Литагент HarperCollins - The Times Guide to the House of Commons

The answer to all these questions is: it depends on what you believe an MP to be in the first place. If you think that having those two letters after a name is useless unless they are followed by a title (Minister for Holistic Governance and Horizon Scanning; Minister for Best-Practice Benchmarking and Blue-Sky Thinking) it follows that you will consider opposition a waste of time.

Some MPs who have been ministers enjoy opposition for a while, or semi-permanently as elder statesmen, able to pronounce on how much better life was when, well, they were ministers. This only goes to prove the point that most MPs want to be ministers in the first place. A few enter the Commons wanting to be backbenchers, and speak for their local area; fewer still come wanting to chair a select committee. But for many of their colleagues, the wish for red boxes is compulsive. Parliamentary life seems meaningless without being Under-Secretary of State for Community Engagement and Meaningful Dialogue (until, of course, one is an Under-Secretary of State, at which point parliamentary life seems meaningless without being a Minister of State, and so on).

It remains to be seen whether the growing tendency of voters to back local champions rather than future ministers, a shift given new impetus by the expenses scandal, alters the parliamentary balance in the medium term. In the short term, it will not: most members of the new Commons intake of 2010, like their predecessors, will want a desk in Whitehall and Westminster.

For those MPs who want to be ministers, then, being a shadow minister is merely a preparation for the real thing, although one tempered by the horrifying possibility that this happy transformation may never take place. After all, one may be sacked. Or one’s party may lose the election. Or, worse still, one’s party may win the election…and one may not be appointed. The ripe fruits of power may be snatched away by the whim or caprice of the prime minister of the day.

Nonetheless, those who enjoy opposing – tabling parliamentary written questions or, better still, freedom of information requests (since ministers do not answer written questions if they can get away with it); digging for stories damaging to the government; hauling into the light information that ministers want hidden; pouncing on their weaknesses, especially at times of crisis; utilising every procedural device (urgent questions, ministerial statements, opposition day debates) to gain advantage and, above all, using the media – will be as happy as pigs in dung.

This gross image is less disparaging than it sounds, because the low politics has a high point: the holding of government to account. Ministers must be answerable for their actions. And to whom should they be accountable, if not to our elected representatives? Furthermore, the odd shadow minister, when not scheming against ministers or schmoozing lobby groups, may be a creator of policy, picking good ideas from bad ones, like a man removing nuggets of gold from earth, thus preparing a future government to make Britain better. It follows that there is a case for taxpayer-funded shadow ministers, although not, in my view, a persuasive one. A political class of taxpayer-funded politicians, distinct and thereby distanced from those who elect them, is already in place. Its position should not be further entrenched.

The majority of MPs of any party will not, at any one time, sit on its front bench. They will soldier on as backbenchers, whether in government or opposition, willingly or unwillingly. And if to be a backbencher when one’s party is in government is to be removed from the centre of events, being one in opposition is to be twice removed. The best chance of nudging one’s way back towards them is to sit on a select committee. The quality of these committees varies greatly, but the better ones are well-chaired; have, therefore, a sense of purpose; cooperate across party lines; probe ministers and departments, performing an irreplaceable public service in so doing; and issue useful reports making strong recommendations.

Why, though, assume that the purpose of being an MP in opposition is to work towards the centre of events? Indeed, why think that this is the purpose of being an MP at all? I return to my first answer: it depends. If one believes that an MP’s work is invalid if he does not sit on a front bench, one will look at such a person with scorn. But why take this view? Members of the local Conservative Association or Labour Party may bask in the reflected glory of being represented by a Cabinet minister. But, as previously noted, a growing number of constituents do not: they want a local champion, not a future minister, someone who will reply to their emails quickly and deal with their problems effectively (even if those problems are outside the scope or beyond the reach of the local MP). They are the masters now, in an age of soaring consumer expectations, not servants in an age of deference trooping meekly to the ballot box every five years and voting either Conservative or Labour on the basis of class. This is the “it” that “they just don’t get”.

A question follows. If being an MP is a job, how can MPs not only have outside interests, but work as ministers? After all, being a minister is also a job, one that has no intrinsic connection with representing Chuff-nell Poges or Sin City South. In future years, the pressure to split the executive from the legislature may become irresistible. In such circumstances, opposition would be differently shaped and constituted, as would government. But until or unless this happens, the opposition backbencher, like his frontbench counterpart, must pack up his troubles in his old kit bag, pressing ministers on behalf of his constituents. After all, that is largely why he is there.

David Howarth

Liberal Democrat MP

for Cambridge 2005-2010

The central feature of parliamentary life is waiting: waiting for the division bell to go off; waiting to be called to speak; waiting for people to turn up for meetings or waiting for stories, good or bad, to appear in the media.

How one copes with waiting defines a parliamentary life. Some people manage to fill all those waiting hours with activity – signing piles of letters to constituents, replying to emails or (for London MPs) rushing to and from constituency engagements. Others, perhaps those whose constituents are not very demanding or who have organised their offices so efficiently that they have completed all their correspondence, engage in a parliamentary form of dolce far niente : hanging around the Tea Room (the best refuge in Parliament because the media are not allowed in), or, for the more distressed, the Strangers’ Bar, or arranging some form of escape – in the past, before the scandals, a foreign trip with a select committee, or latterly an early return home on a Wednesday evening. Some even take an interest in legislation, and spend their time writing amendments to Bills, although that is very much a minority interest.s

There is even an activity that manages to combine all three – giving the appearance of constituency activity and of taking an interest in parliamentary business but, in reality, doing nothing – namely signing early day motions. Members can be seen in every part of the building flicking through an important-looking blue document occasionally scribbling their signature on it. They are adding their names to EDMs. Technically, EDMs are motions the sponsors of which would like the House to debate some time soon, but on no specific day.

In reality, no one sponsoring an EDM expects, or even wants, the House to debate it. EDMs are merely a form of petition that only MPs can sign, a petition aimed at no one in particular that achieves precisely nothing. Even if every single MP signed an EDM, nothing would happen or change. They are, as someone once remarked, parliamentary graffiti.