It’s a case not so much as turkeys voting for Christmas as turkeys voting to reject their escape into freedom. The House yesterday debated the proposal, originally put forward by Parliament First (the All-Party Parliamentary Group on reform of parliamentary procedure which I chair), that all amendments tabled at the committee and report stages of bills should have to be accompanied by an explanation of their purpose in no more than 50 words.
You might think this was a minor and unexceptionable proposal which would go through on the nod. If so, you do not know the culture of Parliament where conservatism reigns supreme, not least within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The proposal was defeated by 142 votes to 23, and of the latter only 4 were members of the PLP.
There is a key reason why this proposed reform really matters. The only time when the House as a whole has any prospect of changing the content of a bill is at report stage after it has gone through committee, where an intransigent government’s whips can use their majority to push through a bill virtually unchanged. At report stage the whole House has an opportunity to debate usually 4 or 5 important amendments, often reflecting the known strong views of the public on the issue, and then votes with the potential to make significant alterations to the bill.
It virtually never happens. The reason is that a large majority of MPs (perhaps as much as 70-80%) allow themselves to be herded through the lobbies by the whips without ever knowing what exactly they’re voting for. The purpose of explanatory statements is to make sure that they do know, by setting out the purpose of each amendment briefly on the Order Paper, the TV monitor and on their iPads.
So why was this obviously sensible proposal so decisively rejected? Good question: it reveals a lot about parliament and the characters in it. The ostensible reason given for rejecting it is that it would impose too great a burden on the Opposition which lacks the support that civil servants give ministers. But this excuse doesn’t bear scrutiny.
It is true that taking a bill through the House is an exhausting labour of several hundred hours: it requires mastering the content of the bill, deciding on the major and minor changes that are needed to it, consulting outside experts for their views on amending it, and then drawing up amendments in acceptable parliamentary form. But once those onerous requirements have been completed, writing down the purpose of the amendment is likely to take less than 30 seconds.
So the real reasons that this sensible little proposal was rejected are that it suited all the parties: both the government and opposition whips would much prefer MPs to go on voting as at present with as little knowledge of the issue as possible. Too many MPs are content to be railroaded though the lobbies so long as they are not held to account for their ignorance or laziness. And too few members of the public are aware of this abuse to make it into an issue which threatens an MP’s tenure.
The three members of the Labour Party voting for the amendment were Jim Hood, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher and Dennis Skinner, with Jeremy Corbyn acting as a teller.
