A ‘Cutting Edge’? The Parliamentary Commissioner and MPs
| Author | Carol Harlow,Gavin Drewry |
| Date | 01 November 1990 |
| Published date | 01 November 1990 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1990.tb01839.x |
A
‘Cutting Edge’?
The Parliamentary Commissioner and
MPs
Gavin Drewry* and Carol Harlow**
The
knowledge
that
the
Parliamentary Commissioner
is
there, eager
to
get
to
work;
the knowledge
that
he
can
act
only
in response
to
complaints from Members
and
is,
therefore,
in
the strictest
sense, a servant of the House;
the
knowledge that when
he
acts he will
be
able
to
go
wider
and further
than
anyone except the Comptroller and Auditor General
-
this knowledge should
surely
put
heart into those backbenchers who
feel
they count for not much more than Lobby fodder.
Rt
Hon
Richard Crossman MP’
Introduction
Professor William Gwyn, distinguished student of comparative ombudsman systems, once
saw fit to complain that ‘persons promoting reform of the [Parliamentary] Commissioner’s
office, including the Select Committee, have not provided as strong
an
empirical foundation
for their proposals as is practically possible.
’*
With these strictures the authors agree.
In our chosen area of relations between Members of Parliament and their Parliamentary
Commissioner, there is little indeed to go on, the two previous surveys, both by academics,
being already more than fifteen years This is in fact somewhat surprising. Over the
years, a series of criticisms of the office as it has emerged have been expressed by academic
observers; by JUSTICE, which has remained constantly involved with the office it helped
to
re ate;^
and the Select Committee, which in
1977
undertook an extended review.5
None has set out to canvass the opinions of the MPs for whom the system is meant to work.
Taken in conjunction with speeches made during the passage of the Parliamentary
Commissioner Bill in
1967,
the available sources did help provide a picture of the way
MPs saw the office at its inception and afterwards as it grew. This gave us a basis for
a number of questions as to how MPs view the office today and its success or failure
in their eyes. We made these the subject of a questionnaire which we circulated to MPs
and their replies form the main subject-matter of our article. We talked informally also
to a number of people whose practical experience of the office is greater than our own
and their views are also reflected in the text. The article is divided into
4
parts: the first
*Professor of Public Administration, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College.
**Professor of Law, London School of Economics. The survey on which this article is based
was
funded through
the generosity of the Nuffield Foundation and conducted with the help of the Royal Institute of Public
Administration. At a later stage, the authors had the help of Sir Anthony Buck, who facilitated access to staff
of the House of Commons and Parliamentary Commissioner’s Office who prefer to remain anonymous. We
would like to thank all these people for their interest and kindness.
1
HC Deb, vol 734 col 43,
2 William
B
Gwyn, ‘The Ombudsman in Britain: A Qualified Success in Government Reform,’ (1982)
Pub Admin 177, 194.
3 They are published respectively in Roy Gregory and Alan Alexander, ‘Our Parliamentary Ombudsman.’
Part I: Integration and Metamorphosis’ (1972) Pub Admin 313; ‘Part 11: Development and the Problem
of Identity’ (1973) Pub Admin
41;
and Lionel
S.
Cohen, ‘The Parliamentary Commissioner and the “MP
Filter”
’
[1972]
Public Law
204.
4 See particularly,
Our Fettered Ombudsman,
JUSTICE (1977); the JUSTICE-All
Souls
Review,
Administrative Justice. Some Necessary
Reforms,
(1988) pp 85-104.
5
‘Parliamentary Commissioner
for
Administration (Review of Access and Jurisdiction),’ Fourth Report
from the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, HC 615 and
444
(1977-78).
The Modem Low Review
535 November 1990 0026-7961
745
irhe Modem Law Review
[VOl53
deals with the debates at the time of the Act and the second with later assessments and
surveys. The third section, contains the data from our survey and the final section our
conclusions (which are strictly our own).
Before
the
Act
When Richard Crossman introduced the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill to the House
of Commons in
1966,
it was, on the face of it, with high hopes. What his views really
were, we cannot be quite certain.6 Crossman was a firm supporter of the House of
Commons and, as Leader of the House, worked to reassert its authority.’ His Diary
records, however, that he took over the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill at a late stage,
knowing little about
it.*
Later, he recorded his resentment at being, as he thought,
outflanked by the Treasury, working through its First Secretary, Niall MacDermot, who
took the Bill through Committee and, Crossman recorded privately, did much to emasculate
it.9 Crossman may have been influenced too by the attitude of the Labour Party to the
office of Ombudsman which, it was felt, could threaten the role of the back bencher.I0
However this may be, in his Second Reading speech, Crossman described the
Commissioner as, ‘a new and powerful weapon with a sharp cutting edge to be added
to the existing antiquated armoury of parliamentary questions and adjournment debates.
’
He was at all times careful to stress the potential of the office to assist back bench MPs.
He spoke
of
the Commissioner’s investigations as providing the ‘cutting edge of a really
impartial and really searching investigation into the workings of Whitehall.”l He
emphasised both the system and the Commissioner’s status as ‘servant of the House’12
and defended the ‘MP filter’ as
an
essential mechanism in preserving this status permanently.
He argued too that only Members could make the new office work; it would not work,
he suggested, unless Members were prepared ‘to do the initial sifting and make sure that
only those
cases
are submitted in which there is a strong
prima
facie
case.’I3 This hopeful
view, as we shall see, was not borne out by events. Again, referring to the appointment
of the retiring Comptroller and Auditor General to the new office of Parliamentary
Commissioner, Crossman said of him that ‘he understands the workings of this House
and is respected in all quarters of it. It is a Parliamentary officer that we want, and Sir
Edmund Compton is a most distinguished Parliamentary officer already.
’I4
Although the debate did not entirely follow party lines, Crossman received surprisingly
little wholehearted support from back benchers for the new weaponry designed for their
benefit.
True,
Sydney Silverman and Alex Lyon both described the innovation in glowing
terms and Antony Buck, later Chairman of the Select Committee established to supervise
the Parliamentary Commissioner, called the Bill ‘a great experiment. We shall be seeing
the utility of this new office and will no doubt see it expand and become more and more
useful.’Is Mr Charles Fletcher Cooke, also to be Chairman of the Select Committee, was
6 See Gavin Drewry, ‘The Outsider and House of Commons Reform: Some Evidence from the Crossman
7 Richard Crossman,
The
Diaries
of
a Cabinet Minister,
1976, vol 2, p 226.
8
Ibid,
p 76.
9
Ibid,
p 208.
10 Gregory and Alexander,
op
cit
(I)
at p 322, citing an unpublished thesis by D.L. Capps.
11
HC Deb, vol 734, col
44
12
Ibid,
col
49.
13
Ibid,
col 61.
14
Ibid,
col 53. The argument was somewhat disingenuous in light of the fact that Compton’s appointment
had been announced by the Government without reference
to
the House before the office had
been
created.
15 HC Deb, vol 739,
col
1370,
Diaries’ (1978) xxi
Purl. Affairs
424, 429.
746
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