Parliamentary scrutiny is democracy’s defence against corruption  | thearticle

If impunity is the handmaid of corruption, scrutiny is corruption’s enemy. Governments shrink from critical examination. The last thing they want is transparency. Getting things done becomes

more complicated. When it comes to naming their most disliked piece of legislation, ministers would probably plump – privately – for Labour’s Freedom of Information Act 2000, rued by many

who voted for it. That sinking feeling, trying to remember what was said in incautious emails, meetings, or printed within departmental reports, is vice’s compliment to scrutiny. The

resilience and effectiveness of official procedures and bodies designed to scrutinise the conduct of the executive and ensure its integrity are a measure of the health of a democracy. A

truth-telling press is vital. Journalists around the world get behind the lies, spin and obfuscation that obscure the reality of their governments’ motives and behaviour even if they can’t

directly control it. Sometimes it costs them their lives or imprisonment.  But the highly politicised mass media of the USA helped Trump convince his supporters that any critical examination

of his behaviour was “fake news”. We saw the ultimate consequences on 6 January in the Capitol. Right-wing domination of newspapers and mass media, as well as social media silos that have

become the sole source of information for many, is a pressing problem for democracies such as our own. Scrutiny of the sensational and the personal cannot replace serious investigation of

policy and malfeasance. Our Parliament has hands-on responsibility for scrutinising the use of executive power and calling it to account with, in well-defined circumstances, the judiciary as

final arbiter. So, when the executive makes efforts to elude parliamentary scrutiny of its integrity and performance, its policies and legislation, and the right-wing press attacks the

judiciary, alarm bells should start ringing. Parliament, and within its limits the judiciary, are the two institutions that can stop government meandering down the road to corruption with

the resultant erosion of democracy and its promise of representation of the people. In August 2019, Boris Johnson highlighted his attitude to accountability by proroguing Parliament to

forestall further debate about Brexit, an act the Supreme Court unanimously found unlawful. It was a textbook example of the judiciary safeguarding democracy.  There are more ways than one

to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny. The phrase “Henry VIII clauses” recalls King Henry’s rule by proclamation. It refers today to amendments to parliamentary Bills which allow change or repeal

by means of secondary legislation, that is by ministerial fiat; statutes are intended to expedite implementation of policy but enable parliamentary scrutiny to be bypassed. Parliamentary

Select Committees focused on the work of particular government departments, or on wider issues, have become since the 1980s a major vehicle for democratic scrutiny. In recent years the

sittings of the Audit Select Committee, overseeing government’s financial reporting and disclosure procedures and performance, have been particularly revealing. The Liaison Committee whose

members are chairs of Select Committees holds an annual stock-take with whoever is Prime Minister. But Boris Johnson in 2019 found he was unable to attend on three consecutive occasions,

once allegedly because he was kept too busy with Brexit. Since this was what the Committee expected to hear about, Dr Sarah Wollaston in the chair accused him of avoiding accountability. His

perfunctory performance in May 2020, when he did appear, suggested that perhaps he was also too lazy to master his brief on topics the Liaison Committee would examine. The pandemic had made

hiding from the public no longer an option.  The Hansard Society, an NGO specialising in research on Westminster and parliamentary democracy, has described ways in which Parliament can be

marginalised that are difficult to challenge legally. No piece of parliamentary business has been more complex and subject to avoiding scrutiny than the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Act

(TCA). Run the negotiation right up to an internationally agreed deadline and, “oh, sorry”, tell Members of Parliament they have only four days over Christmas to read a 1,246 page Treaty,

and, after its publication, allow 24 hours to discuss and pass its Implementation Bill. Then, once the consequences of Johnson’s Brexit are emerging, have Mr Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the

House of Commons, refuse to extend the life of the Brexit Select Committee beyond 16 January 2021. Small matter that this agreement, the most important document affecting the future of our

country since the declaration of war on Nazi Germany, defines our relationship with our largest trading partner, involving 27 European countries, for years to come. Not that the EU treated

its own Parliament any better, allowing _provisional_ implementation before the TCA went to the European Parliament for ratification. But then the EU’s Parliament is in reality often a

fig-leaf for rule by the Council of Ministers, with the Commission acting as political and technical Sherpas. In short, our Government has taken back control of our own democratic deficit –

with great benefit to its donors and friends.  The pandemic means urgency has become more plausible as an excuse for short-circuiting Parliament. Everything is urgent or, at least, becomes

urgent when indecision, the hallmark of the present Prime Minister, repeatedly creates crises requiring immediate action. Parliament and Opposition are required to rubber-stamp legislation

and guidance, with far-reaching implications for the economy and daily life. But why not hear from Parliament upstream when broad strategy ought to be debated? Johnson’s repeated – _faux_

Churchillian – martial language about Covid ignores the fact that we faced the enemy during the Second World War with a coalition government of National Unity. Johnson also sees the

Opposition as his enemy. For political effect, timely suggestions from Keir Starmer are publicly ridiculed, only to be implemented days later. Meanwhile the Government continues its

“levelling up”, the important task of awarding whenever possible contracts to the companies of Tory donors. One of these, worth £96 million, to deliver laptops to schools for poorer children

known to be least equipped for online learning, fell 30,000 laptops short of its delivery target. It also happens that the company’s founder, non-executive director and shareholder and his

wife were major Tory donors.  So far, the slide into unaccountability has been held in check by the strength of our institutions dedicated to the scrutiny of government conduct. Efforts and

opportunities to avoid such scrutiny have been deliberately, sometimes accidentally, multiplied in the last few years. The consequences are becoming visible. As Thomas Paine said of the

Paris aristocrats prior to the French Revolution: “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody”. Not an ideal state of affairs in a pandemic.

Not an ideal state of affairs in a democracy at any time at all. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important

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