Political commentary
Into the unknown
Patrick Cosgrave
Whenever criticism is made of their work rate Or effectiveness, MPs normally reply by referring to the enormous amount of unsung and unspectacular work done by them in various House of Commons committees, Standing and Select. We tend, nowadays, to suspect conventional defences; but this happens to be a particularly good and fair one. Of course there are lazy MPs, and drunks, adulterers and malefactors of various kinds among their number but — and see now how the seasonal spirit has stayed with me — by and large they make up the hardest working body of men and women that I know of. Having, over the last year, praised some and blamed many, I thought 1 would welcome the New Year by remarking on the activities of some known and some virtually Unknown members, including some front benchers whose activities, underemphasised at the time, seem worthy of memory.
Committee work is excruciatingly boring, and quite exceptionally ill-rewarded, in terms of that publicity which is meat and drink to the ambitious politician. Moreover, the recommendations of a Select Committee can easily be overthrown by a determined government using its majority in the Chamber; and the Present Government, unprecedentedly ungenerous in its interpretation of parliamentary convention, largely because of its pettily doctrinaire attitude of mind, has been willing all too often to do just that. Indeed, while the election of, first, a minority government, and then of a government with a bare majority of the whole House, was initially welcomed by independent minded backbenchers on both sides of thp Commons — because they thought it would make the whips more responsive to backbench opinion — the happy dawn of a new age of backbench autonomy has not yet arrived. As always, this is largely because of the spinelessness of the Government's sup_ Porters.
To return to Committees. There are three Particular members of backbench committees (among many) who have scored highly for intelligence and skill in the last year. When the Committee on the Wealth Tax was set up its remit was, not to question whether such a tax was a good or a bad thing, but to devise methods of implementation. As is now well known several reports, and none by an 'agreed majority, emerged from its deliberations. This was widely and correctly regarded by members in all quarters as a brilliant act of sabotage by the Conservative members of the Committee, led by Mr Maurice Macmillan: in addition to disPlaying hitherto unsuspected forensic skills during the proceedings of the Committee, Mr Macmillan and his colleagues took adroit advantage of whipping errors by Mr Mellish Which enabled them to scupper Socialist intentions at one or two crucial points. All this Was good parliamentary fun; and it was useful ton, in that it demonstrated, within the framework of the parliamentary rules, that the Chancellor's initial concept of the tax was of n^"htful soundness. The most notable thing
about the Tory minority report, however, was the pithiness and elegance of its language: nowadays we expect political speeches and parliamentary documents to be clumsy and often barely literate: this was a report of singular style.
Mr Michael English, the Labour member for Nottingham West, has long been known to conoisseurs as a particularly scholarly expert on parliamentary procedure. An anti-Marketeer, he was the man who discovered the butter mountain, and exploited it to the embarrassment of the government and the advantage of pensioners. His committee work on public expenditure has been remarkable, all the more so in that he has so often managed to carry members of all parties with him in committee recommendations, against orthodoxies favoured by both front benches. Mr English is, in style, the reverse of spectacular, but when one compares his achievement to the lack of achievement of so many of the deadbeats among the junior ranks of the government, one is amazed that he has enjoyed no preferment.
All the members of the Committee scrutinising those peculiar directives and instruments issuing from Brussels deserve praise, and none more so than the chairman of the Committee, Mr John Davies. The task is impossible. yet they manage to discharge it almoSt well. This is the place, moreover, to praise one of the most gifted senior backbenchers on the Conservative side, Mr Neil Marten. Another procedural expert, Mr Marten has devoted a large part of his political life to opposition to British membership of the Common Market. He has lost ministerial preferment as a result, and he has suffered in various ways outside the House of Commons as well. Never, though, has he lost his humour or his balance, and he is held in the highest regard on both sides of the House. It is said that, even now, he would prefer to hold a watching brief on the EEC, even if offered an Opposition front bench post; but Mrs Thatcher would be well advised to try to persuade him to change his mind. Unlike, say, Mr Powell, Mr Marten does not question the referendum verdict in principle; his expertise is not restricted to this one subject (he was the architect, with Mr Alf Morris, of the Chroni cally Sick and Disabled Persons Act, a private members' effort, and one of the most enlightened social measures of recent years); and his ability to get under Mr Wilson's skin would be invaluable to the Opposition.
In all ministerial careers luck and timing play an important part. One man of whom this is less true than most is Mr John Mackintosh, the Labour member for East Lothian. Small, handsome, donnish and torrentially articulate, Mr Mackintosh is the most sinned against of backbenchers. He is no respecter of either authority or persons; his interventions in debate are invariably brilliant, and widely applauded; and he seems to have as little chance of a job now as when he first entered the House and fell foul of the unspeakably dull and inarticulate Mr William Ross, Secretary of State for Scotland. In the high days of the British parliamentary tradition a Mackintosh, however much of a nuisance he might be to the duller folk who have to see that the government gets its business, would have been given a break: today it is nothing short of scandalous that a man who has given up so much to enter politics (he is a most distinguished academic, and the author of the Standard work on the British Cabinet system) should be left to moulder on the back benches. Mr Mackintosh, like many another brilliant performer, might be a rotten minister, but he should be given a chance to try.
Mention should be made of some of those who live between the darkness of the backbenches and the light of the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet. Mr David Howell, by the expedient of returning to the policies he espoused before 1970, has emerged remarkably well from the shadow of Mr Heath, and deflected the (nowadays) dangerous accusation of being wholly a Heath man. Mr Tam Dalyell is one of the handful of members, Labour or Tory, who has refused to compromise an inch with the nationalist tide that threatens to overwhelm his like in Scotland and, pedestrian in manner though he is, has made of himself a most effective backbencher, and prominent Committee man. Mr Andrew Faulds, at first, apparently, a buffoon, and then bitterly disappointed when Mr Wilson gave and took away the job of arts spokesman, has made himself into an extremely solid figure, without sacrificing his Thespian flamboyance. Mr John Biggs-Davison, for years regarded as something of a romantic twit, has settled down behind Mr Airey Neave as an increasingly formidable spokesman on Northern Ireland. Mr James White, the Labour member for Glasgow, Pollok is the reverse of spectacular, dominating or impressive, but he has carved an important niche for himself on one of the most important subjects of all, abortion law reform and, though his Select Committee on the subject had to be abandoned, he has an excellent chance of securing its revival: he has a moral passion which nowadays is rare and, starting in the face of hostility and indifference, has won much of his point.
Finally, it would be wrong not to mention the Speaker, Mr Selwyn Lloyd, on whom so much depends. There was much initial criticism of Mr Lloyd because, having held so many high ministerial positions, it was thought he would identify too readily with the Establishment. His wit is dry rather thari broad, and tie has few of the gifts which make a man uproariously popular. But his patience, consideration and even wisdom has won plaudits. He has presided over a House which, if less distinguished than many in the past, still enjoys a wealth of talent that commentators and the public rarely sees.
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