Watchdog piddles on wrong tree.

Watchdog piddles on wrong tree.

Newsnight and its brilliant reporter Chris Cook have exposed a very credible list of parliamentary scandals-including Kids Company. They are entitled to the odd lapse. Attacking the relationship between MPs and Clerks they are off-target and piddling against the wrong tree. The anti-Bercow statement contrasts with his well established reputation based on the evidence of almost everyone else. The other claims are not new.  One has been investigated and judgements made. 

That relationships between MPs and Clerks are one of the great abiding strengths of Parliament.  Having served on, suffered on, despaired on, triumphed on Select Committees for 31 years, I abase myself before great parliamentary force for good. Among the vast Commons Community, things must occasionally go awry. I have no knowledge or comment on the allegations made. But I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of splendid working relationships with the intellectual strengths, impartiality and fairness of generations of clerks.

Select Committees have their problems and I have sounded off about them for decades. Some became politicised by their majorities or their chairpersons. Some deliver verdicts contrary to the evidence heard. Others go native descend into pressure groups such as farmers. The best remain anchored to the evidence and produce valuable challenges to the conventional (un)wisdom of parliament. For my money, the best reports of my time were A Health Committee report in 2005 about the self-serving deceptions of pharmaceutical companies and the Transport Committee report of 1993 that prophesied the calamities of Rail Privatisation.

Brexit has brought out the worst of Select Committees. Passionately committed chairs have distorted evidence and produced reports that are so laughingly biased, they have been ignored as serious contributions to the debate,

With so many problems, why attack the trust that exists between MPs and Clerks? Having experienced many conflicts with Committee Chairs and fellow members in the past, I can vouch for 31 years of respectful work with clerks. I have never experienced any animosity between them and MPs. They are an exemplary group to whom parliament owes its homage and gratitude.

Try again, Newsnight. They are many other targets worthy of your ire.

Comments

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Yes, it is ultimately to our own advantage to have a fair, reasonable and credible debate. I doubt they are looking in the right place. When I talk of 'you and your colleagues', I mean those who shape the debate, set forces moving, make decisions and interventions, not those whose task it is to provide administrative support. According to you they are as useful and above reproach in their duty as can be reasonably be expected.

Those that stand and are elected to political office are the ones that need to be scrutinised, and as you say there is much to be getting on with to that end.

We have had and continue to have many advantages in this country. That didn't come by accident (well maybe some bits of luck did). The essential progress upon which our society is built, looking back in comparison to relatively not that long ago, is due to good people being motivated to learn, to seek justice, to try and set that progress in stone so that it endures and can be built upon. The evidence is, as I say, there when you read what the likes of Karl Marx wrote about in the 19th century for example. There are many others, a few of which I have even read. That comes of having the right principle/aim to begin with, coupled with a devotion to do it, which is what I hope to see from politics, parliamentary or extra-parliamentary. If they/we fall behind, others will take advantage. And I think we see much of that coming from the right. A proper credible debate IS necessary. So, patient, unsung heroes are vital, they are what keeps us afloat in many instances. We shouldn't forget them, or allow this or that faction to push them around.