On Monday night, David Cameron and Nick Clegg succumbed to the temptations of power.
On Monday night, David Cameron and Nick Clegg succumbed to the temptations of power. They went against the spirit of their pre-election commitments to restore trust in politics. While the press concentrated on the government’s strategy for the economy, they sneakily expanded the government’s future powers of patronage. The coalition quietly whipped its MPs into voting for an expansion of the power and influence of the executive (government) over the legislature (parliament). The bill in question was the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and the result was that the number of MPs will now be reduced by 10 per cent at the next election but the number of ministers will remain the same.
Perhaps most shocking was the supine manner in which the Commons went along with this reduction in its independence. At the start of the debate on this measure, there were only 19 MPs on the coalition benches, six on the opposition ones and two milling by the door. There was no attempt on behalf of coalition MPs to make the government back down and only 22 Conservative MPs ended up rebelling.
Monday night’s events were at odds with Cameron and Clegg’s reformist rhetoric during the election. In February, Cameron declared, ‘We’d want to reduce the power of the executive and increase the power of parliament even if politics hadn’t fallen into disrepute.’ The Liberal Democrats claimed that their policy was to ‘cut the number of ministers and MPs’. Now, however, the two parties have pushed through a law to reduce the number of MPs while keeping the number of ministers constant, thus further reducing the ability of the legislature to rein in the power of the executive.
One Tory MP, Charles Walker, attempted to put this right. In September he tabled a new clause that would mean that the number of ministers would be reduced by the same proportion as the number of MPs. Walker’s clause would not have reduced the extent of the executive’s influence in the Commons, but merely maintained the status quo.
The government’s only substantive response to Walker’s proposal was to argue that the new clause was unnecessary as it would voluntarily reduce the number of ministers in time. But if that were really the case, what would have been the harm in accepting Walker’s clause? Walker was asking his colleagues in government to hold the line, not to weaken their position. But even this was too much for the coalition whips. They were determined to expand their masters’ powers of patronage.
Not a single Conservative MP that I spoke to in the days preceding the vote could make an intellectual case for the coalition’s position. Several of them laughed when I asked if there was any justification for what the government was doing. Those who canvassed for the measure report that only one MP objected to it on principled grounds. But — with those 22 noble exceptions — they were all going to vote for it. As one MP who supported the government position told me, ‘It’s one of those issues where blind loyalty and self-interest coincide.’
The reference to self-interest was revealing. For this MP, the priority was to maximise his chances of becoming a minister, rather than maintain the position of the Commons vis-à-vis the executive. This man had stood for election as an MP because he aspired to become a member of the government. He had gone into politics to govern rather than to hold the government to account.
Here lies the fundamental problem with our current political system: at least two thirds of our MPs aspire to be members of the executive. This limits their desire to hold the governing elite to account, which in turn makes the Commons an ineffective body. If parliament does not hold the government to account, no one else can do so properly in the five years between general elections.
Wanting to become a minister is not, of course, an ignoble ambition. But it does conflict with one’s loyalty to the institution of parliament. There were at least 20 Conservative MPs who had told colleagues that they were going to vote for Walker’s clause until the whips suggested to them that it would not be a good career move.
The worst thing is that those who executed this nasty power grab will never be held to account by the public. Even those few constituents who go to bed after watching the News at Ten and wake up to the Today programme will be unaware of their MPs’ actions on Monday night. Parliament is so little reported these days — there were only four journalists in the press gallery of the House of Commons for most of this debate — that MPs can get away with voting for almost anything so long as it does not raise the ire of an organised lobby group or becomes a cause célèbre.
At the same time, the current arrangements do not serve the executive well. As Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office, has observed privately, the system gives us the worst of both worlds. We have a legislature where most of the members would rather be part of the executive, and an executive whose talent pool is restricted to members of the two legislative houses.
The solution to this problem is a full separation of powers. The Prime Minister could fill ministerial positions with the best people for the job. Those with experience of running large organisations could be brought in to turn around problem departments. Parliament would then be made up of public servants who believe their main purpose is to hold the government to account. With no MP able to become a minister without resigning their seat, MPs would fuss less about their promotion prospects when deciding how to vote. The Commons would become a far more vigorous check on the executive.
If being a member of parliament were the height of an MP’s career, self-interest would make them protect their powers and independence against executive encroachment. MPs would believe that they had been sent to parliament to hold the government to account rather than to try and join it.
Comments