MPs pressing for the reform of backbench bills have declared war on the government after it refused to accept any of the changes that they recommended. Private Members’ Bills are a tedious and unedifying part of Parliament which promise much and disappoint even more. Earlier this year, the Procedure Committee published a report on how they could change, so that members don’t bring poorly-drafted bills with good intentions to the Commons, only for them to die without dignity at the hands of a filibustering backbencher. They are not the hottest issue of the day, but because they are often on things that people care about, such as parking at hospitals, first aid education and so on, when these bills are talked out, the result is that Parliament looks even more powerless than voters already think it is.
Today ministers have published their response to that report, and despite some promising initial signs that they might be minded to accept some of the proposals, it doesn’t look great. The government is not accepting any of the committee’s major proposals for reform, sticking only to backing ideas about the listing of bills on days when the house is actually sitting and deadlines for printing bills.
It is an odd response when the committee helped ministers draw up their plans for English Votes for English Laws, and has also sought its support for implementing the Strathclyde reforms to the way the House of Lords approaches secondary legislation. Even odder when you consider that the Committee’s chair Charles Walker made a series of rather dark threats about the consequences of ignoring this second attempt to reform the PMB process. Today he tells me that it’s ‘war’ from now on: ‘Given the fact that I made clear when I launched the report that if they did not go ahead with these, they would see forces unleashed against them, and those forces are now unleashed.’
The government may have just one or two other things on its mind at the moment. But while this row is about a niche issue that few people really know about, disagreements about the way Parliament works can get much bigger than those on the outside might expect. There are a good number of MPs who care about Parliament being treated properly and want to make sure its reputation is not damaged any further. And Charles Walker is not a man who lets ministers mess around, either.
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