Shenanigans & filibustering – how the whips block bills the majority want

Fifty years ago private members’ bills were an important channel by which MPs, if they were lucky enough in the draw, had the opportunity to pilot legislation through Parliament of some real local or even national significance. This small but valuable opportunity has now been closed by the steady interference of the executive. Friday was a good example of the anti-democratic arrogance which has reduced these bills to a pointless facade.

My bill would have ended tax avoidance both by having the tax returns of the 250 wealthiest individuals and 250 largest companies published and by having banks report both to Companies House and HMRC the real trading address of a company, who its directors and beneficial owners really are, and where they’re located. HMRC would then be empowered to access a company’s bank account data, enabling the tax abuse currently costing the country at least £35bn a year to be effectively addressed.

I won 19th place of 20 randomly selected from about 450 applications. If you’re in the first 7, you get priority in the allocation of scarce time on Fridays, when private members’ bills are traditionally taken, and a serious chance of getting enough parliamentary time to secure second reading. If you’re no. 19, normally not a chance, but on Friday there was just one bill in front of mine, promoted by a new Tory MP on deep-sea mining.

It was a hand-out bill: the Tory MP, rejecting all the requests from charities and others to promote one of their good causes, but wishing to have her name on the Statute Book by promoting a successful bill, asked the government for any bill they would not oppose. It should therefore have taken no more than 1 of the 5 hours available on Friday.

But the Tory MP and 3 of the usual suspects (members of the regular Tory back-bench filibuster squad) spun it out for 3 hours and then the Minister, winding up the debate which was unopposed, took more than another hour rather than the 10 minutes it should have taken. Just over 1 hour left was0 too little to have sufficient debate to secure second reading – which of course was the objective of the whole filibuster exercise. I spoke for 20 minutes, and then Jacob Rees-Mogg, the amiable Tory toff who has stepped straight out of the eighteenth century, talked the bill out.

Why are governments so fearful of giving anyone else but themselves the power to influence the legislative process? Why are they so determined to block MPs, even their own MPs, from having the right to propose legislation that, even though they command a majority of votes in the House and can vote down what they disagree with, they nevertheless prefer to use every bit of shenanigans at their disposal to prevent any such bills from ever reaching a vote at all or, preferably, from ever being brought before the House in the first place?

Just as they are currently trying to prevent charities from having any voice before general elections, so they want to snuff out the voice of anyone who dares to demand a modification of the law, however popular that might be with the electorate. Democracy is fine for them, so long as they can always get their way. Widen the access to the democratic right to decide what the laws of the country should be, and they will deploy every underhand tactic to stop it in its tracks. So what should be done?

How prise open just a chink of opportunity for an electorate crying out for reform? The government’s first trick is to insist that all Private Members’ Bills (PMBs) must be taken on Fridays, when they know very well that the vast majority of MPs will be in their constituencies, and then demand that a quorum of at least 100 MPs must be present to vote for “a closure motion”. Very few bills survive that without the full support of the government.

There several ways of redressing this. PMBs could be taken instead on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings when almost all MPs are normally present. Alternatively, the vote could be deferred till the next Wednesday. Or the 100-minimum vote could be replaced by a srequirement of 50 MPs in favour. To prevent filibustering, time limits could be imposed on speeches. Any matters not agreed at committee stage could be referred to a vote of the whole House at report stage, with a short explanation of each amendment to ensure that all MPs at that stage knew what they were voting on.

At least this would for the first time give such bills, especially those favoured by a majority of the public, a reasonable chance of becoming the law of the land.