The laws that will stop Jack Straw killing babies

Alan Watkins on politics

As this is the column which specialises in giving the details our great broadsheet newspapers evidently consider too boring to print, I begin with the composition of Labour and the Liberal Democrats' joint consultative committee on constitutional reform. Its leaders from the respective parties were Mr Robin Cook and Mr Robert Maclennan, himself a former Labour member who was Under-Secretary for Prices and Consumer Protection in 1974-79, which was more than the undoubtedly clever Mr Cook ever was.

On the almost complete lack of government experience, incidentally, of Mr Tony Blair's front bench - on which Dr Brian Mawhinney and his understrappers have so far preserved a surprising silence, maybe because to point it out would be to draw attention to their own over-lengthy term in office - it occurs to me that the only front-bencher with Cabinet experience is Mr John Morris, who was Welsh Secretary in 1974-79. He is not in the Shadow Cabinet but outside it as Shadow Attorney.

The rumour is that when Mr Blair comes to form a government this job will not go to Mr Morris but to another Welsh lawyer, Lord Williams of Mostyn. As Mr Gareth Williams he successfully defended one of Mr Jeremy Thorpe's co-defendants in 1979 and recently appeared on television to announce that in his opinion a grave miscarriage of justice had occurred. This seemed odd, even if commendably frank. There we are.

Anyway, to return to the constitutional committee: the Labour representatives, in addition to Mr Cook, were Mr Ron Davies, Mr Donald Dewar, Lord Plant, Mr George Robertson, Mr Jack Straw, Lady Symons and Mrs Ann Taylor. The Liberal Democrats, in addition to Mr Maclennan, were Mr Nick Harvey, Lord Lester, Mr John Macdonald, Professor Dawn Oliver, Mr Michael Steed and Mr Jim Wallace.

The Liberal Democrats accordingly had another former Labour member in Lord McNally; an expert on elections in Mr Steed; and two noted human rights lawyers in Lord Lester and Mr Macdonald, who is not an MP. On the Labour side Lord Plant had been chairman of the party commission on electoral systems which spanned the Kinnock-Smith years and in 1993 concluded after Herculean exertions of mind and spirit that nothing much should be done. Lady Symons was as Ms Liz Symons a kind of top persons' trade union leader in Whitehall. The rest were the usual suspects.

Their report is not well done; but you are surprised to find it done at all. When you come to think about this it is something of an achievement that the group's members did not start breaking the crockery and indulging in various other traditional old Liberal habits (for the more pacific people are in theory, the more bellicose they tend to be in practice). Broadly, Labour have won on the Bill of Rights and devolution, and the Liberal Democrats on electoral reform. Let us now have a look at one of the commitee's conclusions.

Both the parties, they say, agree that the rights and duties defined by the European Convention on Human Rights should be incorporated into our law. But this, they go on, "would not affect the sovereign powers of Parliament". How so? Well, when introducing Bills into Parliament, ministers would be required to explain why any provision is, or appears to be, inconsistent with rights given by the Convention. "This would strengthen parliamentary scrutiny and aid the courts in interpreting Parliament's intentions in legislating." This supervision would be carried out by means of "a joint select committee of both Houses of Parliament" which would "monitor the operation of the new Act, scrutinise pending legislative measures in the light of [Convention] rights and advise Parliament about compliance with the UK's obligations under the international human rights code to which it is a party".

Oh yes? Is that the way they think it is going to work? Where have they been all these years? For the committees which have been established to scrutinise, supervise or monitor various legislative developments - over delegated or European legislation or what-have-you - have been distinguished usually by their ineffectiveness. There are broadly two reasons for this.

One is that most MPs are idle, incompetent or both. Even those who possess enough diligence to read the necessary documents are rarely acute enough to comprehend their meaning. There are exceptions such as Mr Nigel Spearing on matters European: but by and large my generalisation holds.

The other, more important reason is that the Whips do not want - positively detest - members who are both industrious and intelligent, if such can be found. What they want are members who keep their mouths shut and vote the party line. If they follow these uncomplicated courses, the Whips say, and if in addition they make helpful interventions at Prime Minister's Questions and deliver the odd uncontroversial speech, they too may themselves expect to become ministers in due course, even if only at a lowly level.

Labour Whips do not have the brutish reputation of their Conservative counterparts. Indeed, even in the period of minority Labour governments in the late 1970s, Lord (then Mr Michael) Cocks and Mr Walter Harrison proceeded more by the gentle touch than by the rough gesture. To this extent, the legacy bequeathed to the party by R H S Crossman's and John Silkin's civilised regime of the late 1960s was not dissipated. Even so, all governments live by party discipline. Mr Blair's government will prove no exception. The large majority which he looks like winning will make control more necessary rather than less. Lord Pym once pointed this truth out on television in relation to a large Conservative majority, thereby greatly displeasing Lady Thatcher, who found him lacking in enthusiasm.

When Mr Straw introduces his Slaughter of the Firstborn (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, as he surely will at the proper moment, he is not going to need assorted cleverdicks telling him that some question of human rights may perhaps be involved. Nor will Mr Blair welcome a succession of barrack- room lawyers instructing a duly elected Labour government what it may and may not do. The firstborn, Mr Straw will say, are a notoriously troublesome section of the community, liable to get up to all sorts of mischief unless drastically restrained, besides being an intolerable drain on the Exchequer.

The judges may prove less easy to curb than the back-benchers. Already, indeed, they have the bit between their teeth and are trampling Mr Michael Howard under their feet virtually weekly. Lord Woolf and Mr Justice Laws have even gone so far as to suggest that they might overrule an Act of Parliament. Does Mr Straw really think they will return quietly to their stables once he (or whoever it turns out to be) has succeeded Mr Howard at the Home Office? The incorporation of the European Convention into English and Scots law - there is no such thing as UK law - will provide the judges with a whole array of additional weapons for overriding the actions of government. This may be a good thing or a bad thing. But Mr Blair and Mr Straw should at least be clear in their minds what kind of thing it is.