Cuckolds' convention
When MPs of all parties start congratulating one another, the rest of us had usually better watch out. The chances are that slovenly if not actually dirty work is afoot. Mr Edward du Cann deserved a polite word of thanks for launching a debate on 'Parliamentary Control of the Executive', a subject that is always in need of an airing. But that is where the thanks must stop. For his motion, his speech and the speech of nearly every other MP who spoke served only to perPetuate every stale misconception and conventional oversimplification about the way we are misgoverned now: 'Parliamentary control over the Executive has diminished and is diminishing. . . backbenchers impotent. . . millions of Cs voted through on the nod. . . fewer opportunities for scrutiny and control. . . power of the party whips . . . need to improve pay and conditions of MPs. . . need for more research facilities' and so on. MPs seem to take positive delight in moaning about how government has progressively robbed them of the powers they used to have and ought to have again. The atmosphere on such occasions suggests a sort of cheerful cuckolds' convention. The debate is a celebration of impotence.
Nobody except Mr Angus Maude dared to point out the simple remedy for MPs discontented with the government: vete against it. This is indeed a peculiar session in which to complain about the impotence of backbenchers, as government defeats have become so frequent in both houses that they no longer squeeze on to the front pages. The Whereabouts of the dimmest Ulster MP and the vacillations Of every Liberal member become matters of national concern. Far from being all-powerful ogres, the Chief Whips, Mr Humphrey Atkins and Mr Michael Cocks, look more like harassed mother hens, desperately and often vainly trying to prevent their charges from sloping off to the Cup „„ inal or to bed. Old-timers grun)ble about poor attendance in the Chamber but the more important reality is that the influence of backbenchers on government policy has increased and is increasing. It is a myth to imagine that there was once a golden age of parliamentary scrutiny Which has now passed away. The only reason why legis■ lation may once have been better scrutinised was because there used to be less of it.
What MPs cannot control, what they were never meant to control and what, most probably, they never will be able to control are the operations of the civil service. We must distinguish sharply between the control of legislation (which MPs can and do carry out and could carry out a lot more effectively if they were not so wet) and the scrutiny of administration — a distinction which MPs themselves are reluctant to make, preferring to snuggle under a blanket of general impotence. MPs can nobble a minister, they cannot nobble a permanent secretary — as those MPs who sit on select committees are beginning to find out. Select committees offer exciting but clearly limited prospects; they cannot by themselves thoroughly scrutinise the vast and ever-growing operations of the administration. But they can provide previously unavailable evidence of sloth, incompetence and malorganisation with which to belabour the ministers responsible. By their nature, they can only mount lightning surprise raids on the bureaucracy. As the experiences of Mr Leslie Chapman show, if the civil servants can fend off the first thrust, they will survive to fight again. Time is the bureaucracy's great weapon, Parliament's greatest deficiency. Mr Nicholas Ridley has compared the British civil service to an enormous steel spring. 'It can be pulled out of its natural position by great exertion but it eventually pulls you back by its sheer persistence. Thus, towards the middle and end years of each government some of the same policies begin to appear whatever the reforming, even crusading nature of the incoming government. Undermined by the system, exhausted by the workload, battered by events, they relax their pull upon the spring and are pulled back, themselves, to the position the civil service always wanted.'
A legislative assembly is not and cannot be designed or equipped to control this spring. That is a task for the political direction of the Executive itself. And it can be achieved only by a fresh government, and a fresh Prime Minister.
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