Three strikes -but they're still in!

Written by David Heath MP and published in Western Gazette on Fri 3rd Jul 2009

I engineered a defeat for the government last Thursday. Okay, so it wasn't a major, catastrophic, vote-of-confidence-inducing defeat. In fact, it was hardly mentioned in the press at all, except for possibly in the East Midlands (which I shall explain in a moment), but it was a defeat nevertheless. And although the whips were spitting blood and pouring expletives on their hapless charges, it was the easiest thing in the world to have avoided. All it would have taken was a phone call.

Some time ago the government decided that there was a need to introduce a system for scrutinizing the work of quangos, non-elected bodies, which take many of the decisions which affect local communities and determine how and where public money is spent. I agree. I am frequently frustrated that agencies and bodies such as the regional economic development agencies are so remote from democratic control. Harriet Harman proposed two new tiers of scrutiny. Firstly, a select committee of the House of Commons for each region, and secondly, occasional meetings of what is described as a regional grand committee, comprising all the MPs elected in a region meeting together. Both have their merits, and if implemented properly could have their uses.

The problem, though, is that they haven't been implemented properly. In the case of the select committees, the government flatly refused to let the membership of the committee reflect the political composition of the region they represent, and what's more packed them with ministerial aides who are hardly likely to provide stringent questioning of their political masters. In the South West, for instance, the committee was to have a Labour majority despite the fact that Labour are clearly the third party in terms of the MPs elected. As a result, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats have been prepared to fill the minority places, and the so-called committees meet with only Labour members and achieve precisely nothing.

At least they couldn't pull that trick with grand committees, as they have all the MPs for a region on them. So we have an alternative tactic. Without any notice, without asking the other parties or anyone else, we were confronted with a series of motions on Thursday telling us where, when, and for how long each committee will meet and what they will discuss. In the case of the South West, it will be on September 3rd, during the school holidays, in Exeter, for a maximum of two hours, which will be only half of the time it will take many members to travel there and back. And all this has been arranged for the convenience of the so-called regional minister and no-one else. So much for effective scrutiny.

I still think these committees can be useful. And I have no problem with them meeting in the over-long summer recess, although it is just plain stupid to do so during school holidays when many people will have booked their annual holiday (or during the Conservative Party Conference, which was another of the dates chosen). But why on earth not discuss it in advance, find out what we wanted to question the government on, find a date, time and venue which suit as many people as possible? That's why we voted against each of the proposals, and actually defeated the government on one, dealing with the East Midlands. Whether that means the good people of Nottingham, Derby etc are uniquely blessed or uniquely deprived I leave it to you to judge. This all may sound like a silly bit of Westminster nonsense and hurt egos. To an extent it is. But it also reveals the fact that despite all the protestations that the government wants to rebuild and strengthen the role of Parliament, actually its reflexes are as bad as ever. Just one win, but strike one!

We had a couple of other examples, which turned out rather better. The government want to set up a committee to look radically at the way Parliament works and suggest reforms. That's good news. But when they placed the motion setting up the new committee last week, it was restricted to looking only at "non-government" business. In other words the more than eighty per cent of parliamentary time which is spent trying to scrutinise legislation and hold ministers to account was to be off-limits for reform. I immediately put down an amendment to expand the remit to all proceedings, and within hours I had the backing of fifty or so colleagues from all parties. As a result the government backed down. Strike two.

Then we had a motion on MPs' pensions, and again an illustration of how too many members of the House still just don't get it. The MPs' scheme, which is pretty generous, and certainly so in comparison to most private sector pensions, is over-stretched. This is mainly down to longevity, which, as I said in the debate, I guess we'll just have to live with. But the solution proposed dipping yet further into the taxpayers' pocket in future years. No way, that just won't do, so my colleagues Steve Webb and Vince Cable, in combination with Labour backbencher Frank Field, put down an amendment to stop it. And as I argued in the debate, if we don't put the squeeze on our own pensions, how on earth are we ever going to get to grips with the problems of public sector pensions more widely.

Again, the government backed down and were forced to accept our amendment. Strike three - in baseball that would be out!