Speaker John Bercow and representative Parliamentary democracy

The contrast between the reception given to Jacob Rees Mogg at Bristol University last week, and that to Speaker John Bercow at Newcastle could not have been more marked. It provided an interesting barometer on the approach of university students to politics today. Mr Rees Mogg is a powerful advocate of free speech and independent thinking from a traditional white male Catholic perspective, raised in childhood by a nanny who now looks after his large family of children and where the boys can expect to attend Eton and Oxbridge like their father, shouted down by a small group of students. I was one of the hundreds turned away from Newcastle University despite arriving half an hour before John Bercow due to speak as the Insight programme of public lecture experienced is biggest audience for 20 years and have had to rely on a recording of which had the audience cheering before he started and when he finished outlining the reforms he had achieved since becoming Speaker in 2009.

Before then he spoke warmly of the role the Member of Parliament for Newcastle central was playing at Westminster and he also mentioned the member of Parliament for South Shields who had arranged for members of the Key club of South Shields to attend the gathering, an interfaith group enabling the homeless to gain footholds more stable lives. It is noteworthy that the member of South Shields was in th3 House of Commons on the Friday moving the second reading Bill pressing the government to define food poverty as the Speaker was visited or had visited a food bank in Newcastle. A second reading was no given without a vote.

One similarity between to the two men is that they both started out on the extreme right of the Tory Party with John Bercow advocating repatriation of immigrants, impressing Norman Tebbit sufficiently to make him vice chairman of a group set up to organise students to vote Conservative before the 1987 general election. After working in in Merchant banking and public relations MT Bercow established with Dr Julian Lewis a business in advanced speaking and campaigning which has trained 600 Conservatives many of whom became Members of Parliament. However, like St Paul, John’s conversion is regarded as left of centre by sections of the Tory party and led to a failed shabby attempt to prevent his reselection before the 2015 General Election, Rees Mogg has shown no such political shifting, being noted a strong Thatcherite and a fervent Brexiteer with one Sunday Newspaper forecasting moves to make him one of three saviours of the hard Leave campaign together with friends again Boris Johnson and Michael Gove an replace Teresa May and Philip Hammond in Downing Street..

Despite the arrival of more women and those of non-white ethnicity in the House of Commons there remains a powerful group of political and social Neanderthals within the Tory Party which John Bercow explained existed when he supported the wish for a nursery in the Houses of Parliament to replace one of the many drinking bars. The nursery opened and the pistol shooting gallery closed. Perhaps the most important and timely reform he has successfully achieved is the significant change in the balance of power between the backbench Members of the House of Commons and the government of the day which irrespective of political Party, if holding an election mandate in numbers, has always tried to prevent challenge to its legislative programme and avoid the detailed scrutiny of its decisions together with the legislative outcomes.

To achieve this objective Mr Bercow has gained sufficient support from across political parties to ensure that as many Members of the House, as possible, can question Ministers on their allotted half or hour on a cycle of Departments, Monday to Wednesday when Parliament is sitting. Because of the growing length of the six question exhange between the Official Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister at noon on Wednesdays, the session has lengthened from the half period since the two previous 15-minute sessions a week were amalgamated, to between forty and forty-five minutes. The second important development is the speaker’s prerogative for allowing backbenchers to question ministers about urgent political matters of the day and which sometimes over the past five years has become two or three such requests granted on one day from the occasional one. The total is 400 requests granted since the innovation was agreed. Mr Bercow also politely reminds Ministers that they are there to be quizzed and not to make statements on behalf of government policy and decision taking which they are also at Liberty to do by formal statements and questioning, which the Speaker and the backbenchers prefer than the written statement released at the weekend or when Parliament is not in session, the printed newspaper article and the informal media leaks and briefings. In addition, a backbench committee has been created to agree the subjects for allotted days when they can open the subject at which the ministerial and shadow ministerial team members participate but cannot necessarily direct the outcome in terms of voting on any motions submitted.

Mr Bercow admitted less success in the promotion of new legislation by backbenchers and even when there is quantitative all party-political support, the willingness of the government legislative lawyers to assist can prove a stumbling block to a Private Member Bill making progress. A recent development has been the ability of any citizen who can command support from four others to launch an E petition which if it gains support of 10000 the Government responds with 100000 required for a debate usually in Westminster Hall but 9 so far have made it to the House of Commons.

 A different dimension has been the John’s approach to bringing Parliamentary democracy to people in addition to bringing people to see what happens within the Palace of Westminster,  John tries to accept every invitation to speak and he is supported by an outreach team, the head of which spoke at a reunion of Ruskin students two years ago which I attended the weekend  of those fateful few days when the Member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was assassinated by a right wing extremist  and Britain voted by  a narrow majority to leave the E.E,C.  Mr Bercow mentioned that among the 1 million visitors that come to Westminster there is a constant stream of school children attending the Parliamentary education centre which is adjacent to the House of Lords, which had also been a concern to some of their Lordships.

Just the day before his visit to Newcastle the House of Commons, on a free vote. And against the approach of the Leader of the House, agreed an amending motion proposed by the Labour Opposition that the House should leave the Palace of Westminster from 2025 to 2031 so there could be complete repair and refurbishment costing a presently estimated £3.5 thousand million. The Commons will move to a planned and prepared site at Richmond House in Whitehall and the Lords, if they agree to the Queen Elizabeth Hall which is across from Parliament Square. What is not clear if the Commons will become a fit for purpose chamber enabling everyone elected to sit, speak and vote and to have appropriate office accommodation with the support staffing required. This should also address all the problems of the present building which work against the need to address equality as well as general and personal safety issues. In this respect the Speaker made the point that there are some 7000-people working at Westminster of which some 750 are directly employed in addition to elected Members of the Commons and the appointed members of the Lords.

The Speaker made passing reference to the role of the Party Whips giving the impression to me they are regarded as a necessary evil in terms of his focus on representative Parliamentary democracy and this goes to the heart of the issues raised in Parliamentary Socialism, written by Ralph Miliband which influenced me in the 1960’s, the issue of referendums with the Brexit vote of the people versus the majority view in both Houses to remain and the way the political process should be conducted in the age of global capitalism and global communications systems and powers.  These are issues for separate debate and which will be part of my review of For the Many published by OR books on taking Labour’s 2017 General Election Manifesto to the next level and which has a preface from Ken Loach and an afterword by Jon Lansman.

Will the proposed changes prevent Westminster returning as a cosy club for professional politicians, supported by mainstream media, and public relations lobbying firms acting for global business and finance interests? There also needs to be greater transparency for the All-party Interests groups, and those who fund them and where there are some 500 for the 1300 Parliamentary. The televising of debates and the verbatim printings of the Official record are insufficient for the average citizen to understand the extent and nature of political and economic power in Britain.