John McDonnell

Last week was not a good one for Parliament. On Tuesday the government narrowly won a vote to avoid a proper inquiry into why we went to war in Iraq and how the government handled the conflict. You might have thought Ministers would at least have said they would have a review once the troops were home, if they could not bring themselves to open one immediately. There was a full one after the Falklands conflict. Instead Ministers claimed that any suggestion of an Inquiry would undermine morale of our troops. Those of us who voted for the Inquiry could not understand that argument. In a democracy it is important that the political leadership and the purpose of a war can be debated. Indeed, at dark hours in both the First and Second World Wars the Liberal and the Coalition governments fighting those wars faced No Confidence debates on the very issue of their prosecution of the war. Few then said this was wrong, giving heart to the Germans. We were, after all, fighting for democracy!

        On Wednesday we had a long debate on how Parliament should go about its work. In a series of votes it was decided that in popular debates speeches should be cut to only three minutes compared to the present eight minutes, that we would not have a September session, and that Parliamentary allowances would be increased by another £10,000. I voted against all these measures, but was in the minority on each occasion. All the votes were free votes, meaning that Labour as well as Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs could make up their own minds rather than following the advice of their Leaders. I think it is extraordinary that MPs can vote for more money to help them do their jobs at the same time as voting to perpetuate the long summer break from Parliament, and accepting so few days  when Parliament meets so you then force very short speeches.

            Of course my colleagues are right when they say the recess from Parliament is not the same as holiday. There are still letters and emails to write, cases to take up and local institutions and people to visit. But nor can they really claim they are anything like as busy when Parliament is in recess as when Parliament is in session. The main part of an MP’s job is to hold the government to account – to ask the right questions, to probe, to make the government think and justify its actions, to get them to think again if they wish to do things that are likely to be harmful or unhelpful. It is far more difficult to do that when we are in recess – you cannot table a question, hold a debate, bring a Minister before the House. All you can do is to write letters or send emails, like any member of the public.

            I look forward to the day when  we have more MPs who want to cross examine the administration and make it fight to get its business through. When I was a Minister I welcomed proper debate and scrutiny from the House, because it reduced the number of things we tried to put through and made the ones that did pass more sensible and better drafted. Today far too much passes through without examination. Long summer recesses are used by this government to put a lot of secondary legislation onto the Statute book, far from the prying eyes of Parliamentarians.