Adjournment (Christmas)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 2:56 pm on 21 December 2000.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Tony Baldry Tony Baldry Conservative, Banbury 2:56, 21 December 2000

I shall come to that issue in a moment. The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly fair point, but I do not wish to detain the House for long, because I appreciate that many other Members wish to speak.

The concept of modernisation has been about altering hours and changing voting arrangements and the times at which voting takes place. Nothing that has happened so far, supposedly in the name of modernisation, has enhanced the ability of elected Members to hold the Executive to account. The opposite is the case: nothing that has happened in the name of modernisation has enhanced by one jot the ability of Back Benchers on either side of the House to call the Government to account. Instead, we have witnessed some elegant moving of the furniture. However, the ability to vote 10 times in one minute on a Wednesday afternoon in the Division Lobby does not enable me to hold the Executive to account any more ably.

This Parliament has seen the fewest rebellions by Back Benchers of any Parliament since the second world war. By this stage in the previous Parliament, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) was Prime Minister, there had been almost two thirds more Divisions in which Ministers had been confronted with dissent from their own Back Benchers. Of course, that was an irritant for us—it was often a complete pain in the neck—but it made the system work. One was accountable to one's own Back Benchers and to people at the other end of the Corridor. That made Ministers think. This Government have the most compliant group of Back Benchers since the 1940s. They might think that having everyone on message on their pagers is good news, but it is not good for Parliament as an institution. It is sad news, because such practices tend to be passed down from generation to generation.

Derek Draper, a former lobbyist and adviser to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), observed that only 17 people nowadays count. Practically none of those people is an elected Member of Parliament. I want us to try to work out ways in which elected Members of the House of Commons will have greater opportunities to call the Executive to account.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition set up the Norton report under the chairmanship of Lord Norton of Louth. It made 90 interesting suggestions, including the restoration of Prime Minister's Question Time to twice a week, which would give us a greater opportunity to call the Prime Minister to account. The report also called for more Question Times and shorter debates with more opportunities for Back Benchers to speak. Shoving us all off into Westminster Hall—a sort of empty cavern—does not assist us in calling Ministers to account. We need to strengthen Committees, and to improve the opportunities of Select Committees to make representations to the House.

We should improve the way in which European legislation is monitored in the House. I was the Minister responsible for fisheries in the previous Conservative Government, and I find it extraordinary that we did not have a debate on the Fisheries Council meeting this year. Every year, we used to have a full day's debate on the Council's proposals, which would enable colleagues from fishing constituencies to express their concerns and to vote on them. There has been no such debate this year. Indeed, at best, the relevant documents were referred to a Committee to be scrutinised. That is no way for the House to perform.

Part of our agenda for 2001 must be to strengthen the institutions of Parliament on a cross-party basis. As an increasingly tubby and gnarled Back Bencher, I do not believe that the work of the Modernisation Committee is strengthening accountability and democracy in this place, no matter how much I may or may not support breast-feeding in different parts of the Palace. What has happened in the name of modernisation is nothing other than a matter of convenience for the Leader of the House and business managers. Nothing has enhanced and increased the ability of Back Benchers on both sides of the House to call the Executive to account.

If we allow Parliament to continue in that way, we will become increasingly irrelevant. We are moving towards an elective, almost unaccountable and uncheckable dictatorship, which would be to no one's benefit. As we go further into this century, I hope that Parliament as an institution can start to apply its mind to ensuring that we modernise in a way that restores the checks and balances that have evolved for centuries, but which seem in danger of disappearing.