Interview: Natascha Engel
The opportunities brought by the expenses scandal aftermath also carry risks – and Labour’s Natascha Engel is taking a big gamble.
It’s no exaggerating to say her role as the first ever chair of the newly created Commons backbench business committee is historic. For centuries the government has decided what topics are debated in the Commons chamber, with predictably tedious results. Now her committee will be responsible for deciding the main business on 27 sitting days in the Commons chamber, as well as a further eight days in Westminster Hall.
“It’s very rare in parliament that you actually get the opportunity to be involved with something that is brand new,” she says. “It’s a big deal and it’s really exciting.”
Her enthusiasm is tinged with concern. She has a bold vision for rejuvenating the Commons, allowing it to hold innovative subjects which will help revive Britain’s debilitated politics and restore the relevance of the Commons. But will MPs follow her lead?
For a long time it was frustration rather than enthusiasm which dominated the Derbyshire North East MP’s mind. She was an unhappy member of Tony Wright’s committee which drew up proposals to reform the Commons, submitting a minority report and claiming in an article for the Times newspaper that supporters of the Wright reforms were “being sold a pup”. Engel called the changes “a depressing waste of a golden opportunity”.
Four months and a general election later, Engel hasn’t changed her mind. “We wasted that opportunity,” she repeats, lamenting it as a missed chance to take a broader look at how MPs “represent people better”. That once-in-a-lifetime chance, it seemed, had slipped out of her fingers.
Now she admits she’s been proved wrong on at least one point – fortunately for her. If Engel’s concerns had been confirmed she probably wouldn’t have been elected to the committee chair post.
Her minority report opposed the election of select committee chairs as a backwards step. Engel feared one elite, the government, would simply be replaced by another – senior backbenchers. It would become part of a failed MP’s career path to graduate through seniority towards a committee place or chairmanship. New MPs would not get a look in.
The fears didn’t materialise. Last month’s elections produced some shock results; the Treasury committee, for example, went to respected backbencher Andrew Tyrie rather than its heir-apparent, Michael Fallon. Committee membership votes proved encouraging too, with the business committee especially dominated by new Labour MPs. And then came the small matter of her own election.
Engel, who only became an MP in 2005, stood against former deputy Speaker Sir Alan Haselhurst in a two-way contest to chair the committee. Sir Alan, while well-respected after ten years of political neutrality and a distinguished career in the House, would have been exactly the kind of old-school candidate Engel feared.
In the event Engel beat Haselhurst by 202 votes to 173. “I really wanted to do this,” she reflects. “I was really, really excited about this, I had some quite clear ideas about why I wanted this to work.”
At the heart of the problem is a time-management headache which most MPs struggle to resolve. Members of parliament have three jobs: being good constituency MPs, first and foremost; being political party animals; and, coming in a poor third, holding the executive to account. “You’re constantly grappling with the issue of how you square that circle,” she explains.
The logic is remorseless. Far from accepting the status quo, Engel’s conclusion is that MPs are finding shortcuts which don’t really solve the problem. Early day motions, which are never debated but which give MPs an opportunity to state their view on whatever issue they like, are a classic example.
“It’s a bit of a sham,” she says, “just a way of making people feel better when it’s really quite meaningless.” This stretching of MPs explains the increasingly empty benches of the Commons at the end of the last parliament. “There aren’t physically the number of hours in a day.”
Yet holding the executive to account is, after all, parliament’s primary focus. So Engel, together with her small team of “creative thinkers”, plans to sit down and try and work out how they go about doing this.
The freedom for the committee to choose what it wants to do is, for political “anoraks” at least, genuinely exciting. Those sham EDMs would become much more relevant if, for the first time in centuries, they were debated on the floor of the House. The most controversial select committee reports could be given their own airing. The government could be hauled in to explain themselves on issues so controversial they have refused to be drawn on elsewhere. The options are, for now at least, limitless.
Yet there are tensions here, too. Of course it’s exciting. But it’s also risky. What if MPs don’t engage? The nightmare scenario for Engel is tumbleweed in the chamber. “The challenge will be to promote what we can do with backbenchers, how we can help them do things differently in the chamber,” she says thoughtfully.
“I’m absolutely certain there will be days what we do doesn’t work. But without experimenting we won’t find out what does work well and what doesn’t work well.”
Engel mustn’t go too far when it comes to irritating ministers, either. She believes it’s possible to persuade the government that, in a roundabout sort of way, helping improve scrutiny eventually helps them because it produces better laws.
It’s easy to respond by pointing out that short-term government reflex against adverse publicity. “The worst thing that could happen is either through complete lack of use we cease to exist,” she fears. “Or that the executive actually finds us so threatening they would close us down.”
If Engel plays her cards right neither of these fates will befall her committee. The pressure is on, though. Next spring the entire committee will be up for re-election as MPs judge the success of the experiment. Then in 2013 a wider House business committee, comprising herself and government business managers, will begin operating.
“If we can demonstrate we are capable not just of scheduling our own business but running our own business as well…” she begins thoughtfully. There will have to be day-to-day liaison with those shadowy parliamentary figures pulling the strings in any case. “It is in only three years’ time,” she muses. “Making a success of the backbench business committee becomes more important in that context.”
Being a member of the mother of parliaments means there’s very few chances to try something new. Engel, having grabbed one such opportunity, has a faces a tough challenge to prevent it slipping out of her hands.
