I’m sure all the people involved are well meaning but there is something soul destryoing about this story on the front page of the Guardian today:
Lord Mandelson is set to make history by becoming the first cabinet minister from the House of Lords in modern times to answer questions in the Commons.
John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, is planning to use his mandate as a moderniser to break centuries of tradition which have kept the Commons and Lords apart in an attempt to make ministers who sit in the upper house accountable to MPs.
Nicholas Watt goes on to describe, in miniscule detail, how the convention that MPs never talk to ministers sitting in “the other place” might be allowed to address the House of Commons (note how he writes all this down, seemingly irony free, yet can’t even grasp a basic fact such as whether the Alternative Vote system is proportional or not – it isn’t just MPs who are the problem here). As long as they don’t cross the bar, they’re safe. One can only speculate what might happen if the big toe of an ennobled minister were to inadvertantly slip over the line. Chaos! Apocalypse! Revolution!
For some reason I am reminded of Egon Spengler’s grave warning in Ghostbusters not to “cross the streamers” – of course at the end of the film it becomes necessary to do that to prevent the end of the world. Somehow I suspect Peter Mandelson setting foot in the House of Commons won’t be anything like as spectacular. Or involve quite as much marshmallow (I could be wrong about that last bit, I will concede).
The normally sensible (he has a blind spot when it comes to the House of Lords, it must be said) Vernon Bogdanor doesn’t exactly help, describing this move as “radical.”
I have to admit that I’m in two minds about this myself. On the one hand, clearly the House of Commons should be free to scrutinise any minister of state, in the House of Commons, without having to worry about bars or go off to the much smaller Westminster Hall. On the other hand, I don’t think there should be ANY ministers in the House of Lords full stop.
This convention about having to ennoble any non-MP who is to serve as a minister is total nonsense. It leads to people like Digby Jones getting a peerage simply for doing five months in the Department of Business, Enterprice and Regulatory Reform (a department which itself existed for twelve months before Gordon Brown insisted on reprinting all the stationary yet again). The argument for it is that ministers must be accountable to Parliament – but they aren’t. They get to answer questions in Parliament – however lamentably – but they are only actually accountable to the Prime Minister.
If we want ministers to be accountable to Parliament then we should have confirmation hearings. Parliament should have the authority to throw out any nominee that it believes to be weak or incompetent. The quid pro quo of that would be that anyone in principle should be able to serve – and not be a parliamentarian. A side benefit, I suspect, is that reshuffles would be less frequent (as they would be become more bureaucratic) and thus ministers would be given the space to do a job rather than spend six months getting up to speed before the Prime Minister moves them somewhere else to cover up for his own failings.
Better ministers with more of an opportunity to do their job? I’m sure the reactionaries in Westminster would be outraged. It might just lead to better government for the rest of us though.
I strongly agree with this, however would you conceed that a check against incessent pigheadedness (on both sides) is needed? Something like recess appointments in the US, where a temporary appointment may be made in the case of gridlock.
It’s really quite an important thing to reform, because of this debate concerning Prime Ministerial health and privacy. For Evan Harris’ argument (which I strongly sympathise with) that it should be up to the PM’s colleagues to judge on his health, as he is technically the first among equals, then he needs to be more practically the first among equals. Confirmation hearings would be a way of achieving that.
That said, I don’t have any objection to ministers being Lords per se — I think it’s good that they should be accountable to a branch of the legislature. The key is ensuring that this accountability means something in more than just theory.
It’s clear to me what is happening. While Brown and Co. pay lip service to the idea of electoral reform they are really nudging us towards MPs being appointed by No. 10.
Thus The Commons will become yet another quango.
That, or you could have a system whereby the block would have to be dependent on a super-majority.
I’m sure there are all sorts of practical considerations to be borne in mind. I’m equally sure that almost anything would be better than the current system which just seems to encourage poor, flibbertigibbet (to quote a Mandelsonism) government.