Triumph for Commons reform
It's rather a pity that the storm beating around Lord Ashcroft has distracted attention from.
The Commons voted through the key proposals of his Commons Reform Committee, in the teeth of watering-down amendments backed by the Leader and shadow Leader of the House. A couple of hundred MPs made the supreme sacrifice of staying in Westminster to vote themselves a little more power, in defiance of their front benches....
(Alright, it was a free vote, but the will of the Labour and Conservative leaderships was clear...)
So MPs will get, at the start of the next parliament, a full-dress Commons Business Committee, organising the timing and subject of debates and the timetabling of legislation. And the chairs (as they will now be called) of select committees will now be elected.
And there was a useful amendment from the Conservative backbencher Chris Chope, which should ensure that the process of electing chairs and committee members should start within two weeks of the new parliament assembling - useful because there has been serious foot-dragging on this in the past.
One test for the new system will be whether it delivers better Commons scrutiny of new laws. As an example, a bit of research on the Commons debates on the Coroners and Justice Bill in 2008-2009 revealed that MPs didn't get round to debating some pretty high-powered issues: reform on homicide law to change the legal definition of murder, assisted suicide, freedom of speech/homophobic hatred (well, they did spend an hour on this one), criminal memoirs and, virtually none of the provisions on the duties of coroners, the make-up of inquest juries and how a new medical examiner system would work. Thankfully, the Lords did do a thorough job of looking at these rather important issues, and asked the Commons to think again about a number of them. But if large chunks of important legislation continue to sail through, unscrutinised in the Commons, then the new committee will be a failure.
Another test will be whether more select committees emerge as really rigorous scrutineers of government. At the moment, some are; some are not. It seems to depend on the particular MP in the chair. So will the collective judgement of MPs, exercised via secret ballot, choose better chairs? (And incidentally stronger members of committees as well?) Watch to see how many ministers get duffed up on live television, under the new dispensation.
Anyway, the decision is now made, so the Leader of the House, Harriet Harman, now has the task of putting the new system in place, for day one of the next Parliament. A lot of people will be watching to see that she does so.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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