The dark forces that are stopping Parliament from doing its job

A good old-fashioned stitch-up of the Commons establishment voted against Robin Cook's modernising reforms

Turkeys do after all vote for Christmas. That is the one unmistakeable conclusion of the weird and contrary events that took place in the division lobbies of the House of Commons at around 8pm on Tuesday night. Usually an apology would be needed for returning to the subject of Parliament. While great events are happening in the world – some of them addressed by Tony Blair in his interview with Jeremy Paxman last night – who on earth cares about the quaint inner workings of a body that already suffers from an excess of introversion?

There are two reasons for not apologising, however. One is that the Commons has gradually started to become interesting again, something that hasn't been true since the heady days of John Major's perilously narrow majority. And the second is that how its members handle themselves in the coming months goes, along with the vexed question of party funding, to the heart of the urgent issue of public confidence in politics and politicians.

The evidence of Tuesday night is not that encouraging. Incredibly, by 209 to 195 votes, MPs voted against a proposal that would have given backbenchers more power to scrutinise the executive by taking some of the task of choosing members of the select committees from the party whips and handing it instead to a group of backbenchers. They did so on a supposedly free vote. The proposal had the all-party backing of an all party committee on modernising Parliament, chaired by an enthusiastic cabinet minister, Robin Cook. And the case for reform had been given a massive boost last summer when Labour MPs – quite rightly – rebelled against the whips' attempt to supplant two independent-minded chairmen, Donald Anderson and Gwyneth Dunwoody, with the Government's own nominees.

The murky details of just how the unthinkable happened have not yet all emerged, and may never do so. Conspiracy is an overworked term. A handful of ministers and whips voted with the – honourable – 195. But it's also clear that if the significantly larger number who voted against had not done so, then the vote would have gone the other way. And that's not all. There were whips and their allies standing by the "no" lobby like traffic policemen directing Labour backbenchers, as it were, to step this way. Whether or not they were, as the official line now has it, "freelancing", it's doubtful that this is conduct appropriate to a free vote. A point seized on immediately after the vote by the strongly reformist backbencher Gordon Prentice. Particularly since not a single full member of the Cabinet turned up to support Mr Cook at his hour of need, on a proposal that it had – at least in theory – approved, and at a time when it wouldn't even have interrupted dinner.

Select committees may be a pale imitation, but they are the nearest Britain has to US congressional committees. The idea that they should be creatures of the executive they are supposed to scrutinise is indefensible in a modern democracy. On Tuesday night, the redoubtable constitutional reformer Tony Wright described how the Government had told him he would not be an acceptable committee chairman. Admirably, the Public Administration Committee – which he now chairs – told the Government to get stuffed.

A lot less admirably, also on Tuesday, the Labour majority on the Treasury Select Committee caved in to government pressure and decided to delay consideration of the five economic tests of British euro entry. No doubt Gordon Brown feels he needs such an examination like a hole in the head. If he pressed the Labour majority, including the committee chairman, John McFall, not to undertake one, he was probably just doing his job. What is clear, however, is that by acceding to this pressure – on what is after all the biggest issue of this parliament –the Labour members of the committee are very definitely not doing theirs.

All of this would matter a lot less if it did not cut badly across what appeared to be a belated but real effort at the top of government, from No 10 down, to take Parliament more seriously. The decision by Mr Blair to appear before the select committee chairmen twice a year, and the potential advance made on Lords reform last Monday, are not only right in themselves but also good politics – as Mr Blair appeared to recognise. Apart from anything else, allowing Parliament to act as a more effective safety valve for scrutiny and dissent makes it more difficult for a capricious press to try to usurp its role.

And that applies just as much to Tuesday's decision on Select Committees. It is all very well saying, as some in the Government did yesterday, that the Commons approved other proposals to strengthen the committees. That's true. But the one which would really make an impact on the outside world was the one to loosen the stranglehold of the whips. On Tuesday the Commons opted for the worst of all worlds: to pay select committee chairmen more and leave the committee composition in the hands of the whips, who now have the even more potent weapon of money to dangle before their chosen nominees.

Kenneth Clarke, William Hague, Sir George Young and many other Tories voted with Mr Cook yesterday. But the entire Shadow Cabinet, in what looks like a good old-fashioned stitch-up of the House of Commons establishment, voted against. This casts considerable doubt on whether the Tory frontbench's commitment to a more robust Parliament is anything more than lip service. Just as it is extraordinary that, in the wake of the latest and worst example of donor trouble, that of Richard Desmond, they aren't grasping the cause of state funding for politics.

Maybe as the Liberal Democrat Commons leader Paul Tyler suggested yesterday, the "no"-voting government members were punishing Mr Cook for not giving them more support in the Dunwoody/Anderson affair. If so, they are failing to grasp the much more important prize of restoring some faith in politics.

But that hardly matters now. Instead, there are two important lessons. If Mr Blair is serious about a better deal for Parliament – and he said yesterday that he backed the Cook proposals – he and his ministers are going to have to do a great deal more to help the Leader of the House than they did on Tuesday. It is now clear that the task of assembling a coalition in favour of a sensible, democratising Lords reform over the coming months will be an uphill struggle. Those who say they want just that are going to have to do some real organising. What both Mr Tyler and Mr Wright yesterday called "dark forces" could well prevent it, just as they prevented reform on Tuesday night. There are optimistic signs. More Labour MPs voted for the reform than against it. Parliamentary reform is still on the agenda. But the reformers are going to have work all the harder to ensure a 21st-century parliament worthy of the name.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk