Steve McCabe
Main Page: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak) Foreign Affairs Committee
Steve McCabe Excerpts
Mike Gapes
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.
When a Select Committee produces a report that contains lots of recommendations and says some telling and critical things and it wants the Government to produce a serious response, that Committee has effect if it works collectively and comes to a consensual report. If the Government then gives an inadequate response, the Committee goes back. Under the chairmanship of my very good friend the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), we have been persistent. We have told the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: “This is an inadequate response. We’re not accepting it.” We have made it difficult for them—we are persistent—and we do that on behalf of the House as a whole. We do it not as delegates from the central committee of a political party, but as parliamentarians who have used our knowledge, experience, integrity and persistence to beaver down, get the facts, expose the scandals and the problems, highlight them and then challenge the Executive.
There has been a trend in this Parliament for the Executive to treat Parliament with contempt. We have even passed motions saying that. I will not deviate from the terms of the motion, but we have seen lots of examples of Parliament having to struggle to assert our authority. It would be very strange if today we start to undermine Parliament’s authority in a different way.
Steve McCabe
I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I should probably say in passing: you are not dead yet. Can there be anyone who has witnessed this debate who could think that voting for this motion would be to represent the will of the House? If the purpose is to represent the will of the House tonight, do we not know what we should do?
Mike Gapes
I am very grateful. Obviously every Member has to look to their own conscience and presumably their own relationship with their party to decide what they will do, but I must say that I am astonished that there is a Whip on this House business. It is not usual.
I was in the House in 2001, and I recall the attempted removal of the Chairs of the Select Committee on Transport, Gwyneth Dunwoody, and the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Donald Anderson, now Lord Anderson. That was not exactly the same as tonight’s proposal, because there was a vote in a parliamentary Labour party meeting, but it was ultimately a decision for the House as a whole. The House at that time rejected the proposal from the Labour party and those names were reinstated. We are in a different situation today, but the essence of my point is that, regardless of what happens to my personal position, this is about how Parliament and the Select Committees work.