James Forsyth invites you to submit nominations for the Spectator Readers’ Representative in our Parliamentarian of the Year Awards
‘MP in Public Service Shock. Politician found to be honest and hard-working. Wife standing by him.’ As the MPs expenses scandal dominated the front pages for month after month, one half expected to see a headline like this. The reputation of MPs dropped further and further with every revelation about claims for duck houses, moat cleaning and phantom mortgage payments. By the end of the affair, 84 per cent of voters thought that MPs put their personal and their party interest ahead of the national interest. Restoring the public’s faith in parliament will require reversing these numbers.
The expenses scandal has left most MPs feeling battered. They have been shocked by the level of public hostility to them and complain that they are being collectively punished for the failings of the worst offenders. Certainly, public cynicism has reached a dangerously high level, as the case of Paul Goodman illustrates. Goodman, the Tory MP for High Wycombe whose expenses were clean and who was destined for ministerial office in a Cameron government, has decided to quit parliament at the next election rather than serve in this atmosphere of suspicion.
Three incidents in the last year highlighted the good, the bad and the ugly side of the Commons and how difficult it will be to restore its lustre. It’s a challenge that will require MPs to set aside short-term political advantage for the long-term good of the House.
The Commons’s best side was on display over the Gurkhas. The government was forced into a U-turn and offer all Gurkha veterans the right of residence in this country by a principled Commons’ rebellion. As Nick Clegg put it, it was ‘a victory for parliament, a victory for decency’.
The bad side came across during the debate over the Damian Green affair. In November, Damian Green was arrested and his office in the Commons searched by police who were investigating a string of leaks from the Home Office. But representatives of the executive entering parliament without a warrant to search the office of a member of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition appeared to be a serious assault on parliamentary privilege. If opposition MPs could be arrested for receiving information from a civil service whistleblower, then the ability of the legislature to hold the executive to account would be seriously compromised.
It was only mild hyperbole to say that the rights that parliament had fought for in the civil war were being challenged. Those MPs who invoked the spirit of 1642 were not just grandstanding. However, the government’s whipping operation was still strong enough to defeat a motion calling for a committee to examine ‘all the circumstances’ surrounding the police raid by four votes. MPs had missed a chance to show that they placed their duty to parliament above their party loyalties.
This failure to stand up for the rights of parliament is behind many of the institution’s current problems. It has handed away too many of its powers to other places — Europe, the executive, the courts and the devolved institutions — and it does not sufficiently scrutinise legislation. As the veteran MP Alan Beith said during his unsuccessful campaign to be Speaker, the next scandal waiting to happen for the Commons is the consequences of legislation that has not been properly examined. This situation has left the country wondering what MPs do.
The ugly side of the Commons was on display in the race to elect a new Speaker. After the expenses scandal, the departure of Michael Martin was a necessary but insufficient step towards restoring the House’s reputation. Martin had opposed transparency at every turn and he needed to go to show the public that MPs understood what had to change. At first, it appeared that Martin would refuse to move. In one cringe-making session, Martin clumsily attempted to use parliamentary procedure to prevent a motion of no confidence in him from being debated.
When Martin did quit the chair, the Commons had a chance to elect a new Speaker. The situation called for someone committed to transparency, trusted by all sides of the House, prepared to stand up to the executive and explain parliament’s role to the country at large. But in a depressing display of petty partisanship, these considerations went out of the window almost immediately. Instead, many Labour MPs saw a chance to foist on the Tories a Speaker they did not want.
A third Labour speaker in a row would have been a breach of Commons tradition. So Labour MPs lighted on a Tory MP who most of the Tory parliamentary party could not stand, John Bercow. His journey from the far-right of the Conservative party to the left of British politics had alienated nearly all of his Tory colleagues. The contest quickly became one between Bercow and the anyone-but-Bercow lobby. The two candidates with the most comprehensive agendas for reform, Parmjit Dhanda and Richard Shepherd, both dropped out after the first ballot, having garnered only 26 and 15 votes respectively.
Bercow was eventually elected after three secret ballots, the first ever to be held in parliament. However, only three Tory MPs are known to have voted for him, and there is talk that the Tories will try and replace him as Speaker if they win the next election. But if they voted Bercow out, whoever they replaced him with would have an extremely hard time reassuring the opposition parties that they were not a Tory plant. Either way, the chance for a Speaker to be elected who would unite the House behind an agenda of reform designed to revive the institution has been squandered.
The next parliament will contain a higher proportion of new MPs than even the one that followed the Great Reform Act of 1832. One way we can encourage the freshers to rise to the challenge of the moment is to hold up the best of the current crop as examples to them — despite the failings of the Commons as a body, it still contains many model MPs. This is where you, the reader, come in. As we did last year, we are inviting you to vote for a readers’ representative. This should be the elected official who you believe has best pursued the noble art of politics, putting the public interest ahead of everything else. As well as punishing the worst MPs at the ballot box, we must encourage the best. That is what we have always tried to do with our Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian of the Year Awards and we hope that you will again join us in this effort.
To nominate someone, go to new.spectator.co.uk/parliamentarian and in no more than 250 words make the case for your choice. We will print a selection of the best nominations in the magazine over the next month and one reader will win two tickets to the awards lunch at Claridges.
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