Peter Mandelson is to take his seat in the House of Lords on Monday following his surprise return to the cabinet.
But for one week he held the job of Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform without having a seat in either the Commons or the Lords. He was presumably allowed to take the job by the rule-keepers because he is a member of the Privy Council.
Many traditionalists will say that the constitutional anomaly will be corrected once Mandelson is made a peer and the Business Sectary can be held to proper account. But scrutiny of ministers in Parliament is becoming increasingly lax. PMQs is a merry-go-round of insults, planted questions and parried queries. If a barb has particular force or an argument an accurate ring it sticks and can affect the public’s view of the government. But this is rare.
In a statement to the Commons in 2001, Speaker Michael Martin even admitted he could not make ministers give straight answers to MPs questions: “It would be unwise for me to express a view on the adequacy of a particular ministerial answer”.
An additional problem is that Parliament has no role in scrutinising vast swathes of ministerial authority. This is not only about war-powers – which have been much debated after the Iraq War – but also matters such as the management of the Civil Service. The Civil Service is managed by Ministers under prerogative powers, regulated by Orders in Council that can be amended, supplemented or withdrawn without parliamentary approval.
Mr. Mandelson’s ennoblement is therefore unlikely to provide greater accountability. In today’s age, ministers are held to account more in the media and by opposition politicians using the media, than in the Commons. The Tories expect Alan Duncan, the Shadow Business Secretary, to oppose the government and appear to have no plans to ennoble him for the purpose, even though his direct counter-part will sit in the Lords. Instead, Mr. Duncan will do his job primarily from TV studios, while facing a junior minister in the Commons.
But if ministers – and the government – can be held to account without a minister sitting in parliament, then why do ministers have to be elected or ennobled? The requirement certainly has a number of draw-backs. Being able to appoint ministers only from the parliamentary talents pool severely limits one’s choices, as both Gordon Brown and David Cameron are finding out. Few senior British politicians have had a life outside politics and therefore bring only a limited experience to the government benches.
Ennobling whoever a Prime Minster wants to make a minister also has its drawbacks. Following a stint in government, which is usually a short one, the ennobled ex-minister gets to be a legislator for the rest of his or her life. This seems like an odd way to choose a legislator, especially one that can easily go on to serve for a thirty-year period. For instance, do we really need Stephen Carter in the Lords once he has done his stint as a minister?
The primary advantage of the Westminster system of government, according to its proponents and elucidated by Walter Bagehot, is its ability to combine accountability with effective governance. But increasingly one of its tenets – that ministers sit in parliament – undermines the latter, whilst being only a limited source of the former.
What options are there? The obvious one is to let ministers be elected by the legislature and speak in Parliament, even if they are not elected by the people. This happens in a number of parliamentary democracies; Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands use this system. In fact, Norway’s most popular politician, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre , does not have a parliamentary seat but is appointed by the Prime Minister; while the Dutch constitution explicitly prohibits ministers from holding a parliamentary seat.
The reason is simple – and based on the idea of the legislature’s supremacy. For when Norwegians, or for that matter Dutchmen or Danes, go to the ballot boxes they elect a legislature, not a government. The legislature, in turn, chooses the government.
If this cuts too much against one of the key tenets of the Westminster model – that only MPs are allowed to speak in the Chamber – then there is the choice of making a virtue of what happened last week. That is, having a junior minister represent the government in the legislature. The Secretaries of State could still be accountable to Parliament – as the British constitution intends – with their appointment approved by the Commons and the legislature able to pass a binding vote of non-confidence, which would force a ministerial resignation. That is the case in Denmark.
To maintain a link between government and legislature, a rule could be passed that only 20 percent of ministers can fall into this category. This would allow the Prime Minister more leeway to bring in experts, without having to run them for parliamentary seats or stuff the Lords, while maintaining the connection to Parliament. The final option may be to offer ministers fixed-term appointments to the Lords. The Prime Minister could be allowed, say, thirty appointments who then have to resign their seat when they loose power or the PM moves on.
Edmund Burke said “a disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve” ought to guide politicians. Breaking the link between parliamentary seats – whether in the Commons or Lords – and ministerial jobs seem like the kind of improvement the conservative thinker had in mind. So do not arise, Mr Mandelson, but stay seated.
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