Foreign Affairs Committee

Michael Fabricant Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan]

I was thinking more of the Leader of the Opposition.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

I had not planned to intervene, given that I am in my pink-and-no-tie mode—but hey, we’re a modern Parliament! May I tell my right hon. Friend—I will call her that—that when there was a move some years ago to get me off the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, for reasons I will not bore hon. Members with now, I was told by the then Chairman, the late, great Sir Gerald Kaufman MP, that a Member of Parliament was elected to a Select Committee for a Parliament. It might have changed, but, regardless of shenanigans, I think the principle still stands.

[Joan Ryan]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention echoes where I started: there is no formula setting out the exact required number. It is not entirely without precedent, but it is extremely unusual for this to happen.

I will try to move on. More widely, this attempt highlights some of the difficulties with how the main parties have a stranglehold on how Parliament works—from the way debates are scheduled to the party political carve-up on Select Committees. The dominance of the House of Commons by the Whips and the usual channels does our democracy a disservice. Minority voices are squeezed out and those who dissent from the view of the Front Benches can be summarily dismissed. If we are to reach across outdated tribal lines and agree on workable solutions to the challenges that we face as a nation, we must look again at how we organise Parliament. We must do that if we are to change politics, and we must change politics.

Removing newly independent MPs from Select Committees undermines and runs counter to the spirit of reforms made in recent years to reduce the influence of political parties over Select Committees. Those changes are widely considered to have strengthened the Committee system. For instance, the Wright reforms, implemented after the 2010 election, removed from party Whips the power to appoint Select Committee members, and introduced their election by their parliamentary peers.

Let me quote some of what former and current Members have said about these matters. The background to the first quotation is a rebellion against removing Select Committee Chairs Gwyneth Dunwoody, the former MP for Crewe and Nantwich, and Donald Anderson, then the MP for Swansea East and now, I believe, a Member of the other place. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), now Leader of the Opposition, said that appointments to Select Committees should be taken out of the hands of Whips. He said:

“I thank the Leader of the House for giving way. Before he completes his contribution, will he say what thought he has given to the Liaison Committee report ‘Shifting the Balance’, which is about the future appointment of Select Committees and appointments to vacancies that might occur in this Parliament? Does he accept its recommendation that those should be taken out of the power of the Whips Offices of all parties?”—[Official Report, 16 June 2001; Vol. 372, c. 45.]

That was very clear.

Angela—now Baroness—Browning, then the MP for Tiverton and Honiton, put the Tory Front Bench view that the power of the Whips to appoint was

“past its sell-by date.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2001; Vol. 372, c. 40.]

It is hard to disagree with that.

Robin Cook, the former MP for Livingston and a very respected and eminent Member of the House, and the Labour Government allowed free votes on Select Committee matters, because they were matters for the House. Will Labour do the same now, and if not, why not? I do not think that any free vote will take place today.

During the same debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) said:

“There is a message to my right hon. Friend. The Government might get away tonight with sacking two hon. Members who should be members of Select Committees, and they might think little of it, but in the last Parliament, and in this Parliament, sadly, they continue to present an image of what they are like which, I am sure, is totally inaccurate. The image suggests that they believe that one can ride roughshod, and grab and take anything. The impression of a belief that we rule, no matter what people say, is being marked down on our card outside. When we are in difficult times, we will find, like the shambles of the Conservative party, that it is too late to reform. The electorate will have marked our card indelibly, and when the moment comes, retribution will be visited upon us.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2001; Vol. 372, c. 61.]

Those are words to which the current Leader of the Opposition should perhaps pay a bit of attention.