Ministers made a poor use of Parliament on press regulation

The government’s decision to delay signing off the Royal Charter for press regulation was initially heralded as a dramatic change of heart, before being re-sold by those involved in the process as just a box-ticking exercise to avoid legal action. Either way, there is a growing noise not just about the rival charters now on offer, but also about the way the government’s deal was brought before parliament. Shami Chakrabarti’s disquiet over the proposals was widely picked up at the weekend. But there is also a growing unease in the Conservative party about the way Parliament voted on the legislative aspects of the new plan at such short notice. ‘We were bounced into it,’ one MP told me recently. ‘If we’d had time to think about it, there would have been uproar.’ Certainly the rebellion on the Tory benches was pretty small, and not an organised one, either, as the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill were approved by the Commons only a few hours after the deal was struck. And at the time, there was a feeling in the party that perhaps they needed to show David Cameron a bit of good will rather than constantly rising up against him. Good for the Tory leadership, perhaps, but not a good use of Parliament as a forum for scrutinising important legislation. Perhaps there might have been a bigger rebellion if MPs had been given a few more days, or perhaps if the amendments had been published as part of a bill starting its passage through both Houses, rather than tacked onto pieces of legislation at the very end of their scrutiny, then there would have been more considered debate about problems and loopholes. That, after all, is how the Houses of Commons and Lords are supposed to function, and the reason why bills take so long to chug through first and second readings, committee and report stages and third readings through to the quaintly-named ping-pong (or ‘consideration of amendments’). This lengthy process assumes that ministers don’t always get things right first time, and why should a deal struck in the small hours have been treated any differently? The Lords made some progress on whether bloggers were exempt from the exemplary damages approve by Parliament. But it was a rush job, with last-minute concessions and stand-offs rather than the drip-drip of debate and change that accompanies proper parliamentary scrutiny. There’s not much that MPs who now wish they’d taken more of a stand can do, and those involved in the Leveson implementation talks were pretty defiant this weekend that the plan is still going ahead without change, in spite of the delay in order to consult editors a bit more. But we could well hear more noise from parliamentarians in the next few weeks about whether ministers should remain quite so defiant about the future of the newspaper industry. And perhaps they’ll be on their guard against such a poor use of Parliament in the future. UPDATE, 8.50pm: Tory MP Glyn Davies has picked up on this post, saying that he’s one of the Conservatives who wished they’d voted against the plans at the time.

Speccie reckons there are more MPs wish they had have voted against the Royal Charter press regulation deal. 14 did. There are more. I'm one

— Glyn Davies (@GlynDavies) May 6, 2013