Suddenly Nick isn’t so bothered about Parliament

By Mike Katz / @mikekatz

It’s enough to make you feel sorry for the Nationalists. Not a sentence I’d ever thought I’d write, but already this unholiest of alliances has made us rethink political realities.

Here’s why. In an overlooked statement after PMQs this week, the Speaker announced the composition of the new backbench business committee (this was after the Labour MP Natascha Engel MP won the election for committee chair the previous day). To the surprise of many, Labour is the only opposition party represented, and the majority of members come from the Government parties.

This committee is the new body set up following recommendations by the Reform of the House of Commons Select Committee, chaired by former MP Dr Tony Wright, in the dying days of the last Parliament. The idea was to cure one of the great ills of our politics, that of the overweening executive strangling parliament, by placing control of backbench business in the commons in the hands of backbenchers.

In practice this would mean that the Government wouldn’t set the agenda all the time in the commons. Topical debates, private member’s bills, discussion of select committee reports would all be agreed and scheduled by the new committee – not scraps from the table handed down by the Government whips to suit ministers’ political prejudices and priorities.

Good idea, right? We’re talking about a day a week of parliamentary time, so it’s no small beer, and clearly essential to help rebuild trust in Parliament by giving all MPs a greater stake and role in determining what they discuss.

So how disappointing when the Speaker stood up to find out that four of the MPs on this committee will be Tories, one will be a Lib Dem, two will be Labour – and, er, that’s it.

Basically, five out of the eight members in total (including the chair) are from the Government side, if not the Treasury benches.

Pedants will point out that ministers or PPSs aren’t eligible – it really is backbenchers only. But let’s remember the pious priggishness of Nick Clegg in full flight last year in the wake of the expenses scandal.

Evil Labour whips were frustrating the will of voters by disenfranchising opposition MPs, he said. Little wonder nobody respected parliament and MPs when the government was so dismissive of them.

What a difference a few weeks and a few red boxes make. Where’s Clegg’s piety now? The Speaker said that the party allocations “reflect the proportions of parties in the House”. This may be the case, but all the Lib Dems’ conviction of the need for Parliament to be overhauled for trust to be restored has gone by the wayside.

It seems – like their conviction on so many things, not least VAT rises – to have vanished somewhere between the gates at the end of Downing Street and the threshold of Number 10. It is equally clear that this committee will fast lose the confidence of both the House and the public if there isn’t fairer repreentation for the minor parties on it. If the point of this committee is to exert the independence of parliament from the executive, then it seems counter-intuitive (to say the least) that MPs from the Government side are in the box seat.

To be clear: this isn’t some underhand endorsement of the policies of British parties other than Labour; perish the thought – whether in Barry, Brighton or the Borders there’s only one party worth voting for. And it’s hardly surprising that the opportunisitic, hypocritical Lib Dems, given their complaints about the Commons being ignored when in opposition, have suddenly gone very quiet on the issue.

But if you think that Parliament needs to reassert itself, that is healthy for backbenchers to be able to determine their own agenda, independent of the executive – as professed by both Cameron and Clegg prior to the election – it just doesn’t feel right that only one opposition party is represented on this committee.

Nor does it sit comfortably that the lion’s share of seats are for backbenchers from the two parties who are least likely to want to schedule debates which inconvenience the Government whether out of personal ambition or party loyalty.

This is one Wright reform which has gone wrong.

Mike Katz is a councillor in the London Borough of Camden.

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