All talk, but no action

By Rob Merrick on Nov 12, 08 10:49 PM

THIS week, MPs are debating the transparency of international aid, modernising the Commons, how to scrutinise European legislation and their own pension fund.

Before that, it was welfare-to-work, the Olympic legacy and the Congo crisis. Okay, the last, in particular, is undoubtedly important, but fine oratory at Westminster is unlikely to make a difference.

No, the truth is that MPs have precious little to do and still three weeks in which to do it - because the Queen's Speech is not until December 3.

Every day brings another debate because almost all the Government's legislation is through, controversy having died with the cave-in on 42-day detention for terror suspects.

Now, you might think this timetable gap is an excellent opportunity for MPs to consider law changes with which - unlike words condemning bloodshed in the Congo - they can truly make a difference?

Indeed, a group of MPs tried to move a vote on whether parents should be allowed to smack their children - a long-standing cause for many. The Government quickly blocked it.

A week later it was deja vu, as ministers used a sneaky manoeuvre to prevent any votes on making abortions "easier and earlier". There just wasn't time, sadly.

On the same day, one Labour backbencher tried to move an amendment to force local health trusts to give infertile couples the IVF treatment they are entitled to. Sorry, can't squeeze it in, ministers told her.

Absolute nonsense on every occasion, of course. There was time aplenty, but the Government wants the Commons to be a talking shop, rather than a chamber that actually decides anything.

Consider the contrast between the way the US Congress has torn strips off the financial "masters of the universe" responsible for the economic crisis and the half-hearted inquiry at Westminster. In Washington, the boss of bankrupt Lehman Brothers was hauled in to explain himself - and the committee extracted a confession from Alan Greenspan, the ex-Federal Reserve head, who ripped up all the regulations.

Here, the Treasury select committee has yet to quiz the bankers behind our own crisis, from whom there has been not a hint of an apology. Public inquiry? No chance.

It is a mystery why MPs put up with it - until you remember that most of them want to be ministers themselves.