'It was a place of wit, which seems to have entirely disappeared': How the Commons has changed
5 min read
Former Labour MP Tony Wright reflects on how the atmosphere and behaviour of MPs in the House of Commons has altered over the years – for good and bad
When our small band of Labour MPs who had won seats in the 1992 election held a celebratory party, our new leader John Smith came to address us. He said that, although we might get frustrated with how the Commons operated, we should always remember it was essentially an “intimate theatre”.
I was not sure I was satisfied with this as a description, but I understood what he meant. It provided the stage for the daily dramas, as John Major struggled to keep his party together and Labour sat back and enjoyed the spectacle. The drama continued after Labour’s victory in 1997, when the PMQ exchanges between Tony Blair and William Hague were compulsive box office.
The Commons felt different then from how it seems now. It was full of big characters, on both sides, with the Blair/Brown governments having seriously big hitters. These were people you wanted to hear, and speech-making mattered. Listening to figures like Tony Benn in full flight was an experience never to be forgotten. Before the 10pm votes, the Chamber would be packed for the wind-up speeches, enlivened by those who had just emerged from the bars. Now the Commons feels flat and empty by comparison.
It was also a place of wit, which seems to have entirely disappeared. When a Tory MP who had been charged with mistreating his sheep got up to speak, the irrepressible Tony Banks would lead a chorus of ‘baas’ from the Labour side. Silly, yes, but also great fun.
Watching PMQs now is a dispiriting experience. It was always a poor exercise in accountability, but at least it was often good theatre. Now it is neither. It used to be the case that MPs were not allowed to read out their questions, and if they did the cry of “reading!” would go up. Now questions are routinely read out and the Speaker seems content to let this happen. Someone elected to public office should at least be expected to string a couple of sentences together without reading from a script.
In many ways, the Commons is a much better place than when I joined it. At that time, it looked like a sea of white men of a certain age
On the Labour side, questions are all designed to be ‘helpful’ and obliged to include the words “14 years”. Most MPs now seem to think it is obligatory to include a reference to their constituency, and this increasing constituency focus crowds out the big policy issues.
Of course there was plenty of drama during the Brexit years, and what followed, but it was not a drama that enhanced the reputation of the Commons. After the turbulence of that period, perhaps a spell of quiet calm, even dullness, is just what the place needs – a serious mood for serious times. It is too easy to be nostalgic for a lost past, or for the big political beasts who inhabited it. Besides, each period has its own character, shaped by the political circumstances of the time. How this period will be viewed in retrospect remains to be seen.
A case can be made that the Commons needed to become less theatrical and more workmanlike. That was the case I spent much of my time in the Commons trying to make. That is why it was important to get the select committees elected, with the chairs elected by the whole House, and for the House to control more of its own business. This was also a way to try to build a career structure (and job satisfaction) for MPs that did not depend upon joining the front benches. This is still a work in progress. So too is the task of getting a proper job description for MPs, which sorts out the duds from the diligent, and helps them (and their electors) see what they should be doing.
There is one obvious way in which the life of an MP is very different now. In 1992 I remember a tech-savvy new colleague trying to explain to me what emails were and why I should try to get the hang of them. These were the days when the post room was the communications hub of the Commons.
I resisted the incoming email tide for as long as I could, persisting in good Luddite fashion in writing out my replies in longhand and getting my long-suffering assistant to decipher them before typing them up and sending them out. This was hopelessly inefficient, but I knew that constituents liked to get a letter with a Commons crest on it. This was long before the later social media tide, of course, and I am mightily glad that I did not have to navigate my way through that swamp. MPs have more resources now, but they have a lot more to deal with.
In many ways, the Commons is a much better place than when I joined it. At that time, it looked like a sea of white men of a certain age. Now it looks much more like the country it represents. Bad behaviour is better policed. It also seems to have a seriousness about it, with MPs who want to do a professional job. This was reflected in the assisted dying debate, one effect of which may be that MPs will not settle for the kind of sterile adversarialism that has traditionally dominated how the Commons operates and reduces them to Lobby fodder.
I welcome the fact that it is becoming more workmanlike – but I hope it will not forget that it is also a theatre, and needs to put on a good show.
Tony Wright was a Labour MP from 1992 to 2010, and chair of the select committee that produced the ‘Wright reforms’ in the wake of the expenses scandal
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