Those of us who instinctively oppose mechanistic constitutional change should not delude ourselves into supposing that all is well with our parliamentary system. Parliament and politicians attract less interest and respect than they did in the past. This is not necessarily a disaster except to those for whom politics are all important. Politics and political leadership are most important in times of disaster. A war, a slump, a civil commotion bring forth a Churchill, a Roosevelt or a de Gaulle. When by contrast, as now, a country is reasonably prosperous and safer than for many years, the political process seems less important. Our media too-themselves in disrepute-like to exaggerate the unpopularity of politics in the contest between themselves and ourselves for membership of the least popular profession.
However, MPs should not delude themselves into supposing that all is well. A certain scepticism about politics and politicians is healthy. Unhealthy is the widespread notion that politicians are becoming a class apart, selfish and separate from the real world. And parliament itself is drifting into a number of difficulties-both as legislative assembly and controller of the executive.
As a legislative assembly the House of Commons is now widely recognised as defective. It is not entirely the fault of the Commons. The technical quality of legislation coming out of Whitehall has deteriorated as its quantity has increased. After the publication of a major government Bill the order paper of the House of Commons is covered with amendments put forward by government itself. Sometimes, and legitimately, these are the result of changes or extensions of policy decided late in the day. But most of the amendments are simply designed to fill gaps and remedy mistakes which the government department did not notice before publication. Nor are things much better when the Bill is discussed in the Commons. The interests of the minister and of the Whips is to get the Bill through detailed examination in standing committee with minimum change as fast as possible. The interest of the opposition is to score political points.
The fundamental remedy consists of less legislation considered in a more measured way, and in a less adversarial spirit. It is alarming that in an article in the December issue of Prospect, two Labour supporters indicate that a Labour government would proceed in exactly the opposite direction. The authors argue that because the Labour party has underestimated the difficulty of getting through its constitutional package, it will need to weaken the legislative process in order to get the package through on time. I can imagine no better means of making the package itself unpopular and unworkable.
As a legislative assembly parliament has the job of balancing out the general interest. It would be a disaster if parliament simply became a collection of advocates of particular causes. Parliament needs to take its time, to wait for particular waves of strong emotion to pass. The pressure groups are a legitimate part of the process. They should have their say. But counter-balancing arguments must be given time to come forward: that the traditional sport of a minority should not necessarily be outlawed because a majority disapproves of it; that the motor car is actually a substantial convenience to many people, and so on. Then parliament, both the House of Commons and the revising chamber, should strike a balance on the measure which is to pass into law.
On the second function of parliament-control of the executive-the picture is less gloomy. To say this is to run against fashion. Having been a minister continuously for 16 years I can honestly say that the influence of the House of Commons was always strong on what I did or said. It had three main sources. First, departmental question time, quite unlike the ludicrous charade of prime minister's questions, provides knowledgeable MPs with an opportunity to give ministers a hard time and thus influence how they behave.
The select committees are a second pressure point. For example, it is salutary that before each European summit the foreign secretary is cross-examined in public by a group of MPs who are not trying to score adversarial points but are teasing out of him the issues likely to come up and the line which the prime minister and he intend to take.
Third, I would cite meetings of backbench MPs. In theory they are private, but nowadays the minister is well aware that some account of them is likely to be leaked. Where two or three backbenchers on his own side are gathered together, the minister feels their shadow on him.
Why then is there such a widespread impression in the media that the executive is secretive and tyrannical and that the House of Commons has no effective control?
The media has an interest in amplifying this Whig view of the constitution because it promotes its own role as a check on governments. (In fact, the deterioration in the quality of the fourth estate is one of the main changes in our political system over recent years. It is evident in the reporting of parliament, and of what happens in Europe.)
There is also a deeper constitutional point. The Whig version of our constitutional problem assumes the separation of powers. It treats the House of Commons as if its main task was to check the executive. But we do not live in the US. Our legislature and executive are not separate. Our executive grows out of parliament but remains part of parliament. In the Tory view of parliament one of its functions is to sustain the executive and help it make decisions in the national interest.
I suspect that my constituents, if asked, would greatly prefer a parliament which helped the government to make better decisions than a parliament which concentrated on checking government, delaying its decisions, introducing interminable political argy-bargy.
Last year Sir Richard Scott was elevated to Chief Whig. No analysis of parliament is now complete without a reference to his "exposure" of government deceit. His report is a deeply inadequate description of modern government, but it is fair to say that allegations are put into his mouth which he never made.
The charge that innocent men had been convicted because the government feared for its skin was dismissed by Sir Richard in a few sentences. But the crucial second-order issue was the distinction between an alteration in the policy guidelines on selling arms to Iran and Iraq and a difference of interpretation. In Sir Richard's view there was an alteration decided upon by three junior ministers about which parliament should have been informed.
What is lost in the report is the place of this sort of decision in the processes of government and parliament. Such a decision is taken by a junior minister about six times each week. A cabinet minister may take decisions of this magnitude two or three times a night when he gets home to his boxes. A minister might in theory act as Sir Richard appears to wish him to act. He could delay the decision. He could ask: Are we sure that we have every bit of information which may be relevant? In practice a minister who acted in this way would not last long. The legislative process should be measured and where necessary slowed. The executive process has to match the speed of the world in which we live.
But whether one takes a fundamentally Whig or Tory view of the duties of parliament, we should be worried about the question of who becomes an MP. We are witnessing a dangerous narrowing of the political class in this country. Forty years ago there was no ladder which went upwards from university or school directly into national politics. In practice, a young man or woman interested in politics had to go and do something else for 15 years before they could seriously be considered as an MP. That has changed. The palace of Westminster is thronged with eager young men and women who have done nothing but politics all their lives. The highly professional politician is particularly vulnerable to the single issue and the pressure group. They have not learned in practical work-a-day careers how to balance conflicting interests before they reach a decision. The number of MPs with outside experience who could provide a counterweight to the more professional politicians has greatly reduced, even in my political lifetime. This narrowing of experience also threatens to unbalance the relationship between ministers and civil servants. A minister should complement the analytical skills of the permanent officials. He should not be an official with an ideology.
Lord Nolan may have unwittingly moved the House of Commons further in the wrong direction, just as Sir Richard may unwittingly have advocated a less adequate government. If as a matter of principle we insist on fulltime MPs-in order to avoid the problem of sleaze associated with outside interests-then we are consenting to this narrowing of the political class. Politicians will get more like civil servants and, perhaps, vice versa. I would greatly prefer to see a substantial minority of the House of Commons spending part of their time on outside activity and bringing to the House of Commons, under strict rules and with total transparency, up-to-date insights and experience from the real world.
Several of us have been on record in favour of a smaller House of Commons. In parallel there should also be a reduction in the number of ministers to match the reduction in the responsibilities of government. No future government is going to restore either the British empire or the command economy.
But we will continue to live in a world of nation states, none of which is capable of delivering alone the security, prosperity and decent environment which the citizens want. The tasks of working with other countries, of balancing risks in an ever more globalised world, of striking the balance between flash floods of emotion and the longer term interests of society-all these will require even more good judgement from politicians. We must not allow a gap to develop between the tasks to which ministers and MPs are called, and their ability to perform them successfully. We must not accept such a narrowing of the political system that ministers come to high office trained principally in the art of being rude to each other. It is arguable that the main need of our system is not for constitutional reform but for a broader understanding by the selectors of future MPs and then the electorate, that experience and ability are more important in the choice of a future politician than an aptitude for the polemics which win a headline but help to separate the politicians from the people.
