NOTE BOOK
The journalistic and political flap over the Environment Department's supposed ' rigging ' of parliamentary questions is extremely tiresome, not merely because of the errors and omissions of the critics, but because the main burden of accusation has fallen on a minister — Julian Amery — who is not merely one of the most able, but also one of the most agreeable, of Mr Heath's ministers. At the last Conservative conference, for example, while various members of the Government marched — heads down and eyes averted — past a demonstration of UCS workers outside the conference hall Amery walked down the line shaking hands and exchanging banter, to the enjoyment of all. And when a young Tory member, elected in June 1970 — and now not a hundred miles from the minister — was standing, a little lonely and lost, in the central Lobby, just after the general election, Amery swept up to him, thrust out his hand, and said, " Welcome to my Palace, dear boy." In this dull and grey age such politicians are to be treasured.
Truth about rigging
Peter Walker was, of course, quite right to respond vigorously to accusations that his department were rigging questions, and to state the fundamental truth that this practice has been going on for some years, and has been readily accepted by all concerned as an integral part of the whole complex game of parliamentary questions for oral answer. Were it not for the combination of a rather hysterical opposition and the extraordinary propensity of the Sunday Times for printing photographs of any document that falls into their hands — and imagining that it makes a news story — there would have been no row at all.
The Sunday Times story was by the Insight team, a body mainly noted for a combination of excessive energy and a total ignorance of political and parliamentary procedure. In their pompous way they told us that their main criticism of the WalkerAmery practice of providing banks of parliamentary questions for the use of Tory members — and thereby squeezing out the Opposition — was that it restricted the ability of the private member to get at and cross-question ministers. Supposing for a moment that any private member given, as is the practice, one substantive and one supplementary question, could conceivably embarrass a well-briefed minister — which nobody with any knowledge of the situation could suppose — then the real abuse arises when members from the minister's party jump up en masse in the middle of Question Time shouting friendly questions which, if the Speaker is kind, as he usually is, get answered by the minister and are used by him not merely to make propaganda, but to turn away the wrath of the other side. The great experts at this game are the Labour party: in the closing months of the life of the last government one became extremely tired of the lugubrious and not very articulate Arthur Davidson, to name but one, jumping up to protect Mr Wilson from the shafts of such as John Peyton, now, of course, one of Peter Walker's ministers.
More abuse
Insight were also upset by the fact that opposition members seeking in Erskine May's words, to "obtain information" by tabling questions for oral answer found themselves, as a result of the Tory plot to get rigged questions high Up on the Order Paper, "squeezed out" and forced to be " normally content with a written reply." Any MP worth his salt knows that the best way to obtain information is to table questions for written answer: only thus can you compel ministers and departments to provide you with full and precise answers to full and precise questions.
Truth to tell Question Time is a game; a -ather good game, as it happens, and one which often produces good political -esults: but it has nothing whatever to do with the constitutional accountability of ministers, or with the obtaining of information. One main rule, for example, is
that ministers are obliged to answer only those questions which bear on their departmental responsibility. Now, since the Prime Minister has no specific departmental responsibility, formulae must be adopted which prevent him transferring questions on, say, unemployment, or Ulster, to the ministers responsible.
The PM's letters
One formula is to ask the Prime Minister how many letters he has received on a given subject — unemployment, or Ulster, or whatever — and, when he has given a figure, to ask a supplementary question bearing, not on the number of letters, but on the real subject. The question, of course, is not a real one: the situation is designed only in order to enable the questioner to make a joke against the Prime Minister, and the onus is then on the Prime Minister to make a better joke back. It is not, on the whole, done for the Prime Minister, or any other minister, to ignore the formula in which the question is couched: he is supposed to accept it at its face value and concentrate his attention on the supplementary. Now, while he may group and answer together a series of questions which will have supplementaries on the same subject, he should not group according to the formulae. It is therefore both annoying and disappointing to find Mr Heath grouping together, say, all the questions which begin by asking him how many letters he has received, so that the supplementaries are diffused and inchoate, rather than witty and to the point. On the other hand, it is a small abuse, which hardly compares to the tricks played by Mr Wilson when he was in power, when he and his private office attained great skill in (a) transferring virtually untransferrable questions to his ministers, especially when they were tricky. and (b) finding clever procedural ways to block formula questions.
Lazy Insight
All in all it is a complex and tricky game. Given its complications it was hardily surprising when the Speaker ruled that there was no prima facie evidence of breach of privilege in the practice of Peter Walker's ministry, though a little disappointing to find Willie Whitelaw nonetheless willing to set up a Select Committee to inquire into the whole business. Such a committee is almost certain to simplify the rules of the game, make' them duller, and take out of Parliament one of the best opportunities it now offers for serious knockabout. It is doubtful if the Insight team will be around when the committee reports, since they are not very good at staying on for things. One of their prize stories during the last election campaign related how Mr Heath refused to talk to some people at a motorway restaurant — an anecdote which was built up into a generalisation about his unapproachability. Alas, after the Insight man had left the restaurant, the Leader' of the Opposition trotted across for an amiable chat with his would-be interlocutors — as he had earlier said he would do, once his conversation with Edward Boyle was over.
PC
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