Political Commentary

The value of Parliament

Patrick Cosgrave

Last week I wrote about the possibility of a military takeover in this country, and the circumstances in which that possibility might arise. Some readers reproached me for even mentioning the subject: others scoffed at the very idea: and some wanted to know what I meant by saying that a sacramental regard for Parliament was necessary to protect us from some of the military dangers. After all, I was told by one disgusted friend as he left the chamber of the House of Commons on the day when Mr Charles, Loughlin and Mr Willie Hamilton had playfully dashed across the floor to occupy a front bench suddenly vacated by the Prime Minister and several of his colleagues, just before feigning a theft of the parliamentary mace, if members will insist on being children at their most important business perhaps we had better have the soldiers in after all. It is, certainly, very difficult to justify the chamber of the House in the light of behaviour like that. Nonetheless, there are a few points to be made.

I have before me a copy of the script of Granada's admirable and marathon The State of the Nation: Parliament programmes, which were screened earlier this year. They consistied of three ninety-minute programmes, the first showing four months in the making of a piece of legislation, including film of highly confidential ministerial meetings; the second the proceedings of a mock committee on law-making and public money; the third a mock parliamentary debate on the ignorance of members. The purpose of the programmes, as Brian Lapping, the intense young producer, and Norma Percy, his research assistant, explain in a preface to the script, was not educational, but critical. Those who worked on the project began with a belief that their own conviction as to the inadequacies of the parliamentary system as it is at present consituated was widely shared. To check this and other suppositions, Granada commissioned perhaps the most elaborate public opinion survey of views about Parliament ever undertaken. Mr Lapping and Miss Percy write: The results undermined our thinking. The majority of the public express a consistently high level of satisfaction with Parliament and their own MPs. Citizens in Scotland and Wales seem to be just as happy as those in England. Trade union members are just as happy with Parliament as the rest of the community.

And there is more along these lines. Mr Lapping and his colleagues were nonplussed by their discovery that the somewhat jaundiced view of Parliament fashionable in press circles in London was simply not shared by the people at large.

Quickly re-jigging their justification, however, they went ahead with the programmes. It is well that they did, not only because there is much ,wrong about Parliament which the public do not see, but also because the last year has seen some changes, notably our entry into the EEC, which may greatly affect the future development of the House of Commons in particular. Nonetheless, as long as the public remain fairly satisfied with the institution, then such horrendous events as I sketched last week remain distant and unlikely.

But many well-intentioned folk are engaged on campaigns which would quickly undermine that satisfaction. Mrs Renee Short and others want to alter parliamentary hours to make the home life of members more satisfactory. One Tory member who is a management consultant has recently an nounced that, if Parliament were a tactory he had been called upon to inspect, he would be appalled at its inefficiency, and he went on to propose changes. (It seems useless to point out, in these enlightened days of management consultancy, that Parliament is not a factory, and should not be judged as one.) The Liberals, in the course of the reform programme I denounced last week, want to split the whole thing up into committees. Nonetheless, the central question remains the usefulness or otherwise of the floor of the chamber itself.

The traditional conservatives, like Mr Powell and Mr Foot, are determined to re-as sert the authority of the floor, and pour scorn on the idea of more and more expert committees. But it is widely felt that they have been engaged in a losing battle, and that the mass and complexity of modern legislation make impossible serious critical scrutiny in a goyernment's activities through the medium of the floor. It is vital to decide between these two views because, as I wrote elsewhere

recently, the floor of the House of Commons is the heart of British parliamentary democracy.

The opposing attitudes are admirably illustrated ,in a clash, on one of the Granada programmes, between Mr John Mackintosh, one of the most gifted of Labour backbenchers, and Mr Enoch Powell, probably the outstanding parliamentarian of his day. Mr Mackintosh wants more information made available to members, and more Select Committees in which to deploy it. Mr Powell, though he has performed brilliantly on more than one Standing Committee, is first, last and always, a chamber man. In the debate Mr Mackintosh spoke thus:

I remember once listening to Michael Foot making an attack on the Labour Government's policy of keeping

troops East of Suez, a brilliant attack I thought, without being disrespectful a little insubstantial in places. And I remember saying to him, wouldn't it have been a good idea if we'd had a Defence Com mittee which could have discovered the cost of bases East of Suez. We could have heard the generals and the admirals on how effective they thought our forces were there, and heard about our treaty commitments, and discovered a little of the thinking behind it. And Michael said to me, "No, it wouldn't have helped me at all." He said, "I only find facts confuse my arguments."

And Mr Powell replied:

He mentioned the ignorant approach of Michael Foot in a defence debate. Well 1 was for a period spokesman for the Opposition on Defence, and two of the proposals of the then government were in the range of advanced weapons, the purchase of an American aircraft called the F-111, and the construction of an Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft. And I said they were nonsense. I said they wouldn't happen, and 1 said that the policy based on them would collapse in ruins. Not only did I not need the advice of Air Vice-Marshals, Air Marshals, or experts from the aviation industry in order to do this; they would have been a positive nuisance. Indeed I had to restrain my colleagues from going and getting that sort of misleading advice. I said, "No, just read the White Paper. And you will see that when a politician, when a government has to write paragraphs like that then

there is nothing behind it and they know there is nothing behind it." And sure enough, there was nothing behind it, because the simple questions, the simple questions which any intelligent member of the public could have asked, but wasn't in the House of Commons to ask, could not be answered. What the devil are you going to do with fifty of those aircraft? Whatever they were like, however good they were.

The Government could never answer that question, and in due course, in incredible humiliation, the policy collapsed.

Most of those of us professionally concerned with politics, as well as, I am pretty sure, those among the general public who follow these things, would like to think Mr Powell was correct; but most would, I fancy, conclude that he was wrong, that the questions were never that simple, that if we had six hundred or so Mr Powells in the House, things might go in this way, but not otherwise. And they would reluctantly agree with Mr Mackintosh in support of the move towards what would broadly be a committee system.

I, in fact, agree with Mr Powell: but I would add that, for the Chamber to work in the way he would like, as an instrument of scrutiny as well as oratory, two conditions would have to be fulfilled. The first is that members would have to agree in their hearts that the Chamber was important and useful in that way; and the temptation of the Committee would have to be removed from them. The second is that governments would have to be prepared to accept defeats on the floor, and the consequent alteration of a policy or destruction of a part of some bill, without either seeking to reverse the vote or treating the issue as a matter of confidence. There is no help for the parliamentary situation unless governments are persuaded or compelled to change their principles in this regard.

From the Granada survey it is perfectly clear that the fundamental condition for revolution — a drastic decline of confidence in politicians and the system on the part of the electorate — is far from being fulfilled. But it is, I think, clear that however high the esteem in which the

public hold MPs and the system, their confidence in ministers is rapidly declining. Such reforms as there have been in recent years in the parliamentary system itself have reduced the potency of the individual member (though it is perfectly true that more backbenchers today are independent minded than was the case, say, ten years ago) and the system, and increased the potency of ministers. As soon as the public discover this — assuming their disenchantment with ministers continues, and is not reversed the success of this or a successor government — their attitude to Parliament could undergo catastrophic reversal. What is absolutely necessary now is a wider understanding of precisely what is going on, and a wider determination to reverse it. Alas, too many of those concerned in the matter wish to change the House, and build new structures on to the old, rather than reviving the old. The prospect of healthy reform (or, to put it more accurately, healthy reaction) ultimately depends on a very few chamber men, and on a rather unlikely change of principle by ministers. It also depends, like all else, on the turn of events and the calibre of personalities of members of Parliament: the situation, and the characters, I will examine next week,