The modernisation of Parliament needs more than new working hours

Now that clapping is allowed in the Chamber, a polite round of applause, please, for Robin Cook's plans to push the House of Commons in the general direction of becoming a modern, effective and accountable legislature.

It makes sense for the Commons to sit earlier in the day. This is not so much a matter of allowing MPs to see more of their families – which only applies if they live in or near London, in any case. It is more a question of the mechanics of accountability. If the Commons starts its business at 11am, important statements will be made at about 12.30pm, allowing the press and evening broadcasters more time for analysis. This applies most of all to Budgets, when a vast amount of complex information is dumped into the public domain late in the afternoon, but the same principle applies more generally.

Other minor changes, such as allowing questions to ministers to be tabled at shorter notice, are a welcome step forward, but Mr Cook still has to win his battle against the combined forces of the two main parties' whips' offices to produce genuinely independent backbench committees to scrutinise the Government.

Changes to Commons hours will also have a more general effect on the culture of the House. The less it is seen as a drinking club and the more it is seen as an office where people work, the better. The ancient institution of the late-night vote, where the lobby fodder of backbenchers are summoned from bars and restaurants by the division bell, will be preserved as a museum-piece on Mondays, but otherwise is rightly to be dispensed with.

It makes sense, too, to cut the working week to three-and-a-half days a week (with Monday mornings and Fridays off), while ending the summer recess earlier, in September rather than October. MPs need to be given time to do their work outside the Chamber and in their constituencies, but the summer recess is too long, producing what is now the annual clamour for a recall of Parliament.

Polite applause only, however. No stamping and cheering until we see the evidence that the Prime Minister understands that more effective democratic scrutiny will strengthen his Government rather than undermine it.

This is more than a matter of simply agreeing to recall MPs to London to debate the undeclared war on Iraq. Mr Cook deployed the obvious argument against a recall yesterday, which is that nothing has really changed since July. But that overlooks the fact that the Commons did not have the chance before July to debate the principle of military action.

Mr Blair has in the past gone to surprising lengths to avoid a vote before committing British forces to military action. Yesterday, however, Mr Cook came as close as he dared to saying that there would be a vote as well as a debate before any action against Iraq.

Mr Cook is right about that, too. It ought to be a basic rule of democracy that the nation does not go to war without a vote by its people's representatives. Mr Blair's reluctance to hold such a vote is all the more baffling because there can be no doubt about the outcome. When rebel Labour MPs finally forced a vote on the bombing of Afghanistan last November, three weeks after it started, the Government won by 373 to 13.

Until Mr Cook's reforms of procedure are backed up by constitutional changes that give MPs real powers to hold the Government to account – above all in matters of war and peace – they will produce a modernised talking shop, not a modern parliament.