Goldsmith’s rallying call for more rebellions
Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith wants government backbenchers to be free to vote with the opposition more frequently, he said last night.
The Richmond Park MP called for a culture change which would allow MPs to vote against the government without it being seen as an act of open rebellion in an audience at the Royal Society of Arts in central London.
Mr Goldsmith, elected to the Commons for the first time last year, said he resented not being able to disagree with his party’s line.
“If I was to table a minor amendment, that would be seen as an act of aggression,” he said.
“If I was to vote against the government, that would be an act of career suicide.”
Mr Goldsmith refused to blame the whips, saying they were doing their job of pushing through the government’s agenda.
But he insisted that “backbenchers should be willing to resist the pressure [of the whips] on issues which matter to them”.
‘Lawmaking in this country is a shambles’
His comments followed a lengthy address by Stein Ringen, a professor of sociology and social policy at Oxford University, who had described the state of lawmaking in Britain as a “shambles”.
“The process is under relentless criticism… and rightly so,” he said. “What we are up against is parliament’s brazen disregard for itself.”
Prof Ringen said he expected Nick Clegg’s programme of constitutional reform would yield little of any consequence, emphasising the “more urgent” need for changes in the Commons rather than the Lords.
He used the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to demonstrate the inadequacy of the lawmaking system. As a result of the indeterminate sentencing policy it introduced, a ‘backlog” of 11,000 prisoners has developed. These inmates are “languishing” behind bars waiting for parole officers to assess their cases.
“This unbelievable state of affairs… a Kafka-like nightmare of the kind one expects to find in a Stalinist state… must be the results of some inadequacy of decision-making,” he argued.
“As the House of Commons now works, it can barely be said to legislate in any meaningful way at all.”
Prof Ringen said MPs needed to retake control of the Commons’ business, which is currently dominated by the government.
Ministers may establish the formation of a backbench committee by 2013. “I find this baffling – why wait three years?” he asked.
The expenses scandal, he suggested, only became serious because the Commons was so “demoralised”.
Prof Ringen added: “The problem is not the MPs, but the institution. It does not have the working arrangements it needs for proper and considered legislative work.
“If only MPs could get into their heads they are who they are… the strange fact of the matter is the House of Commons has no one to speak for it or stand up in the world and speak for itself.”
He called on Speaker John Bercow to do more, and said select committees held the key to improving parliament’s performance.
Allowing these bodies to scrutinise and reject the government’s legislative proposals after the second reading stage would solve the problem, he argued.
Public accounts committee chair and Labour MP Margaret Hodge rejected much of Prof Ringen’s arguments, despite calling herself an “instinctive reformer”.
She said he had offered a “narrow and partial analysis” and insisted “there is a lot of good legislation that takes place”.
Ms Hodge, who presided over the longest ever piece of legislation in the Companies Act 2006, said lawmaking was only a “tiny part” of parliament’s work. She also opposed the “over-politicisation” of the Speaker.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Goldsmith agreed with many of Prof Ringen’s ideas. He lamented the failure of the new parliament to implement proposals made before the general election.
“The reforms we now have on the menu I think are almost completely meaningless,” he added, referring to the electoral reform referendum.
“The central issue is that parliament fails to properly scrutinise the executive.”
