It is after all Lords rather than Commons reform which makes headlines in Labour’s programme

It is after all Lords, rather than Commons, reform which makes headlines in Labour’s programme. Yet doesn’t most recent history suggest that it’s the Commons that is failing in its constitutional duty to exercise control over the government?Not according to the self-confessedly heretical definition of the Commons’ purpose which Douglas Hurd elegantly supplies in the new issue of Prospect magazine. He distinguishes between the “Whig” view of Parliament, that its main task is to check the executive, and the “Tory” view, which he shares, that one of its main functions is to “sustain the executive” – while helping it “to make decisions in the national interest”. A view most perfectly expressed by that highest of high Tories, the Duke of Wellington, as “the Queen’s government must be carried on”.

To paraphrase (rather crudely) Hurd’s argument: as there is no separation of powers in the British constitution, as there is in the US, the “Tory”, as opposed to the “Whig”, view must be right.Hurd is critical of the detailed workings of the Commons. He is sensitive to the criticism that bad laws are too often rushed through whipped standing committees without alteration. He sensibly argues that Parliament would be improved if there were fewer ministers. He’s right to point out that there must be something wrong with a government which has grown in numbers since it was running first an empire, then a command economy. It may not be literally true, as a Permanent Secretary assured me, that “80 per cent of the world’s junior ministers are in the British government”.

But the indefensible exemption of the ministeriat from the ruthless reduction in Whitehall’s manpower serves only to reinforce government patronage, and silence dozens of the most intelligent and independent-minded MPs.He is on less sure ground in suggesting that “Chief Whig” Sir Richard Scott and Lord Nolan may have “unwittingly” contributed to the deterioration of government and parliament. Maybe the post-Nolan regime on earnings disclosure will drive away some bright MPs. But which does more to damage the quality of MPs – that or the hopelessly ramshackle lottery of MP selection, not least in his own party? He may be right that Sir Richard was naive about the workings of government. But would the Government have been in trouble over arms to Iraq if it were not for the pervasive convention that on sensitive issues, departments answer parliamentary questions in the most contemptuously minimalist way they think they can get away with?But Hurd’s central thesis is also surely too benign. A government certainly has a fundamental right to get through the programme on which it was elected; properly used, whips lubricate democracy rather than merely impede it The Commons needs a balance of functions to be healthy. It is a scandal that the whips’ patronage extends to the select committees, and that departmental committees don’t have more resources and powers. And that more standing committees don’t have the power to call expert witnesses while considering legislation or – occasionally – more freedom to divide on detailed provisions of Bills across party lines.