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The new Backbench Business Committee has done well to reassert Parliamentary sovereignty but it needs to evolve to ensure MPs do not lose its voice in scrutiny and policy making.

Decades of MPs' being told on a daily basis what to do by Government and alternative government have left us with atrophied faculties, ill prepared to take on even a small part of the subtleties of managing the business of our own  House and had robbed us of an alternative vision to the Executive dominance of the legislature. Thankfully on the back of the 2010 Wright committee proposals the new Backbench Business Committee is starting to turn this around. Many congratulations to you for an excellent start.

A burst of reform by a new government was welcome but even so it was clear that a steady period of Parliament building up the intellectual muscle to run even a part of its own affairs was always going to be necessary.

The Wright committee put the basics of a new mission in place but that is now being resisted by a combination of reviving executive control of parliament, some poor judgements by individual MP’s , abuse of a still delicate  process by factional interests, and pressure of events. The BBBC needs to continue its evolution to handle these  challenges or  MP’s could lose control of many of the recent reforms of Parliament.

It is not a surprise that the e-petition has now increasingly being reclaimed from Parliament by the real powers in politics -the media and the Government/alternative Government. E-petitions circumvent rather than rebuild MP’s representative abilities and were always going to end in an even greater belittling of the MP’s role. Like the “e-campaigns” that flood MP’s in-boxes, most of the “e debates” far from being spontaneous are highly organised by vested interests, most appear to be “got up “at the tabloid editorial meeting, even frontbenchers are now openly colluding with newspapers to fix the agenda for debates. Some MP’s have no value to add, some appear to be willing indeed enthusiastic conduits for the raw sewage of populism. Because there is so little self confidence in the role of MP’s and an independent Parliament ,there is no coherent and uniquely Parliamentary response to this-the BBBC has to fill this gap even at this early stage in its maturity. If they don’t then  local/backbench/constituency  
issues will be squeezed out and the BBBC  will become the e- petitions committee giving away hard won backbench time to whatever is the most intimidating media bandwagon .

In addition the BBBC must revisit the issue of   voting on backbench business rather than the House taking note. Government [and opposition] is being drawn by voting into whipping backbench business which was intended  to  normally be thoughtful and mind opening. This was always meant to be the uncontroversial ,non threatening end of the parliamentary agenda. A faction  might have thought they were clever in “winning” a vote against the EU on prisoners rights and were emboldened to try to win a vote against their own Prime Minister on European union, but in order to do so ,most probably did not even realise or care that they as MP’s  were abusing and discrediting the very weapons of their own future liberation.  If the frontbenches [admittedly  by their own misjudgement] get sucked into more difficult/embarrassing voting situations then government –through the powerful civil servants who run Parliament’s agenda-will feel obliged to reassert control by one means or another of the  backbench business committee.

Until the BBBC’s role is established beyond Executive interference it should ensure debates “take note” not vote.

The BBBC was always the important hors d’oeuvre before the  main course of the House Business Committee. If MP’s are unable to keep the balance on the BBBC tightrope  between holding government to account while not embarrassing it  then this bodes ill for the much more difficult trick of running the proposed House Business Committee. It was a central tenet of Wright that Government would always get its business and  if Government through the whips seek to control of the HBC for fear that it will prove to be a source of weekly embarrassment, then the whole of the reform agenda will be not only be halted but set back a generation.

Those of us who helped drive the Wright Committee agenda did so the strengthen MP’s and Parliament not the media or the Whips. It is  time to pause and reflect on the great achievements of the reforms and the threats they now face from the very  institutions they were meant to better hold to account. Some thoughtful statesmanship about the bigger picture from the BBBC is essential, good wishes in that challenge,