A report from a group of MPs detailing how to reform the Commons provides a blueprint for a better and more effective parliament, MPs were told today.
Speaking during a Westminster Hall debate, Mark Fisher (Lab, Stoke-on-Trent Central) said the recommendations of the House of Commons reform committee should be enacted as soon as possible.
He said that in recent years Parliament had "lost its sense of its own identity" and MPs had become "creatures of government".
"Parliament has been getting steadily weaker and more enfeebled and government has been getting stronger and more almighty," he said.
"Parliament is not working at the moment". He added. "We come here when we a called, we go away when we are told to".
The one-off reform committee of MPs under the chairmanship of Labour back-bencher Tony Wright was appointed with government support to come up with proposals to reform the way parliament conducted business.
Reporting back in November, the committee recommended that select committees should be elected by secret ballot of the house, and that committee members should be elected by secret ballot from within party groups.
It also said that backbenchers should wrest some control of scheduling of business in the Commons from the government, and that the public should be more involved in parliamentary debates through the use of petitions.
Backing the report's proposals Fisher said that while the government had a right to expect to be given enough time to get its legislative programme though parliament, they did not need to "dominate and run" the detailed day to day business of the Commons.
And he said the method of select committee chairmen being picked by party whips was like government "choosing its own invigilators".
Current practise meant that government was in effect "scrutinising itself", he added.
But Conservative MP Mark Field said the report was "far too timid" in its proposals.
He said Parliament needed to "pair back" control of the legislature by the executive and said that all committee members should be chosen by secret ballot, not just the chairmen.
Committees were currently blighted by the "ludicrous charade of ill-prepared MPs pouting out prepared questions", he said.
And he warned that if Parliament were to have any future relevance MPs should regard lawmaking as an "end in itself" rather than an essential stepping stone towards holding ministerial office.
Natascha Engel (Lab, North East Derbyshire) warned against rushing into reform before defining what was meant by that term.
She said that the report failed to address "wider democratic deficit" in the country.
Engel, herself a member of the reform committee, published a minority report dissenting from the committee's final proposals.
Cautioning against secret ballots for committee membership, the Labour MP pointed to the recent election of Speaker Bewcow by that method.
"Opposition benches felt they had a speaker they did not want foisted upon them by a government majority," she said.
And she also warned that going instituting too much change so close to a general election risked "trying the hands" of a future generation of MPs who would have their own ideas about how to reform the Commons.
