Sidney Low said that ‘government in England is government by amateurs’, and parliament seems to be doing its level best to vindicate that view. The Assisted Dying Bill being rushed through the Commons with sinister alacrity has exposed structural flaws in our legislative procedures, not least the vulnerability of private members’ bills to exploitation by those determined that proper parliamentary process not hinder their legislation’s path to the statute books. Whether through truncated debate, a stacked committee, a lopsided witness list, unreliable undertakings, or the resolute incuriosity of scrutineers unwilling to scrutinise, the bill reminds us that institutions are only as reliable as the fidelity of those who populate them to a common ethos.
Parliamentarians are not expected to forgo ideology or intrigue – such things are the lifeblood of a parliament – but to pursue them in a parliamentarian spirit, a temper of mind that respects process, cherishes debate, solicits scrutiny, and volunteers candour. A parliamentarian understands that these conventions confer legitimacy on lawmaking, satisfying opponents that they lost in a fair fight and are morally obligated to accept the result, but they also ensure that the act which goes for royal assent is a more robust instrument than the bill that was introduced. A parliamentarian wants not merely their bill to pass but the best possible version of their bill.
Those behind the Assisted Dying Bill might be members of parliament but none of them is a parliamentarian. At every opportunity, the peddlers of premature death have revealed their impatience with the parliamentary process and their disdain for those who see things differently. Assurances given are cast aside without compunction, evidence to the contrary is disregarded, and good faith efforts to improve the bill are dismissed with zealous certainty. They don’t want the best possible version of their bill. All they want is for assisted dying to be legal, unintended consequences be damned.
Consultation: skipped. Policy development: avoided. Disability advocates: ignored. Judicial safeguards: dropped. The scheme proposed has yet to reach the statute book and already it is falling apart. Some have raised the spectre of Harold Shipman in this debate, but that increasingly seems unfair to Dr Shipman. His assisted dying scheme managed to kill hundreds before it fell apart.
Good intentions can make bad legislation, and when MPs are drunk on them it is the duty of parliament to interrogate those intentions soberly, conscious of the harm that comes from hasty, emotive lawmaking. It is to parliament’s profound shame that, with honourable exceptions such as Diane Abbott, the most robust scrutiny of this bill is coming from Dr Yuan Yi Zhu, a Canadian national who teaches international law at a university in the Netherlands. Dr Zhu, who takes an interest following his country’s experience with medical assistance in death (MAiD), has approached these proposals with more diligence, scepticism and analytical rigour than many privileged enough to have been elected to the Commons. Why shouldn’t the public hold parliament in contempt when so many MPs appear to do the same?
The Assisted Dying Bill is especially egregious, but there are other emergency flares being shot into the sky over Westminster, signalling to us that our parliamentary democracy is in distress. The government’s relentless, almost fanatic, campaign not only to surrender the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius but to ensure Mauritius is paid handsomely to accept it, is another tale of parliamentary inadequacy. Strong attitudes for and against the surrender mostly reflect party affiliation, but in parliament there aren’t all that many strong attitudes. The prime minister is hellbent on relinquishing sovereign and strategically valuable British territory and many MPs can barely muster interest. Here is another ready-made opportunity for parliament to prove its worth to a cynical public. Yet again, it is failing.
Consider, too, a recent string of news stories highlighting the absurdities of our immigration, refugee and asylum regimes. The Palestinian family granted asylum under the scheme set up to give shelter to Ukrainians. The Nigerian woman who was denied asylum eight times, joined a terrorist group to bolster her case, and was successful on her ninth application. The Ghanaian holidaymaker given the right to remain in the UK thanks to a three-year marriage to a German national and despite the fact she did not attend her own wedding. Whether these were cases of the courts trying to make sense of parliament’s ill-conceived and inconsistent legislative outpourings or examples of judicial overreach by a liberal bench, we know that no one ever voted for these outcomes. At no general election has the winning party put to the electors that their country should become an international doss house with no locks on the door.
There could not be a less opportune moment for parliament to draw attention to its shortcomings
Parliament ought to be stirred to action in defence of our people, borders and laws. MPs should be drafting legislation to make it harder to enter the UK informally, remain here after committing serious crimes, or abuse our generosity with spurious claims. Again, however, parliament is found wanting. Whether through indolence or ideology, the UK parliament appears thoroughly uninterested in fixing our broken immigration and asylum systems.
Every time another poll shows growing disillusionment with parliamentary democracy, liberal commentators file the same 1,000 words scolding the public for siding with The Bad People. They’ve been duped by Russian misinformation. Elon Musk brainwashed them with the X algorithm. They should listen to the experts who will explain why their every concern is wrong, dangerous, far right, or actually a good thing.
Instead of browbeating the masses into revering parliament, shouldn’t we be asking what parliament is doing to earn respect? There have always been voters who regard MPs as crooks, frauds, rogues and worse, who dismiss the Commons as thoroughly out of touch with the general public. We’re talking about something of another order entirely: voters who have given up on parliament as the national decision-making body. Who regard it as an obstacle to and not a guarantor of scrutiny, an institution which reflects the priorities of a permanent managerial elite and which lacks the calibre of MP necessary to check the executive and legislate wisely.
These are precarious times. A fug of authoritarianism lingers over much of the West, threatening to choke democratic institutions and popular consent for liberal norms. There could not be a less opportune moment for parliament to draw attention to its shortcomings. Sidney Low’s characterisation was meant to distinguish England’s government by generalists from the rule of technocrats on the Continent, but parliament is coming to resemble an unfortunate fusion of the two. Government in Britain today is government by amateur technocrats, an aloof aristocracy of the inept and the inadequate. If this is the best you can offer the public, don’t be surprised if they go looking for more sinister amateurs and less reputable technocrats, those who appear willing and able to do what parliament cannot or will not.
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