The lack of any real effective democracy in the House of Commons was on view again in yesterday’s Budget debate. A budget of £670bn including unprecedented borrowing of £175bn, with debt levels expected to double over the next few years to a staggering £1.2 trillion, 80% of our entire GDP, and debt interest charges already at £28bn a year expected to rise to £43bn a year, plus a black hole in the public accounts of £45bn left unaccounted for – all this sailed through with decultory debate and just four votes on relatively minotr consequentials. The House desperately needs an Estimates Committee, complementary to the PAC and the Treasury Committee, which examines systematically and in depth the whole of the Government’s Budget, how it is financed and how it is allocated, what are the goals it is designed to achieve and therefore what size it should be, and what on a zero-budget analysis year-by-year should be expanded and what reduced. The session should be open televised hearings with independent experts called to give evidence, both about the structure and shape of the Budget as well as its component parts. Alas, that is but one – though an exceptionally important one – of the many gaps and shortcomings in the Commons’ procedures which mean that the House is massively failing to hold the Government to account, which is its one real function. But there are now beginning to be some stirrings in the dovecotes.

Parliament First, a Back-Bench cross-party group of senior Parliamentarians, is starting to assert itself and advance the outline of a democratic agenda. It is pushing for a new Business Committee, elected by the whole House in a secret ballot, which would prepare a fortnightly programme of public business for the House so that the Government would no longer be able to monopolise the agenda. It is proposing a Public Petitions Committee so that petitions which receive at least a certain level of support from the public must be discussed and where appropriate referred to the relevant Select Committee and/or debated on the floor of the House.
It is calling for Parliament to set up its own Commissions of Inquiry to investigate matters of major public concern and appoint the chair and members and the terms of reference, creating an independence of scrutiny which an Inquiry set up by No.10 would not have. And it is demanding that the chair and members of Select Committees should be elected by secret ballot of the whole House rather than slected through the patronage of the Whips (in effect, No.10), with some of the more important reports chosen by the Liaison Committee (made up of chairs of all the Select Committees) for debate on a motion on the floor of the House and with a vote at the end.
There is one other form of patronage which should be removed from the monopoly of the Executive and instead shared with Parliament. As with US Congressional hearings, key public appointments should be subject to ratification by the appropriate Parliamentary Select Committee. Gordon Brown did hint at this in his first statement as PM when he promised a Democratic Renewal Bill. Shortly after the Cabinet Office drew up a list of some of the most important quangos and Ombudsman offices which, it was stated, would be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny. Sadly, nothing happened. But even if it had, the list excluded all the really important offices of State – Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Heads of the Police and Judiciary, and all key external appointments made by the Prime Minister.
Only when Parliament takes to itself the real powers to hold the Government effectively to account will the public’s faith in it begin to be restored.

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