John McDonnell
Wokingham Times
All too often I have had to tell readers of this column that Parliament is not working well to defend our liberties and hold the government to account. There are too many holidays, too little time to debate and question, too few Ministerial statements, too many pre-emptive leaks to distract attention from Parliamentary criticisms of government, too many Bills that go through with much of their content unexamined owing to government imposed restrictions on time, too many good questions that are never answered, too much spin and too little truthful analysis of issues.
Today I have to report the shenanigans in Parliament on Friday 18th May, which summed up what is wrong. Indeed, no script writer of satirical drama would dared have written anything so damning to the cause of Parliamentary accountability.
By some establishment miracle, a nasty little Bill to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act was given yet another Friday to allow it time to pass through the Commons. Normally private members Bills are only given one Friday. If they are contentious as this one clearly was, they perish, talked out by a handful of MPs who can legitimately expose their undesirable features at some length and prevent a conclusion being reached.
I made enquiries last Thursday, alerted to the threat that this contentious Bill was different because it had yet more time. I was told by good informants that Labour would have 80 MPs there. They were relying on the other parties to have 20 there, to give them the 100 MPs it takes to close down debate and prevent a small group of opponents talking the Bill out. I cancelled my engagements in the constituency for Friday, and went to London.
Sure enough, I found that there were around 100 MPs keen to drive this through, and a much smaller group of us wanting to stop it. The 100 called three votes to bring different phases of the business to a close before I and others had a chance to speak, winning each one. On the final vote about whether the Bill should be approved or not, 98 voted for it ( 78 Labour, 18 Conservative) and 25 of us voted against it (9 Labour, 5 Conservative, 1 Plaid, 1 Respect, 9 Lib Dem).
I disagreed with the Bill because I think that if we are to have a Freedom of Information Law it should apply to Parliament as well as to the rest of the public sector. Proponents of the Bill said it was not an attempt to prevent people knowing how much we all claim in expenses, because the present Speaker has confirmed he will continue to publish the figures. However, the law would no longer require publication, and a future Speaker could rule differently.
I am now spending some time lobbying peers to vote against this measure when it is their turn to debate it. So far no peer has been willing to come forward to sponsor it. Without a proposer in the Lords it will die a natural death. It would be a suitable end to this story if no peer were foolish enough to pick up this unpopular measure and run with it. The Commons would then be appropriately shamed. Alternatively, I am working to see Conservative peers turn up to help vote it down.
