Parliament: the Wright Effect

Michael McCartney (Bradford Grammar School) explains that changes to the executive-legislative dynamic in the UK that have gone largely unnoticed, but are no less important for that.A printable version of this article appears in the latest edition of FPTP - tutor2u's digital magazine for AS & A2 Politics students.

Many students argue that we live in what is effectively a post-parliamentary system where MPs are merely lobby fodder. Often students bandy around the (over-used and much misunderstood – but that is possibly the subject of a future article) term “elective dictatorship” in an attempt to provide evidence of parliament’s decline. And while it is useful in a comparative sense to illustrate the weakness of an executive drawn from the legislature versus a clear separation of powers, these arguments show a limited understanding of goings on in Westminster.

There is a great deal of academic evidence to counter the idea that Parliament is an organisation suffering a long term decline. It is more accurate to say that power is multi-directional in nature, i.e. flowing upwards from the legislature and downwards from the executive (in a similar vein power in the USA has ebbed and flowed between federal and state government in recent years) and this should be recognised in essay responses in order to give a more balanced answer.

On the one hand it is the case that:

• party managers may have lost power;
• Blair did not lose a vote in the Commons for 7 years;
• Prime Minister’s Questions has little real worth in terms of MPs holding the PM to account;
• select committees are nowhere near as powerful as their US counterparts;
• and Early Day Motions verge on the pointless (search “EDM Chorister Jack Topping”!!).

Admittedly I have only summarised the points on one hand of the argument for reasons of space, but a full answer would present a more cogent case than is often seen to defend Parliament. For instance, it could make reference to the excellent work by Philip Cowley, Professor of Politics at the University of Nottingham, and his website revolts.co.uk., and present the case that the increasingly rebellious nature of MPs during the last Labour government was not a temporary hiatus in the slow death of Parliament, but part of an on-going trend evidenced by the fact that revolts increased to a post-war record under the coalition government. Additionally another feature that has escaped the public’s attention is the fuel injection that the Lords has undergone post 1999, and reference to this development illustrates a candidate knows what is really going on in British government and politics.

Arguably the single most important development in executive-legislative relations in the last several decades is the introduction of departmental select committees in the UK in 1979. There are numerous examples of their excellent work to support this assertion. Some of the most prominent include: Arms to Africa (1999); ineffective Office of the Deputy PM (2002, 2005); role of Attorney General (2007).

It is the increasingly high profile that these bodies have achieved over the past five years, however, that is of particular focus here since it is a very recent change and definitely one that would impress examiners if referred to explicitly in the given context. A report released earlier this year by the Democratic Audit has gone as far as saying that the media coverage of select committees is now at unprecedented levels and that their work even merits international attention. This upsurge has occurred following Tony Wright's House of Commons Reform Committee (Rebuilding the House) recommendations [specifically here in respect of select committees]:

• chairs are now elected on a free (and secret) ballot of all MPs

• backbench members, not whips, determine who should represent their party on each committee

Wright (a former MP and now a Professorial Fellow at Birkbeck) himself has hinted that the real action is far away from the floor of the Commons: “The external media attention that the House gets comes far more from the Select Committee system than from anywhere else.”

In depth analysis by the team (Patrick Dunleavy and Dominic Muir) at the Democratic Audit reveals that media mentions of work by committees more than trebled between 2008 and 2012. Unsurprisingly, much of this increase can be attributed to the work of four major committees: Public Accounts; Home Affairs (especially after the English riots in 2011); Treasury; and Culture, Media, and Sport. But increased broadcast and press coverage was evident almost across the board, with 17 of the 25 committees experiencing growth.

The Wright reforms have in part achieved, therefore, what they set out to. Namely, increase the public profile of Parliament. The caveat here, of course, is that more press coverage does not necessarily mean that the public consciousness of the inner working of Parliament has changed. If it hasn’t, given the magnitude of the change it can’t be long before voters recognise the shift.

So what does this mean in terms of the ability of the legislature to hold the executive to account? Peter Riddell once wrote that select committees have “been a major factor in the opening up of the workings of government over the past twenty years”. If this is the case, and one of the most effective limbs of the parliamentary apparatus is receiving far more media attention, government departments are far more likely to be held liable for their actions.

Questions

Outline the role of select committees

Use the internet to research the contents of the Wright Report and analysis of its effectiveness

Discuss whether reforms to Parliament since 1979 have increased the ability of the legislature to effectively control the executive