The MPs expenses scandal has awoken a debate on “what Parliament is for?”. It had always supposed it was to scrutinise legislation, but it is clear to me that this does not happen; the executive branch of government has control of the legislature and can whip the votes in favour of what it wants. An elected second chamber, now the policy of this Government, runs the risk of extending the Government’s control of Parliament; do you think that the party machines will put up “party rebels” for election? That is why, bizarrely, the application of Darwinian random selection via hereditary genes provides for more independent thought in political terms.
The lack of scrutiny affects how Parliament covers privacy matters, and it first entered my consciousness when I produced my written evidence for the Home Affairs Select Committee’s inquiry into the Surveillance Society in 2007. I was concerned that a decision to use the ID Card database as a general information resource for the public sector was not scrutinised by Parliament.
For me, seeing the evidence unfurl was a wake-up call; it showed how a Government could deliberately avoid scrutiny on an issue as mundane as “public administration”. My evidence shows that Government told Parliament one thing but behind the scenes it did another and it ignored advice from leading Civil Servants to inform Parliament. I have identified several Ministerial statements to Parliament that struggle to pass the minimum threshold of being “economical with the truth”, and show that a comprehensive Written Statement about the change of use of the ID Card’s database was delayed 9 months until the ID Card Act could not be scrutinised further.
If the politics of accountability, scrutiny and debate over public policy cannot be channelled through a Parliamentary process on a subject as mundane as "efficient public administration", how can Parliament assume it has properly scrutinised any other governmental policy? There is wide-spread concern that Parliament is no longer the focus of political and policy debate; my evidence goes a long way to illustrate one reason why this is the case.
Readers who are interested in this aspect should access the downloads available on amberhawk.com (entitled “MPs expenses - 2009”).
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