MPs 'turning their backs' on foreign affairs

The House of Commons is pushing itself to the margins by turning its back on the Arab revolt, says Denis MacShane.

The whole world is debating the uprisings of the peoples from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf. Sky, Al Jazeera, CNN and the BBC offer gripping coverage. Newspaper reporting and analysis has been riveting. But there is one forum in Britain where debate on the unfolding events of world history is banned: the House of Commons.

There has not been a single debate on international affairs in recent months, let alone recent weeks in the Commons. The government has offered two brief statements on the Middle East since the crisis began with the selfimmolation of an unemployed Tunisian in mid-December.

The Speaker has granted an urgent question which brought William Hague to the Commons to be asked why he had not banned the export of made-in-Britain weaponry and security kit designed to put down demonstrations in Bahrain.

And after his visit to Egypt and important speech in Kuwait, the prime minister will presumably make a statement this week. But statements and urgent questions are no substitute for debate. They allow a one-line point from MPs which is easily parried by the minister at the Despatch Box. They are better than nothing but are no substitute for proper argument, made in speeches with real content.

This is not about party difference. International policy does not stop at the water’s edge. Whether endorsing the previous Conservative government over its appeasement of Slobodan Milosevic at Srebrenica or debating policy in Afghanistan, there are as many divisions within parties as between the two sides of the Commons.

But these discussions now take place everywhere except in the Commons. There are three ways a topic – other than a government bill – can be debated at full length in the Commons. The government can decide to table a motion, as can the opposition on 20 days a year.

In a new Commons development, the backbench business committee can also decide what should be debated on 35 days a year. The government has now opted out of organising international debates. There used to be a debate before each European Council. In 1994 I made my maiden speech in one such debate along with Sir Edward Heath, Peter Shore, and Douglas Hurd. These European debates have now been abolished.

In the week before the recess, the backbench business committee invited myself and Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP, to put forward the case for a debate on international policy on the Monday after the recess when an empty six-hour debate slot had to be filled. Carswell is as fiercely Eurosceptic as I am pro-European.

But we both want the Commons to hold the government to account on foreign affairs. The chance to allow the Commons to discuss the crisis in world history was not taken up. Instead a debate on the Big Society will fill Hansard. The issue is worthy enough but it is safe to say that all the Tory speakers will endorse their prime minister and Labour MPs will not.

The backbench committee are decent people. They reflect today’s Commons. Each Thursday, the amiable and respected Commons leader, Sir George Young, is asked by 40 or more MPs if he will grant a debate on a topic. At best one, or perhaps a second, MP will request a debate on foreign policy.

So gradually, the Commons is turning its back on what happens outside our shores. MPs are becoming more and more constituency social workers with a side-passion on AV or phone-hacking.

The days when the Commons took itself seriously and was taken by the outside world as a serious forum for world affairs appear to be over. But MPs have no-one to blame but themselves.

Denis MacShane is the MP for Rotherham and was PPS and a minister at the Foreign Office, 1997-2005.

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