Labour's plans for law-making and the House of Commons

Lucy Powell, shadow leader of the House, gave a keynote speech on her party's plans but there is little more than aspirations just to be better than the Conservatives

Yesterday the shadow leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, gave a speech at the Institute for Government on how a future Labour government would work with Parliament: it is available in full here. This being very much my sort of thing, I went along to listen in person and thought it was worth spending some time on what she said. This is the clearest and most comprehensive expression of the opposition’s view of the House of Commons and the legislative progress I’ve encountered, and we are now probably no more than six months from a general election and a likely change of government. You will forgive me, then, if I go through this is some detail.

Preamble

Being a shadow minister is an odd existence. You have no executive power at all, of course, and your decisive control over policy will be defined by the degree of interest in your brief taken by the leader of the opposition. You will be expected to have the breadth of knowledge of your ministerial counterpart but you will have dramatically less support in terms of advice, research and administration. You may well, however, have a better sense of the mood of Westminster and of the media, as you don’t have to devote large portions of your working week to the drudgery of actually doing a ministerial job. On the other hand, you do not receive any additional pay: in the Commons, only the leader of the opposition (Sir Keir Starmer), the opposition chief whip (Sir Alan Campbell) and the deputy chief whip (Holly Lynch) are paid a higher salary, as are the shadow leader of the House of Lords (Baroness Smith of Basildon) and the opposition chief whip in the House of Lords (Lord Kennedy of Southwark).

The role of shadow leader of the House of Commons is stranger still. Even within Parliament, many are only vaguely aware of the role of the leader of the House, which I wrote about in 2022. Her involvement in the management of parliamentary business is obvious enough, demonstrated by Business Questions every Thursday morning, but there is less reason for the average MP to think much about functions like chairing the cabinet’s parliamentary business and legislation committee (PBL) or sitting on the House of Commons Commission, the statutory body responsible for the services and administration of the House (on which the shadow leader also sits). Indeed, Powell admitted in her speech that when she was asked to take on her current job in September 2023, after nearly two years as shadow culture secretary, she was hazy on the full extent of its responsibilities.

(For one of the best accounts of being leader of the House of Commons, I recommend the relevant chapters of Inside the House of Commons: Behind the scenes at Westminster, the 1989 memoirs of John Biffen who held the role from 1982 to 1987 and was regarded as one of the best leaders of the post-war era. I wrote about it at the beginning of last year.)

It is not a role which offers obvious fame or fortune. Unless you are approaching a general election and hoping to be translated from shadow to substantive office, like Powell, it is either a task undertaken to show willing and hold a seat in the shadow cabinet, or else carried out because you are genuinely interested in the business and procedure of Parliament. Into that latter category would fall previous incumbents like Sir Chris Bryant (2015-16), Eric Forth (2001-03) and Norman St John Stevas (1978-79). Indeed, the job was only really properly regularised in the 1970s, and until January 1988 it was the leader of the opposition, not the shadow leader of the House, who responded at Business Questions.

Powell’s views and intentions are particularly important for two reasons. The first, as I have suggested, is that she is likely to become leader of the House of Commons in the near future, assuming that Labour wins the general election (which the opinion polls indicate it will) and that Starmer awards her the brief in government (he has generally hinted that the most recent reshuffle put his colleagues into the roles he wanted them to assume in government).

The second reason is that the business, procedures and, perhaps above all, the culture of the House of Commons are unusually high up the public agenda at the moment. Yesterday (Monday 13 May) the House approved new procedures to address MPs who are accused of serious sexual or violent offences, introducing a risk-based assessment which could see Members who have been arrested banned from the Parliamentary Estate. The issue of the working environment in the Commons, and especially bullying and harassment, has been in the public eye for more than five years now: in August 2018, the BBC’s Newsnight broadcast a detailed investigation by Chris Cook into bullying of staff by the former Labour MP Keith Vaz, among others; a new Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme had been set up shortly before the report was aired; later that year the House asked Dame Laura Cox to undertake an independent inquiry into conduct in Parliament; an Independent Expert Panel was created to deal with appeals and sanctions in June 2020; and perhaps most notoriously, in March 2022, the former speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, was found to have bullied and harassed staff on 21 separate charges.

This all takes place against the background of a collapse in public trust of politicians and political institutions. At the end of last year, an opinion poll found that just nine per cent of those surveyed trusted politicians to tell the truth, the worst rating since Ipsos began measuring the metric in 1983 and one which made politicians the country’s least trustworthy professional group, regarded as less reliable than estate agents, advertising executives and journalists. (As a writer who has worked in public relations, I may as well make it clear than I have never been an estate agent.) This can be placed in a broader context by the annual Trust Barometer study by communications giant Edelman. The current leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, gave a very good, sober and realistic analysis of this problem in March 2023.

Powell’s speech

The Institute for Government (IfG) was founded in 2008 as an independent think tank to assess and improve the effectiveness of governance. Its £15 million endowment came from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the philanthropic vehicle of Lord Sainsbury of Turville, who was chairman of his family’s supermarket enterprise from 1992 to 1997 before being ennobled by Sir Tony Blair and then spending eight years as minister for science and innovation. He has been chancellor of the University of Cambridge since 2011. The IfG has carved out an important and high-profile niche researching and reporting on the conduct and quality of government under its five directors: Lord Bichard (2008-10), Lord Adonis (2010-12), Sir Peter Riddell (2012-16), Bronwen Maddox (2016-22) and Dr Hannah White (2022-). (Disclosure: Hannah joined the House of Commons as a clerk the year before I did, so I have known her for nearly 20 years, though she left in 2012.)

The difficulty with the IfG as a forum for a major speech is that the primary audience is, to say the least, a specialist one, but technology means that the address will be available in full on the internet within hours of it being given, and therefore the speaker will want to have one eye on a wider audience. That can make it challenging to judge the tone, navigating between detail and accessibility, and between dispassionate, rigorous analysis and partisan argumentation; and that tension is more acute in this case because the role of leader of the House—and by extension therefore of shadow leader—has a duality to it, both partisan and non-partisan. The leader of the House is, of course, a government minister and a member of the cabinet, with everything that entails, but there is also a degree to which she has a wider responsibility to the House of Commons as a whole. She is the cabinet’s representative in the Commons but also the representative of the Commons in cabinet.

Today’s audience was a mixed economy: Powell’s deputy Nick Smith (a genuinely lovely man, warm and generously sceptical) was there, as were at least two peers, three or four clerks, one or two notable academics and the BBC’s inimitable Mark D’Arcy. Powell found it difficult, at least initially, to find exactly the right tone, swinging from standard-issue opposition lines about the current government and earnestly thoughtful offerings about how the Commons could and should operate. It is a small criticism but I don’t feel bad about registering it.

One other relatively superficial but niggling criticism: one charge Powell laid at the door of the government was making major statements or leaking details of policy to the media rather than announcing them first in Parliament. This is a fault that governments have exhibited at least since 1997, and it is both discourteous and unhelpful. From time to time, governments promise to end the practice and respect the privileges of the House, and they generally then do the opposite. It bothers me and Powell is entitled to mention it. That said, while the situations are not wholly analogous, it was slightly vexing for her to say it given that her speech had been pretty fully briefed in advance to Labour List and heavily trailed in an interview with David Parsley in i News.

To deal first with the overall impression Powell wanted to give, she emphasised that a new Labour government would deal with the problem of conduct, accountability and the low level of public trust essentially by adhering to high ethical standards. She talked about the “politics of service” as Labour’s guiding principle, a phrase which Sir Keir Starmer has used on several occasions. At the Labour conference last autumn, he referred to “a party of service” and the British people seeing “service in their politics”. Addressing the Scottish Labour conference in February 2024, he described his party’s mission as “a project—to drag us away from the game of gesture politics. And return us once more to the politics of service.”

This is fine insofar as it goes, and the notion of service fits with the image of Starmer as a sober, serious, selfless and experienced figure. As it happens, it is also a phrase to which supporters of the three-times prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, sometimes resort. It is an obvious tone for Powell and Labour to use, but it is simply an aspiration which any candidate for office would articulate. Without any supporting concrete commitments, it is meaningless.

I won’t rehearse Powell’s speech at length because you can watch it for yourself. But she attempted to encapsulate Labour’s approach to Parliament and the legislative process in three elements.

Public trust

The first was this issue of rebuilding trust. Certainly no-one would disagree that it is a vital and difficult challenge. We can exaggerate the degree to which politicians were respected and trusted in the past—it’s largely a “golden age” myth, as anyone who has looked at cartoons by Hogarth and Gillray will tell you—and I also take a slightly pessimistic view, which I have expressed before, that the expenses scandal of 2009 did reputational damage to Parliament from which it simply will not entirely recover. However, the slow, tortuous, back-breaking work of redeeming the image of politicians and political institutions must be undertaken and it is, I think, one of the most important tasks facing whoever is in government over the next decade and more.

Apart from insisting that Labour ministers will adhere to high ethical standards, one of Powell’s pledges was that a new government will introduce stringent restrictions on Members of Parliament having outside interests. Voters, she said, wanted to see MPs spending their time “delivering” for their constituents and devoting their energies to being parliamentarians. This echoed Starmer’s conference speech, in which he talked about a situation “where MPs have only one job—service”.

This is an issue on which I take a view which I realise is unfashionable and on which I don’t expect to carry public opinion. Provided there are safeguards around transparency and conflicts of interest, I am relaxed about MPs having interests outside the House of Commons. I think it can give them useful experience of the world about which they are legislating, as well as specialist knowledge on various issues which can usefully be brought to bear on the scrutiny of legislation and government. I don’t like the phrase “second jobs”, because, as I have said repeatedly and will continue to say, I don’t accept that being a Member of Parliament is a “job” is any normal or usefully comparative sense. It is a responsibility, a function, a duty, a public service and many other things too, but “job”, no. The post-1997, “family friendly” sitting hours of the House of Commons make it more difficult in practical terms for MPs to work extensively away from Parliament in any case, so it may be an issue destined to wither away.

It is additionally irritating that the debate about outside interests is inconsistent and based on feelings as much as logic. We applaud MPs who continue to work as clinicians—Dr Dan Poulter, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Dr Caroline Johnson—and we regard it as a good thing if Members serve in the armed forces reserves (Lieutenant Colonel Tobias Ellwood, Lieutenant Colonel James Cleverly, Lieutenant Will Quince). Those are regarded as “good” outside interests. We are more ambivalent about lawyers in Parliament, like Sir Geoffrey Cox KC, Fiona Bruce or indeed, before he became party leader, Sir Keir Starmer KC; there is the faint suspicion that such Members are earning too much money and being too successful. Any outside interests which are more obviously commercial are held in very low esteem. The scandal over Owen Paterson’s lobbying in 2021, which contributed to the downfall of Boris Johnson, was perhaps a tipping point for the jaundiced public eye.

Restricting, almost to nothing, MPs’ outside interests would be relatively simple and, I admit with weary reluctance, would probably be an easy win in reputational terms for an incoming Labour government. It will probably happen, the public, if they notice at all, will probably approve, but it will be a short-lived and minor boost. Functionally, in my view, it will make virtually no positive contribution to the working of the House of Commons. I don’t believe there is a single MP who neglects his or her public and constituency duties in favour of paid work but will, deprived of that opportunity, be seized by a new-found diligence. (I also think there are vanishingly few lazy MPs.)

Powell also, rightly, alluded to the fact that the House of Commons Committee on Standards is currently undertaking an inquiry into the “standards landscape”. This is a wide-ranging investigation of the various ways in which MPs’ conduct is regulated and governed, and it is right to let the committee publish its conclusions and recommendations. But that reticence leaves Labour’s proposals looking thin. To a substantial degree, we are left with the reassurance that there will be higher ethical standards because Labour ministers and MPs will act more ethically. That may be so, but we will have to wait and see.

“Doing government better”

The second plank of Powell’s message was that the Labour Party will take a more considered, professional and efficient approach to legislation. Her criticisms of the current government were all manifestations of dysfunction: poor-quality legislation being delivered to Parliament, which she blamed partially on PBL failing to perform its role as a proving ground and clearing house, and excessive reliance on “emergency” legislation. In the latter regard, Powell cited 32 bills since 2019 which had been “fast-tracked”, that is, had been given second and third readings on the same day.

It is true that this parliament has seen a very high number of bills passed more quickly than usual, and in general that is a bad thing, because it means they receive less scrutiny and MPs have less time to prepare for debates. In mitigation, we should bear in mind the nature of some of the legislation: the Coronavirus Act 2020 was a special case; by my reckoning there were seven bills relating to Northern Ireland, both in terms of Brexit and the re-establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly; two more bills were rushed through during Liz Truss’s brief premiership to deal with energy prices and the Health and Social Care Levy (which was scrapped); while the Counsellors of State Act 2022 was a short and technical constitutional bill which was uncontroversial but urgent. Nevertheless that accounts for fewer than half of the number cited.

Labour’s solution to this failure, however, is once again the promise of better and more responsible behaviour. Powell explained that she had already begun a process of consultation with colleagues to create the skeleton of the government’s first King’s Speech, and she spoke of a “strong pipeline of legislative plans”. Assuming a general election in October or November this year, every putative cabinet minister will have held his or her brief for more than a year and will therefore have had the opportunity to make careful plans in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition’s Office and the shadow leader of the House; Powell also spoke positively about the contribution of Starmer’s chief of staff, former permanent secretary Sue Gray, in bringing Whitehall experience and rigour to the preparation of legislative plans. Nevertheless, it remains an undertaking simply to be better than the current government.

One area in which Powell did promise more activity than we have seen in recent years is pre-legislative scrutiny. In 1997, the House of Commons Modernisation Committee recommended a systematic process of pre-legislative scrutiny, whereby the government would publish some bills in draft form and commit them either to a departmental select committee or a specially constituted joint committee of both Houses, which would then consider them not clause by clause but overall and in conceptual and policy terms. This process can work well, and certainly allows Parliament input into a bill before it is introduced, but it is currently in the gift of the government to decide which bills are examined in this way, and it also makes the process of creating legislation longer.

I worked on the joint committee which scrutinised the draft House of Lords Reform Bill in 2011-12 and published its report in March 2012. It was a painstaking process, and certainly allowed some issues to be examined extensively, although in the end the bill was not proceeded with because of disagreements within the coalition government. In recent years, however, very little pre-legislative scrutiny has been carried out: four bills were published in draft in the 2015-17 Parliament, seven in the 2017-19 Parliament, but Boris Johnson’s administration, at least in part because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, did not submit any legislation for scrutiny before its formal introduction until the draft Building Safety Bill in July 2020, and only seven more draft bills have appeared since then.

Powell seems to be promising, then, that there will be a significantly higher number of bills subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny than the roughly one in 10 we have seen recently. That is no bad thing, but, again, it is not much more than a promise to be better than the current government. In December 2022, the IfG and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge jointly produced a report entitled The legislative process: How to empower parliament, and this proposed a much more structured and formal system of pre-legislative scrutiny, but that does not currently seem to feature in the Labour Party’s firm commitments.

To be clear, I am not calling for a more formalised process. I think pre-legislative scrutiny can be a useful additional stage of policy formulation and execution, but I don’t think it is practical to expect it to apply to all bills, or even the majority of them, and I think a more flexible system is preferable; I also think leaving it to the discretion of the government is probably, on balance, the right approach. If select committees had the power to demand pre-legislative scrutiny of bills, there would eb a danger of constitutional zealots pushing for a very high instance of this but outstripping the will and resources of the House to conduct it.

One area of procedure which Powell indicated to be unsatisfactory was private Members’ bills. I’ve written about the ways in which backbench MPs can introduce legislation before so need not rehearse the details: Powell’s complaint, like that of many, is that the procedures are unnecessarily complicated and obscure, and, in particular, it is too easy for an individual MP to foil the passage of a bill on a measure which has “popular support”. She did not, however, suggest any alternative mechanisms. That is not a criticism of too severe a nature, but I do think the gap between saying you don’t like the way something is done and suggesting a practical and better alternative is a substantial one.

The main thrust of her dissatisfaction, that bills can be derailed, is not one for which I have much sympathy. It is true that backbenchers have in the past been frustrated by what they see as obstructive and old-fashioned colleagues using parliamentary “tricks” to thwart them. To that I would respond, firstly, that the rules are the same for everyone, and, importantly, they are available for all Members to read and seek advice on if necessary. Second, backbench MPs have very few ways of stopping legislation they don’t like, which makes me loath to take one of the handful away from them. Most of all, though, I am profoundly suspicious of this notion of “popular support”, the idea that some measures are so obviously sensible and virtuous that all MPs will want to support them. By extension, the reverse of that argument is that no MP should be allowed to oppose them, and that creates the prospect of a tyranny of the biens pensants which I think is potentially damaging. I understand the frustration of Members, of activists and of voters in general, but until someone proposed a method for addressing this issue which still allows proper, even if fatal, scrutiny, I am unconvinced.

Powell also explained that she wanted to approach legislation in a “whole-parliament” way, that is, taking into account the passage of bills through the House of Lords as well as the Commons. This is sensible but is essentially just underlining what already happens: the “usual channels” of both Houses work very closely together, and any difficulties in recent years with legislation being heavily amended in the House of Lords—most prominently over the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024—have derived from policy rather than process. Powell reminded the audience that the current composition of the upper house means that, after a potential general election victory, the Labour Party will still only be the third-largest party in the Lords.

This is slightly disingenuous. Labour are the “third” party in the Lords only if you regard the crossbench peers, of whom there are currently 180, as a “party”, which manifestly they are not: by definition, the crossbenchers are not aligned to any political party, and, while they congregate as a group for administrative purposes and elect a convenor (currently the Earl of Kinnoull), they do not take a collective position on matters of policy. The composition of the House of Lords is currently as follows: 277 Conservatives, 180 crossbenchers, 172 Labour peers, 79 Liberal Democrats, 37 non-affiliated peers, 25 bishops of the Church of England and 15 others peers from smaller parties or from none, including the Lord Speaker, Lord McFall of Alcluith. It is true, then, that a Labour government would neither have a majority in the Lords nor even be the largest minority, by some way; and the shadow leader of the Lords, Baroness Smith, told a select committee on Tuesday that an incoming government would not create “hundreds of new peers”, so for a while, at any rate, it would have to manage legislation in a House where it could not rely on simple weight of numbers to prevail. One might, of course, observe that this has been presented as a virtue of the House of Lords in recent decades.

On the legislative process in general, then, we are again left to put our faith in Labour’s assurances. They will draft legislation better, make it more coherent and well-considered, more evidence-based, they will subject it to more rigorous testing within government, especially in PBL, and this will in general raise the quality and effectiveness of the legislative process. Apart from pre-legislative scrutiny, however, there are few concrete metrics which we will be able to apply to measure a Labour government’s success in this regard.

The culture of Westminster

The third area Powell addressed was the general working culture of the House of Commons, and especially the ways in which incidents of bullying, harassment or outright assault and violence are dealt with. I agree with the overwhelming majority that there is a serious problem in this regard, as I touched on above. As long ago as October 2018, I wrote in The Times that I had seen and heard of unacceptable levels of intimidatory behaviour and bullying, and that the safeguards then in place were laughably inadequate. I did make clear that I was never subject to anything I would classify as bullying, although I certainly endured some—mercifully few—examples of rudeness and anger which did no credit to the MPs involved, but I had colleagues and, more importantly, friends who were treated in ways which were simply unacceptable and for which there was not then proper recourse.

The processes for dealing with this problem have come a long way in the last five years or so. Undoubtedly there is more to be done, and on Monday the House agreed, as I mentioned, a risk-based assessment procedure for MPs arrested for sexual or violent offences. I may as well as at this point that, whatever one thinks of the outcome which was agreed, I found the tenor of Monday’s debate disappointing. On a minor point, I take the view that Parliament is a working environment so different in nature, composition, consequence and standing that most comparisons are simply not helpful; that is not to say there should be no regulation at all, but rather to say that the House should create processes from first principles according to the results it wants to achieve, rather than try to make existing practices from elsewhere fit in some way. I am aware that is felt to be an old-fashioned point of view, but it remains mine. Nevertheless, Monday saw additional measures put in place which I hope will be beneficial.

What concerns me more is the inability of some participants to accept that those who hold different views can possibly be acting in good faith or sincerity. I thought there was much to be welcomed in the contribution of Dame Karen Bradley, the chair of the House of Commons Procedure Committee since January 2020, not because it was eloquent or polished but in fact—I hope she would take this in the spirit in which it is meant—because it was not. The way she approached the issue was slightly halting and vague, but I think that reflected the fact that she had genuinely wrestled with some of the measures proposed, and indeed at one point she said “this is a balanced judgment; there is no right or wrong answer”. There was also wisdom in her observation that “I am glad we have got to the point where we are finally discussing it [exclusion from the Parliamentary Estate] and we have the chance to vote on the proposals, but it is a process, not an event”.

By contrast, to take one example, I think the way in which the SNP business manager Deidre Brock framed the debate was unhelpful as well as ungenerous. She concluded her remarks by saying “Westminster is often accused of being an institution stuck in its ways and unable or unwilling to change. Please let us ensure that is not the case today.” The implication of this is that it really would not be acceptable to oppose the measures, and would be in some way letting Parliament down. These are enormously difficult issues: in essence, trying to find a balance between the need to protect all those who work on the Parliamentary Estate and the ability of MPs to carry out their duties as legislators and representatives, and that is almost impossibly hard.

In any event, Powell is fully entitled to feel that Monday’s decision was another step forward, and she is equally entitled, and I think correct, to say that there is more to do. Again, she did not set out any specific further measures, though she clearly leans more heavily towards the analogy with other workplaces than I do. I suspect, therefore, that she will in time want to bring in additional measures, and she promised that “we’ll look at how we can embed good employment practices tackling abuse and harassment in Parliament”.

We will see how the new landscape operates, but there is another part of this, and that is the role of political parties. As leader of the House, Powell would be working in close co-operation with the Government Whips’ Office, and whips have traditionally not been as transparent or straightforward in dealing with discipline and personal conduct as they could have been, so we will watch Labour’s business managers and parliamentary shepherds carefully if they do move into government.

(I also think, though here is not the place to expand very much, that there is a burden on the parties to conduct more rigorous due diligence on parliamentary candidates. Too often, in this parliament in particular, MPs have been found with cupboards more than adequately stocked with skeletons, and there has been a suspicion that little vetting was carried out before they were allowed to be candidates. But that is a matter internal for the parties, and for another discussion.)

Other matters

Aside from those three main areas, the Q&A session shed light on some other matters. Powell seems open to the idea of extending remote participation in the House’s proceedings: although hybrid working was rapidly introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the lockdown restrictions came to an end most of the provisions were withdrawn (the House of Lords allowed a few more to remain). There is no mechanism at all for MPs to participate in debates or ask questions remotely, and although there is a system for voting by proxy, it is intended to be very limited and to apply only to those “who are new parents, who have experienced complications relating to childbirth, including bereavement, or are experiencing serious long-term illness or injury” and are therefore unable to be present on the estate.

Powell spoke of a desire to make the role of a parliamentarian work for those who live outside London, and noted the demands it places on family life and relationships. This of course applies differently to different Members, depending on personal circumstances, the distance of their constituency from Westminster, what other parliamentary, ministerial or quasi-ministerial roles they may have and factors like how safe or marginal their constituency is. Powell mentioned in particular the frustration that she and many Members felt that recesses (strictly speaking, periodic adjournments of the House) did not always coincide with school holidays outside London or in the state sector. Given her belief that Westminster should, where possible, conform to the practices of other workplaces, she may well want to review the ability of MPs to participate remotely.

I understand the pressures that MPs face in terms of travel, time away from families and the difficulties of living essentially a two-centre life. But I think the presumption must be in favour of physical attendance, and any exceptions, for reasons of health or circumstances, being just that, exceptions. Although hybrid and remote working have spread hugely since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, their merits and demerits are hotly contested. Moreover, I think there is a real danger that if MPs were able to work remotely to an extensive degree, especially if they could assign the activity of voting in divisions to someone else, they could become very disengaged from the work of Parliament as a whole. Moreover it would clearly be in the interests of the party whips to encourage this disengagement, to keep potential troublemakers away from Westminster and perhaps to have whips holding many proxy votes for several Members. Parliament, according to its etymology, should remain a place for the representatives of the electorate come together to talk.

Powell was asked about the idea of a business committee to determine the agenda for the House. There is already a Backbench Business Committee, established in 2010, which is allocated a certain amount of parliamentary time and can determine the subjects for debate in this time as it chooses. These are, however, restricted to general debates rather than legislative activity. However, the idea of a backbench business committee sprang from the House of Commons Reform Committee, known after its chair, Dr Tony Wright, as the Wright Committee, which in November 2009 published a report entitled Rebuilding the House. This document also proposed that all of the business before the Commons, currently determined predominantly by the government, should rest with a House Business Committee comprising the elected members of the Backbench Business Committee, together with frontbench Members nominated by the three party leaders and chaired by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the senior deputy speaker.

This idea has not been taken up, 15 years after the Wright Committee published its report. It would represent a huge surrender of authority and initiative by the government, unless the whips were satisfied that it was in practice wholly under their control, and I am not at all surprised that no government yet has been selfless enough to implement Wright’s suggestion. The House Business Committee was raised with Powell, who gave a very brief and. non-committal response, but it seems clear that this is not an idea a new Labour government would be interested in championing (I am not surprised, and if I were a government business manager I would want no hint of it either).

There was some discussion of secondary legislation, and the accusation that the government too often relies on statutory instruments—which receive much less scrutiny that primary legislation—to implement policy that should be more thorougly considered. Powell noted and endorsed that charge, but again we had only a vague commitment that Labour would behave more responsibly. I will say only this: the government was accused of misusing secondary legislation when I became a clerk in 2005, it continued to bear that allegation throughout my time in the House, it was a charge which had and has some truth to it, but I see no prospect of serious change. Like a House Business Committee, major reform of the use of secondary legislation would really require a government selfless enough to seek more scrutiny by MPs, and therefore more vulnerability and less control. I would be astonished if a Labour government possessed that spirit of selflessness, or if a Conservative government, re-elected by some strange quirk of events, gave ground on the issue either.

Winding up

The Labour Party has enjoyed considerable political mileage from the plight of the government over recent years as it has suffered a number of reputational, ethical and electoral setbacks, both self-inflicted and otherwise. There is no discredit in that: Labour is doing part of the job of an opposition, which is to manoeuvre itself into a position where it can become the government. Equally, the worse the government’s predicament has become, the less the opposition has had to do actively, simply stepping back and allowing a lot of advantage to come to it. Partly it is a political equivalent of Sir Jackie Stewart’s formula in motor racing, to win at the slowest possible speed.

Commentators should retain a degree of sympathy for an opposition party hoping to enter government when it seeks to make as few specific commitments as possible. Commitments reduce a government’s room to change course or emphasis, and of course the opposition never has access to fundamental information like financial data on which it can base policies. So a degree of ambiguity combined with nebulous aspiration is part of the game.

All that being said, at a time when Parliament’s reputation is so low and the opposition has been so fierce and relentless in its criticism of the government’s conduct, the thinness of Powell’s offering and the scarcity of concrete proposals is disappointing. Labour’s Commission on the UK’s Future, chaired by former prime minister Gordon Brown, published a thick report entitled A New Britain: Renewing our democracy and rebuilding our economy, which contained a number of very detailed proposals for constitutional change, including the replacement of the House of Lords with an Assembly of the Nations and Regions. But it said virtually nothing about the House of Commons, except to reiterate that it should retain its legislative primacy over a reconstituted second chamber.

There is no dearth of ideas. As well as our thriving think tank ecosystem, the IfG’s Hannah White has written a critique of the current arrangements, Held in Contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons? Journalist Ian Dunt published a stinging analysis called How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t, while Sir Chris Bryant recent released Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament—and How to Do It. Liberal Democrat veterans Lord Tyler and Sir Nick Harvey have written a volume entitled Can Parliament Take Back Control?: Britain’s elective dictatorship in the Johnson aftermath. In addition, there are legions of professional opinion-havers—into which category I quite freely place myself—who can scarcely be prevented from speaking their minds on the failings and potential remedies of Parliament.

I’ve written about a range of issues: reform of the House of Commons in general, the role of select committees, the work of the Public Accounts Committee, MPs serving on committees, the importance of the Commons promoting and defending its work, select committee resources, the role of the speaker of the House, parliamentary language, the changes to the House’s sitting hours, how party whips operate, alternative career paths for backbench MPs, the Youth Parliament, the leader of the House, legislation introduced by backbenchers, holding the prime minister to account, the involvement of the Church of England in the House of Commons, the effect of machinery of government changes on parliamentary scrutiny, public engagement by the House, the state of the legislative process, how hard MPs actually work, and war powers and the Royal Prerogative. That’s just me.

What are Labour promising? Restrictions on MPs’ outside interests, fewer fast-tracked bills, better legislative drafting, increased use of pre-legislative scrutiny but generally just “better” behaviour. It is fine so far as it goes, but it does little to inspire, and, importantly, it offers very few metrics by which the world can judge Labour’s progress in improving the House of Commons and the legislative process. It will take more than this to rebuild public trust and make our institutions work better for all of us.