You have to wonder at the integrity of our parliamentary procedures.
Initially came the news was that there would be possibly 10 sittings of the Committee to consider the Bus Services Bill. The Committee’s purpose is to rigorously examine a Bill line-by-line, clause-by-clause. Then, after discussions between the business managers for the government and opposition, there were to be only six sittings.
In the end, the Committee galloped through its proceedings and completed its ‘scrutiny’ of the Bill in just three sittings.
This was so far short of being a detailed and rigorous examination of the Bill as to make the whole process almost laughable.
Indeed, the main substance of the Bill, the clauses dealing with Advanced Quality Partnerships, Enhanced Partnership Schemes and franchising were all done and dusted in the blink of an eye on the first day.
You can only conclude that the 16 MPs on the Committee (which included Buses Minister Andrew Jones) have signalled that they really don’t much care about buses.
The Lib Dems and SNP even declined to take up the seats on the Committee they were offered.
I recognise that for many MPs, being on a Bill Committee is a real bore, while some have to be on the Committee by virtue of their positions. I’m sure most Committee members would rather have been doing something else.
Even so, but once you are appointed to a committee shouldn’t you, as a parliamentarian, take your responsibilities to scrutinise and examine a Bill more seriously than this?
Or put another way aren’t we, as the people who elected you, entitled to expect you to take your responsibilities more seriously?
This less than cursory examination of the Bill tells me that for all their huffing and puffing about the quality of bus services, the problems caused when services are withdrawn and all the rest of it, when the opportunity arises to examine a Buses Bill, and the polices that give rise to it, MPs really don’t care.
I’m not surprised. These days Bill Committees have become so staged managed, with the opportunity for really serious and meaningful debate vastly reduced, you do wonder what the point is.
In the ‘good old days’ before Tony Blair started his programme of modernising parliamentary procedures, Bill Committees were serious affairs and MPs on them took their roles seriously. Even Secretaries of State sat on Committees.
The opposition really put ministers under the spotlight. Committees even used to sit all night if needs be. Today it’s all so anodyne.
Bus operators should take note. MPs don’t appear to care about buses very much. I’ll leave you to decide if that’s good or bad.
