Boris Johnson appears to be afraid of parliamentary scrutiny – but will his party let him get away with it?

The prime minister is returning to the bad old days of government patronage, rewarding MPs for their loyalty if they had not been appointed as ministers

To understand Boris Johnson’s attitude to the House of Commons, it’s worth going back to what now seems like a prehistoric as well as pre-pandemic era — last October.

In declaring that “if parliament was a school, Ofsted would shut it down”, what Johnson really meant was that it had repeatedly failed to do what he regarded as its real job: to approve whatever the government wanted.

That was when Johnson was struggling at the head of a minority administration. Having since secured a handsome 80-strong majority, he now intends to use it on Wednesday to curb the one crucial function historically entrusted to parliament: the sensible public scrutiny that improves the quality of government, which has never been needed more than now.

Since 2010, cross-party Commons select committees have considerably increased their reach. They have created a new career route for intelligent politicians who recognise that chairing an important committee can be more productive than being a mere front bench spear carrier. Instead of the cosy old system in which the whips appointed their favourites, the chairs have been elected by all MPs in a secret ballot, increasing their calibre as a result.

And they in turn have put together, and elected the chair of, the Liaison Committee, which is a super-select committee and the only one that has the power to interrogate the prime minister. When properly chaired, such sessions require a prime minister to be across the detail of policy without the usual baying crowd of loyalists to cheer every gibe all too often substituted for a real answer at prime minister’s questions. (It may be partly in the hope of restoring this football-crowd atmosphere that Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the Commons, issued his recent call to MPs to turn up to work despite the Covid-19 restrictions.)

Now the government plans to break with all recent precedent by appointing its own chosen Liaison Committee chairman, the Tory MP and staunch Johnson ally, Sir Bernard Jenkin. The reason that Labour’s Harriet Harman is seeking to amend the motion installing Jenkin has nothing to do with his being a Tory, as any alternative would also be of the same party, as were the previous two liaison chairs, Andrew Tyrie and Sarah Wollaston (at least she was Tory when she landed the role). But both were independent-minded MPs who took seriously the job of rigorously questioning the PM. Both were serving select committee chairs and elected by their peers. Jenkin is neither.

Johnson is returning to the bad old days of government patronage, rewarding MPs for their loyalty if they had not been appointed as ministers. Disappointing as that motive is, it may not be the whole story. For making your own person chairman of the one committee able to hold the centre of government to account sits rather easily with the disdain for — or perhaps fear of — serious parliamentary scrutiny already shown by team Johnson.

Johnson refused all three requests, with one excuse or another, from Wollaston to meet the Liaison Committee during the last parliament. His close lieutenant Dominic Cummings was officially held to be in contempt of parliament last year for failing to turn up, as the former director of Vote Leave, to a hearing on “disinformation and fake news” by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

And there was the curious case of the last Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) Russia report which Johnson held up until after the election. The ISC, though composed of senior parliamentarians, is not a select committee and a new PM still routinely appoints its members. (So far, he has appointed only the chairman, another loyalist, Chris Grayling, and publication of the report is still awaiting the appointment of the other members.)

The Liaison Committee cannot block government policy. But it can help to expose it to the light on Covid-19 and the renewed threat of a no-deal Brexit, to take only two examples.

Harman believes Johnson instead wants to “manipulate parliament” to “shield himself from accountability that is intrinsic to the job – not an optional extra”. Her amendment is very modest, insisting only that the new chair should be already chairing a select committee. The least that can be done by fair-minded Tory MPs who believe in parliament’s historic role of scrutinising the executive is to support it.