Contrary to popular wisdom, the mother of parliaments is working better than ever

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Feb 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the mother of parliaments is working better than ever



Illustration by Steve O'Brien




The home of democracy: Contrary to popular belief, Britain's Parliament, the "Mother of Parliaments", is in finer fettle than ever


SITTING on his canopied chair, behind his bewigged clerks, smiling meekly and mildly calling “Order!”, Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, seems an inoffensive sort of chap. But he has become the subject of a mini-scandal and the symbol of a big malaise.

The scandal involves air miles and expense-account taxis; the malaise concerns the alleged venality and utility of Parliament itself. David Cameron, the leader of the Conservatives, observed in the House of Commons this week that the public now doubts whether politicians offer value for money. Judging by newspapers and talk shows, the public has decided: the repute of the mother of parliaments is roughly equal to that of the Millennium Dome; MPs' status has fallen lower than that of estate agents, and maybe even journalists.

It is easy to see why. First there are the amateurish financial controls that have permitted dodgy accounting, generous loopholes and brazen nepotism—a system that Mr Martin himself has, perhaps unfortunately, been deputed to address. Many MPs seem unable to grasp the widespread anger that these fiddles arouse; they accuse journalists of confecting it—and defensively interrogate said journalists about their own expenses. Then there is the fact that the green benches in the Commons are often very green indeed, because very few people are sitting on them. Gordon Brown, like his predecessor, is scarcely ever there; MPs who do turn up are often outnumbered by the schoolchildren in the public gallery, who are also better behaved. And, alas, this neglect of the chamber is entirely rational.

Along with the taxis, Mr Martin has in the past been accused of undue partisanship (like all speakers he is an MP, in his case a Labour one). That too reflects a general problem with the House he chairs. Since the birth of modern political parties, the partisan loyalty of MPS (on pain of not being promoted) has hobbled the Commons in its supposed job of holding the executive to account. Real power was long ago displaced to the cabinet, then sucked from cabinet to the prime minister, and from him to the Scottish Assembly, Europe and so on.

Important debate takes place inside parties—and in the media: as a popular political joke has it, the best way to bury an issue is to make a speech about it in the Commons. Mr Brown's team once vowed to make policy announcements in Parliament first, but they soon reverted to the leaking and spinning of yore. The one parliamentary set-piece that commands attention—prime minister's questions (PMQs)—has, under the pressure of television, and of the mutual loathing of Mr Brown and Mr Cameron, become a weekly yelling match (badly policed by Mr Martin). On February 27th Mr Cameron tellingly used the occasion to challenge Mr Brown to extra-parliamentary televised debates.

Here comes the “but”: all of that is sad and bad, but little of it is new, and most of it has been worse. “The scene of noise and uproar which the House of Commons now exhibits is perfectly disgusting,” reported Charles Greville in 1835. Not only the manners but the morals of MPs used to be at least as lax; taxi abuse and other scams brought to light by improved scrutiny pale beside those of bygone eras now mistily regarded as halcyon. Attendance in the Commons has always been pretty slack.

The same is true of MPs' sycophancy: they are in fact much less docile than in the past.

The original Bagehot records a Victorian description of Tory MPs as the “finest brute votes in Europe”; 50 years ago, more politicians may have been able to quote Thucydides, but they were even more obedient to the whips than their counterparts today. Though Labour's big majorities have disguised the sedition, the MPs of Tony Blair and Mr Brown have by post-war standards been peculiarly rebellious. Even if actual government defeats have been vanishingly rare, insurrections have forced ministerial concessions, as in the current wrangle over anti-terror laws. An opposite but encouraging trend is visible on the Tory benches: for all the pantomime adversarialism of PMQs, the Tories have actually become more co-operative over legislation during Labour's decade in office.

Dignified and efficient

Parliament isn't only less woeful than it used to be: in some ways it is even actively good. MPs spend more time than ever helping their constituents. That helps to explain why—as with attitudes to, say, the NHS—general and particular perceptions are contradictory: people respect their own MPs while believing that as a pack they are villains. Meanwhile, although House of Commons select committees are neither as powerful as congressional ones in America nor as independent as they could and should be, they are increasingly well resourced and influential; the prime minister now appears before one of them. Another relatively recent initiative is useful scrutiny of bills in draft form. All that is less fun than blood-and-thunder oratory, but in an age when the substance of politics is often dryly technocratic, committees aren't a bad place to conduct it.

But the biggest and least-noticed improvement has been in the House of Lords. There are still more walking sticks than ethnic minorities reposing on the red benches beneath the stained glass and gloomy statuary. But the affiliated Lords are now more fairly spread among the parties than in the days of in-built Tory domination. They are also more effective and assertive in rejecting and improving bills. Lacking a majority, the government has to resort to the quaint expedient of winning the argument. As it happens, there will soon be an election to the Lords: one of the 92 hereditary peers left among the appointees by the reform of 1999 has died, and another will be elected in her place. It is a crazy arrangement—but it is working.

Easy as it is to excoriate it, the mother of parliaments is not as senile as its many detractors, and the run of recent scandals, suggest. On the contrary: she is in finer fettle than ever.

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