Confederation. This was the moot of the royalist mixed governments of high medieval Europe which leaned in the monarchist direction on three poled model of power which typifies Greek thought. “Vox populi vox Deo est!” means the voice of the people is the voice of God and when the people spoke with an overwhelming majority a great adjustment was often made although court and church scribes souhgt to minimize these records. In modern politics the people are more involved in most of policy but I find most modern democracies (including the UK where the demos is politicaly the most active element it seems)find it difficult to adjust specific polices to the popular will even when many of the human actors in the structure support the national mood. I am responding to Mullholland but am eager to see if Lord Norton’s instincts will lead to a real increase in response to the popular will in this very influential parliament and if so in balance with other values his lordship has expressed as being his own.
All fair enough but, particularly in the commons, the packing of committees by the whips with yes men rather undermines the value and usefulness of a longer, more genuinely open process. It really saps the willingness of people to get involved in what few areas they can when too often the result of the committee seems decided before it ever meets.
I do certainly agree wholeheartedly that allowing more input into the committee stage could lead to improved legislation, from my very limited experience of watching the process closely.
However, this does rely on the general mood at Westminster changing from one of merely rubber stamping the Government line to one of trying to achieve the best possible legislation. This, perhaps, requires a cultural shift, above all by Government, but also by the opposition and media.
I am not pretending that governments set out to produce poor legislation, but I’m sure you’re right when you suggest they consider their bills to be the finished article.
I think that, as a people, we have a nasty habit of, on the one hand, expecting our politicians to be responsive to us, whilst, on the other, seeing any departure by the Government from its original stance on an issue to be a U-turn and a sign of weakness. We really do leave our Government with no place to go, so in many respects we have only ourselves to blame if we have turned our Parliament into the world’s most expensive rubber stamp.
And yet, amendments are made, some accepted, and some improvement is to be seen in much of the legislation that is passed, almost despite the situation.
Things seem much better in the Lords than the Commons, presumably as so many members of the Lords see the function as being a revising chamber, and none are dependent on the party whips for their survival – a crucial feature imperilled in my opinion by the prospect of becoming an elected chamber.
So hard is the Commons whipped that I’d suggest little would be gained by extending its committee stage, consisting largely as it does (as Croft says) of good heads repeatedly banging themselves on brick walls. But I think the idea of an additional small evidence-taking committee in the Lords is splendid, especially as the Lords normally (I understand) has a Committee of the Whole House on public bills.
Petitions, too, as you say have great potential. I seem to remember reading a very old Dodds (was it?) some years ago, and discovering that to be admitted (to the Commons), petitions had to be in the form of a prayer. This may have now changed.
The very simple move of timetabling an hour, say, of Commons time a week to No 10 ePetitions that have closed that week and reached a threshold of signatures, enabling MPs to speak on them, would itself require next to nothing in resources but would much improve the current situation, in which petitions of over 200 signatures seem to merely be sent to some departmental underling to scribble a response to and then henceforth ignored. There are many frivolous ePetitions but there are also many serious ones.
I agree, Croft. By the time the public can give evidence, decisions to include and exclude terms of references have already taken place.
E-petitions look like mini-referundums, often written, and voted for, by single issue groups. How would this proposal by itself allow greater debate outside of Parliament?
Hmm… If laws passed are so stringent that even the Attorney General cannot understand and comply with them, how on earth do you guys have the gall to impose them on us, the little people ??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/22/lady-scotland-illegal-immigrant-brown
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6844591.ece
What seems ridiculous is that there is a form of ‘reverse discrimination’ operating here – since there are so few women and black people in Government she is clearly treated more leniently, despite the fact that it is the Government who is responsible for there being so many white males in charge.
How on earth can we have any confidence in ‘equal treatment under the law’ when this nonsense is allowed to continue ??
stephenpaterson, I agree with you on the Lords. They do run more smoothly than the Commons, and this cleanness of operation is imperiled by the House of Lords becoming an elected Chamber. In fact, while I can do nothing to avert it, it seems to me that the Lords should not be so reformed, and the current mood of endless democracy is a mistake. A Mixed Government with a strong, but not absolute, Monarch, and Lords who have real teeth as they did prior to the early 20th century I think would be better than transforming the Lords into, basically, the US style Senate the commons favour.
Politicians are always subject to the whims of the masses, and to their voter blocs, and the financial powers behind the special interests who control those blocs, and must succumb to party politic to advance or retain power. A Lord, there for life by either Birth or appointment, seems much more fee to honestly evaluate the subjects placed before him for consideration, without fear of being bullied to of power by his party, or loosing an election by a short sighted and ill informed public.
I disagree with the above poster who suggests that the will of he majority is the voice of God, since the majority has proven time and again to be very capable of grave error, and the current trends in Popular culture reveal a society I’d not trust in making policy.
I would, if my proposals meant anything, suggest this; Let the Lords remain unelected. Let the Lords have real power to revise, or even refuse, legeslation. If we’re so determined to imitate America, wy not imitate it on its sensable policies and make it to where he Lords dont have to rubber stamp the Commons decisions, and act only as revisors. if the Commons legeslation is refused by the Lords, it is simply sent back to them, wuth proposals on changes. The Lords retain the right to revise a bill but if the bill is simply unacceptable tot he Lords without ovehaulign the whole thing, they woudl refue to sign it and return it from whence it came. If the Commons then demand the Bill be passed, and if a two-thirds majority of the commons insist, it is passed.
Then it is sent to Her Majesty, who can refuse asscent.
One can even extend this to her, though. If we give the Crown real power, but allow laws to pass she (Or he in the future) would refuse if two-thirds of both houses support it, then I see this as a better mechanism.
Yes I’m posting a whimsy. We live in the age of Democracy,and the Commons insists that we make the Lords more democratic. Everyone seems sold on Democracy, and insists we must live in one, and that Democracy is the only free and fair way to govern. I just see it as an endless mess of politicians making back room deals and gaining power by mere popular appeal.
With the Commons as corrupt as it is now, I just think we would be better off listening to the Lords more, and the Lords would be better off as they are (Dreadful 1999 “Reforms” aside) than being further changed.
In fact, the best reform to the Commons I see is to simply eliminate the current party-politic system all together.
Let each man or woman in the Commons run independently with no party support and no whips in site.
I think that’d be much safer.
Given an elected upper chamber, all perhaps would not be lost supposing that, for example, all members could serve one term only, and that term a lengthy one, perhaps 15 years? Elections by thirds at five year intervals?
Yet we may still lose some very capable cross-benchers in the election process…and others, who may simply not be interested in elections. Hmmm…
Many thanks for the comments so far. I find myself in agreement with most if not all of what you all write. I will respond in greater detail shortly, but I just wanted to come in at this point to pick up and reinforce a point made by stephenpaterson, one that I consider fundamental. I have been making the point for thirty years or so that structural or procedural changes will be of little use if there is not the political will on the part of MPs to employ them effectively; indeed, there needs to be the political will to create and sustain changes (as happened with the introduction of the departmental select committees in 1979). We can devise wonderful schemes for reform, but they are wasted if there is an absence of political will to make them work. I take the point that a cultural change extending beyond MPs is desirable. I have variously been asked what may trigger a change in attitude on the part of MPs. Early in the 1970s, the stance taken by government induced government back-benchers to assert themselves. I think the present mood on the part of electors may act as a trigger. We may at least try to ensure that some good comes out of the present situation.
I should hope for those in depth thoughts soon, as I do enjoy reading your thoughts, and will await them with anticipation.
stephenpaterson, all wouldn’t be lost even if it became an all elected chamber but had only three to six year terms. Once upon a time the House of Lords was simply abolished, creating a single house Parliament. This was the Republic of England, though why wales was overlooked I don’t know, and before the Union of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain, later called the United Kingdom.
If the Lords can be completely abolished for ten years (Along with the Church of England being reformed to being Presbyterian) to give way to a tyrant in the name of the people, then I can see the same happen here. The Lords becomes elected, then becomes as corrupt as the commons with carer politicians making deals and doing what is politically expedient for their party of political ideology, people loosing favour in it, and i going back to the way it was.
Of course today there is international pressure to ensure every nation in the word becomes democratic, and we live in a Globalist society. Still, anything can happen. They once said the Soviet Union was the way of the future and would last 1000 years, and 75 years later it fell.
In fact, in 1981 people were predicting the whole world would be engulfed in Communism within a century, and that it was simply the way things will be, with the Soviet Empire supreme, for all the foreseeable future. 1991 came, of course, and we saw quiet the turn around.
Thanks for the comments. I take the points variously made. As I have already commented, change itself will be meaningless unless Members have the political will to utilise it effectively.
Kyle Mullholland and franksummers3ba raise the responsiveness of Government to the popular will. I think our system has the merit of producing government able to advance a coherent programme of public policy, yet at the same time our electoral system ensures that it is not unresponsive to the mood of the people. It knows it can be swept out at the next general election – election day, in Karl Popper’s words, is ‘judgment day’ – and so cannot afford to ignore shifts in public opinion. Parliament has a role to play in conveying the mood of the people. Developing means of engaging more with the public will give it greater scope for hearing and pursuing the concerns of th public or particular publics. Parliament has a responsibility to hear and reflect and not simply act as a cypher. Government has to listen, though I very much take stephenpaterson’s point that it is in a difficult position: if it moves from its stated programme, it is in danger of being accused of doing a U-turn. This is relevant to a point I shall make about the Lords, which can enable Government to accept changes without facing such accusations.
Adrian Kidney: Thanks for your comments. I think the case is powerful for building on what we have. The crucial point, as I say, is political will. It is not a case of saying the House of Commons should be vested with more power: it already has it – the issue is whether MPs are willing to use it. As you will know, some are more willing than others to reflect and to seek to use the power to effect. It is importsnt to ensure they are the norm and not the exception.
Croft: The method by which Members are selected to serve on committees was one of the issues discussed at the seminar. Some argued the case for members of select committees to be elected by the House. This seems to ignore the fact that they already are (and in 2001 the House rejected the nominations for the Foreign Affairs and Transport Committees). There may be a case for reverting to the intentions of the founders of departmental select committees, which was to have a selection committee operating independently of the whips. I am also inclined to the view that the focus on the selection of members of departmental select committees misses the real problem, which is the selection of members of public bill committees. I think the trend over recent decades has been in the direction you indicate. Any government back-bencher thought likely to take an independent line is excluded. We need to think how we deal with this problem. Would crafting a selection committee, without whips, be effective? How can the influence of the whips be circumscribed in practice?
stephenpaterson: I very much agree with what you write. You express neatly the problem facing governments in contemplating a policy change and the need for a change in culture. You also encapsulate well the situation in the Lords, on which I shall say more in response to Zarove. It is the case that the committee stage of bills in the Lords used to be taken of the floor of the House. Now, some are taken in Grand Committee and some on the floor of the House. Any peer can attend a Grand Committee, so it is a form of a parallel chamber. The peers who participate tend to be those, as you would expect, with a knowledge and interest in the subject – the very people who could form an evidence-taking committee prior to the bill being considered in normal committee format. On petitions, I agree: you get the occasional frivolous one, but normally they are well-intentioned, often raising a serious issue of concern – yet the signatories who are genuinely concerned get nothing of value out of the process. Your suggestion of taking No10 petitions is a novel – and stimulating – one, on which I shall reflect.
ladytizzy: I think petitions tend to be the product of local concerns or rather concerns held by people who are in one particular area. Interest groups tend not to utilise them, largely because they recognise their limited utility. That may change if petitions gain a higher profile and there is scope to trigger debate. That I think would make the case for a dedicated petitions committee, so that one had a body to recommend which petitions should be the subject of debate. In principle, of course, there would be no reason why interest groups should not encourage members to petition: it would be in their own interests to go out on the streets to get other people to support them.
Bedd Gelert: The problem often is not so much primary legislation as regulations made under the parent Act. There is a powerful case for reforming the process by which secondary legislation is crafted and by which it is scrutinised by Parliament. This is a subject I have spoken on in the House, not least on an excellent report from the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments. It is clearly something we need to pursue.
Zarove: Thanks for your comments. My own view is that the House of Lords does a good job and that there is a case for strengthening what it does. Reiterating the point made by Adrian Kidney, it is a case of building on what exists. There is considerable value in its present mode of operation. As a House that is unelected and draws on the experience and expertise of its members, it adopts a less partisan approach than the Commons. There is greater scope for a real dialogue with the government. Given the nature of the membership – and the absence of a government majority – ministers take it seriously. (There is also research that shows that so too do civil servants – those officials who form Bill Teams are more concerned with reaction in the Lords than in the Commons.) Because the House is not the elected House, it attracts little media interest. This is arguably to the benefit of the House, as it means ministers can accept amendments knowing that doing so will not be portrayed in the next day’s media as some U-turn. The consequence of how the House operates is that we achieve a valuable and effective process of scrutiny. I think we can build on that by creating evidence-taking committees to consider Bills following Second Reading and before the usual committee stage. As I say, we should build on the process. Electing the second chamber, in my view, would destroy that process. Election (even if you elect members for a fixed single term) changes completely the terms of trade between the parties. The process would become partisan and change the approach taken by members. As stephenpartson goes on to note, we may lose many capable members. It would be an invitation to struggle between parties and probably between the Houses and not to engage in constructive discourse. The present system, in my view, adds value. An elected House would be value detracting.