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House of Commons (Effectiveness)

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr. Fraser, although this is the last time, as both of us are leaving the House. I thank the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) for negotiating his way to this debate. He said a lot of things, many of which I agreed with—it is especially good to greet a fellow commuter. Nevertheless, I can respond to only a couple of the points in the time that I have. First, the question that the hon. Gentleman raises itself raises a further question: what is Parliament's job? We cannot tell how effective a body is until we know what its job is in the first place, so I shall make some remarks about that. Secondly, he raised the question about what kind of people are coming into Parliament and into politics. That is a very important question and I shall say something about that as well. On the first point, the key issue is what Parliament's job really is. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have found a great contrast between this place and local government—between what a Member of Parliament is supposed to do and what a member of a local authority is supposed to do. A member of a local authority is there to make decisions about things that happen, whereas the job here seems to be just rhetorical. The hon. Gentleman has made that rhetoric effective on a number of occasions, but it is a very different thing. It comes back to two problems. One is the idea that the job of Parliament is not to govern the country but only to hold to account those who do. That was said originally by Gladstone, and the time has come to question it. If our job is not to set at least the outlines of policy, why are we here? What kind of people are attracted to a job that is not to effect policy, except when they are promoted to be Ministers along the route of patronage? That is a real problem. The second problem is that this country seems to operate according to a theory of a single source of authority, which used to be the Crown, under the hereditary principle, but is now the leader of the winning party in the election, who holds power as a single source of authority under current assumptions. Therefore, from the point of view of the media, when Parliament does the job mentioned by the hon. Member for Reading, West—changing proposals for laws as they go through the House—it seems to be rebelling and defying that authority. The theory is wrong. We need a different idea of Parliament's job, where it is perfectly legitimate for Members of Parliament to do their job and not be accused of defying the single source of authority. Otherwise, we shall end up in a situation in which the only supposedly legitimate job of a Member of Parliament is to act as a member of an electoral college in the first week of a new Parliament, but after that to be a kind of drone or cheerleader. I have supported nearly all the proposals for reform. I am a great supporter of changing the electoral system, and believe that a different configuration of parties, and majority rule not being so common, would change the single source of authority theory. I am in favour of the business committee and will have more to say about that this afternoon—we need to get rid of the idea of Standing Order No. 14, under which the Government, just by being the Government, control the agenda of the House. I am also in favour of an elected Lords and all that. However, such proposals all come down to this: do we have a political system that has moved from having an hereditary monarch to having an elected, presidential monarch? I do not think that we should have such a system. The second question is about who comes here. In part, the answer depends on what the job is. I think I am observing a serious change in who comes here, because of what the job is seen to be. Often, members of the public think that Parliament is dominated by lawyers. I am a sort of lawyer, but an academic one, not a real one, so I notice how many lawyers there are and it is only about 11 per cent. of the House, not the 60 or 70 per cent. that people think. In fact, the percentage of lawyers in the House is going down. I suppose we can get up to 14 per cent. if we include people such as me, who are academics, and those who have law degrees but did not practise. Instead, the type of person coming into this place has a background as a professional in politics or in the media, in marketing, public relations or journalism. In the current House, nearly 40 per cent. of the parliamentary Labour party have some such background as political professionals, and across the House as a whole about 20 per cent. have a background as media professionals. In case people think such a situation will change if lots of Conservatives are elected, of the incoming Conservatives in their held and target seats, exactly the same percentage have been political professionals and even more—nearly a third—have been in the media professions. The life of such people involves not making real-life decisions, but manipulating symbols and getting themselves ahead by their ability to manipulate symbols.