The Parliamentary Fallacy

My research accidentally reveals a basic misunderstanding among Britain's MPs

And the results are IN.

I’m referring to the task I set myself back in the summer: to write personally to every MP in the British Parliament about the WHO Pandemic Treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations that are currently being agreed, on our behalf, behind the scenes.

You could say that the project was born of incredulity: I was struggling to believe that the Parliament of the democracy in which I’d grown up was simply letting way-of-life-ending measures go through without so much as a nod. The Westminster I’d known as a journalist had become unrecognisable: MPs were no longer publicly debating or sharing changes to the governance of the country with the people. The occasional noise that came out of Parliament when a single MP tried to initiate a debate on the subject suggested that our elected representatives hadn’t even read the relevant documents and were content to hand the whole thing over to a small group of negotiators. Worse, their reluctance to discuss the issues suggested a culture of secrecy ideally suited to the cloaking of vested interests.

Meanwhile, time was moving on. The Treaty and amendments are due to be agreed at the World Health Assembly next May, while the UK’s chance to reject amendments already agreed in 2022 expires this December 1st. You can find a summary of the timescale here. And although this Substack focuses on Britain, James Roguski is not wrong when he says the choices made will affect everyone on earth.

So I decided to read the WHO documents myself, extracting from them a select number of questions pertinent to British democracy. Are the proposals consistent with informed consent? Do we really want to give a transnational NGO the power to impose ‘binding’ measures on the country? Is it wise to agree to invest so much resources in an organisation with clear commercial links to bodies that would benefit from such an arrangement? You can find a brief explanation of what I set out to do in this piece and the letter I sent to MPs in a previous Substack.

Given the context, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of substantive responses. The point was to put MPs on notice, to highlight their failure to scrutinise new policies and protect British democracy from potentially destructive interests. On a personal level, there was something valedictory about the task: like many others, I am coming to terms with the realisation that things have gone so wrong in the Western world that we need to rebuild outside the mainstream. At the same time, I also had a lingering hope that the democratic conscience might be reawakened in at least a few MPs.

But the responses threw up something I never anticipated. Some MPs appeared to believe they are prohibited from communicating with anyone outside their constituencies. ‘Strict parliamentary protocol means I can only reply to constituents, wrote Jacob Young, a formulation echoed by William Wragg and Valerie Vaz. ‘There is a Parliamentary protocol that Members of Parliament can only respond to communications from their own constituents,’ claimed Justin Madders.

Now this was odd. I had been familiar, as long as I could remember, with the convention that MPs only take up specific problems on behalf of their own constituents, those to do with housing, for example, injustices or failures of the system: the part of their work known as casework. But for MPs to claim that they were forbidden from communicating with the citizenry was bizarre. How could it possibly be true in an open society that one section of the population was prohibited from discussing public affairs with another, especially when that section was the elected representatives of the people?

So I went to straight to the horse’s mouth to check the details of the convention and almost immediately received the following reply from the House of Commons:

“Firstly, you may like to note that there is no statutory job description for Members of Parliament and how MPs carry out their duties and the cases that they wish to undertake is a matter for them to determine individually. 

“The Parliamentary convention which guards against Members of Parliament taking on the constituency work of a fellow MP is a convention and not a rule or standing order of the House and is applied flexibly. Therefore if an MP is unable or unwilling to act; constituents may approach other Members of Parliament as appropriate.  For example, there are of course certain circumstances whereby it would be appropriate for a Member of Parliament to represent another constituency, including the disqualification or death of the sitting MP. How constituency business is handled in that period is not, strictly, a matter for Parliament itself and various ways will be found by the relevant party or by neighbouring MPs to provide some appropriate ‘representational cover’.”

So there you are – the convention some MPs were referring to did indeed apply only to requests for assistance involving them in representation and action. There is of course no bar on politicians communicating with the public about matters of policy or national interest.

Yet, as the MPs’ replies continued to come in, it became clear a significant number appeared to believe that their freedom of speech and association was severely constrained by their elected office. The office of Maria Caulfield wrote: ‘Due to strict Parliamentary protocol, Maria is only allowed to respond to those who live in her constituency’. Florence Eshalomi, the Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, replied: ‘Due to Parliamentary rules, I can only respond to people living in Vauxhall’.

The peculiarity of the trend was thrown into relief by the number of replies from MPs demonstrating that they did understand their dual role as both constituents’ representatives and national legislators at Westminster. Some responses demonstrated a real appreciation that people might want to share their views on a range of issues and indicated that communications were helpful in informing the MP about public feeling on a subject. These replies tend to attribute an inability to respond directly to a lack of time - constituents’ problems take priority - rather than blaming it on a chimerical ban on communication. Some MPs came up with the neat solution of directing correspondents to their website where they outlined their position on issues generating significant public concern.

A further group of MPs replied in a way that was opaque, neither demonstrating the misunderstanding of the first group nor any acknowledgement of public interest in policy. In all, the variation among the current parliamentary cohort was so wide that I decided to roughly calculate the proportion of MPs falling into the various camps. I chose four categories to cover the range of responses: Understanding, Non-understanding, Misunderstanding and Substantive and, in allocating the replies, erred on the side of generosity. Along the way, I got the impression that there was a gap between older, seasoned MPs who were open to communications about policy and a newer, less experienced intake with a more limited sense of their role, but I can’t substantiate this in terms of numbers.

Out of 610 replies, 278 MPs demonstrated an understanding of their dual role, 268 were opaque, and some 60 – about 10% – displayed a misunderstanding of their role, putting themselves at odds with the description provided by the House of Commons. There were four substantive responses to the subject of my letter. I’ll get to those later. Although it’s possible a handful did not receive my letter – a couple of MPs required me to fill out a form which did not accept the link to the letter – the remainder, some thirty-something MPs, did not reply at all. Andrew Bridgen (I know some of you are wondering!) was one of them. My own MP, Steve Reed, did not send any follow-up to the initial automated response despite me making it clear that, as a constituent, I was expecting a reply.

But for now, why does the misunderstanding – I’m going to call it The Parliamentary Fallacy – matter?

Open communication and debate is essential to a free society, particularly where legislation and policy are concerned. In a complex society where the range of issues is vast, MPs naturally specialise in particular policy areas which they pursue as their careers progress, perhaps as members of select committees or post holders in government departments. In this context, suggesting that an MP’s horizons be confined to a provincial demographic outside of which they are not permitted to communicate is patently ridiculous. By the same token, citizens with concerns in particular areas naturally approach MPs who share their interests. If their own MP has no such interest and a citizen is led to believe it is pointless to even approach another, their only channel is through campaigning organisations, who may not share their views, or by writing to a ministerial department, where policy has already been decided.

The 60 MPs communicating The Parliamentary Fallacy are misleading the public and doing a disservice to democracy.

A further aspect of the situation strikes me forcibly. The relationship between citizen and MP is supposed to be one of equals in which the former freely chooses a person s/he considers suitable to represent her in matters of governance. When that relationship is construed purely in terms of casework, the citizen is cast into the role of petitioner, begging the MP for help. How disempowering! And the disempowerment cuts both ways for if, to borrow the phrasing from Maria Caulfield’s office, the MP is not ‘allowed’ to communicate freely, she has not much more authority than a school prefect. The social contract at the heart of Western democracy has disappeared and the MP is merely implementing a system in which the real power is held elsewhere. But by who?

Or do I mean by WHO?

*

Before we move on to the next bit of serious stuff, let’s have some fun.

Andy Mcdonald advised me that his office would be closed from 22^nd December 2021 until 4^th January 2022. Rushanara Ali told me to ‘get boosted’ if I wasn’t ‘fully vaccinated’. (I do find this comi-tragic: it’s so obviously not the role of an MP to tell a stranger what medical procedures to have. Should I write back and tell her to have a breast removed, just in case?) Lloyd Russell-Moyle informed me that, to limit the spread of the virus, his office was still closed to visitors and his staff working from home. And Stella Creasy, while not replying about the subject of my email, thought I might like an update about the hospital at Whipp’s Cross.

Now, let’s get to the four substantive replies I received. Matthew Pennycook’s office said that ‘Mr Pennycook takes the issues you raise extremely seriously’ and left it at that. Steve Brine said that, as Chair of the Health Select Committee, this was ‘a subject of which’ he was ‘seized’ and promised that the committee would continue to monitor it closely. He included a link to a letter he had sent to the health minister which you can read here. It asks nicely about the arrangements for the negotiations and mentions the 5% of the national health budget being demanded by the WHO. But most of all, it reveals the extent to which MPs, even those sitting on the Health Select Committee, are being kept in the dark about the deal the government is currently brokering with the WHO.

Peter Kyle was exceptional in responding with a courteous email of some length that addressed me by name, but the contents were rather general and didn’t address the questions posed in my letter. His email ended with an assurance that he would ‘follow developments in this area closely and bear in mind the points raised’. 

Siobhain McDonagh sent a reply that was almost identical to Peter Kyle’s, but added: ‘One lesson of the pandemic is that no one is safe until everyone is safe, and that global health is local health, so global co-operation on pandemic preparedness and biological threats needs to be strengthened.

‘Speculation that any future treaty will undermine UK sovereignty and give the WHO powers over national public health measures is, in my view, unfounded,’ she went on. ‘Indeed, protecting national sovereign rights is a distinct principle in the first draft text, which makes no reference to vaccine mandates, lockdowns or any such policies. Indeed, the implementation of the regulations “shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons”.’

This was interesting indeed. It is well recognised amongst those who have examined the issue that the Pandemic Treaty and the IHR amendments go hand in hand, and that the really problematic proposals are in the latter. The assurances in the treaty about sovereignty and humans rights are at odds with the specific proposals in the IHRs; to make the contradiction readily accessible to the MPs, I had put a screenshot of some of them in my letter. See below:

Article 18, amendments to the IHRs

McDonagh’s reply suggests she’d read neither the IHR amendments nor my letter, and was instead falling back on some sort of pre-prepared response circulating among MPs that the Treaty poses no threat to British sovereignty.

Finally, I looked at a sample of the MPs who had directed me to their websites for statements about policy issues.

Huw Merriman, whose website has a section dealing comprehensively with policy areas, had this to say: ‘The UK Government supports a pandemic instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response to protect lives, the economy, and future generations from future pandemics. The instrument will be developed by WHO member states, and the UK will not sign up to any treaty that compromises its sovereignty.’ Craig Whittaker’s website also featured a response which did not address the substantive issues but repeated the line about sovereignty.

I could not find anything on Flick Drummond’s website to do with the Treaty or IHRs but there was a rather dispiriting statement on mandatory vaccination. The website of Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry had nothing to say about the WHO’s proposal; instead there was a statement on mandatory vaccination which left me baffled. Thornberry was committed to bodily autonomy and personal choice, she said, but vaccine passports were nothing new and politicians were ‘looking at’ making vaccination a condition of employment. Did she believe in informed consent or not? 

I couldn’t find anything relevant amongst the policy responses on Barry Gardiner’s website. Surely Jeremy Corbyn would have something to say on such an important subject? I searched, but found nothing.

So there we are. Not a single MP addressed the issues around vaccines and certificates, quarantines and closures or the implications of the proposed enhanced surveillance and data-sharing regime run by the WHO. It’s a situation that reflects the general silence about Britain’s response to Covid, and the absence of reflection and assessment on the part of the political class responsible for it. So with regard to our response to future pandemics, it seems as if we are left with conflicting sets of attitudes and beliefs held by three main groups: the politicians who hold that ‘it’s all in hand but we’re not talking to you about it’, a group who (if you read the documents!) are clearly after huge amounts of power and money, and a public who believe nothing as unpleasant and mad as what they experienced in 2020-22 will happen again.

How is that going to work out?

*

The Parliamentary Fallacy and the failure of MPs to discuss the most important public health issue of our time is a symptom of the de-democratisation underway in Britain. This is not just about the threats posed by the Public Order and Online Safety Bills, as serious as these are. I’m talking about the culture, the values that lie at the heart of a democracy, ideas and principles which must be understood by people and politicians if the country is to truly function as a democracy.

Two recent controversies are salient examples of this loss of democratic values.

One is the Energy Bill passed by the Commons earlier this month. The legislation lays the ground for the introduction, by statutory instrument, of a range of new powers and offences connected to the government’s Net Zero agenda. Regulators would have the right to use ‘reasonable force’ to enter people’s homes to ensure their owners had met the right requirements and fines of up to £15000 and imprisonment of up to a year could be imposed on those who fail to comply. The bill’s final reading prompted a minor rebellion by some Conservative MPs – you can hear Craig Mackinlay expressing his outrage here. But my question is: why so little, so late? It takes a long time to get a piece of legislation to this stage, the third reading of a bill. Why did only a handful of MPs wake up at this point in the proceedings?

The second issue is the furore around Russell Brand, who has been subject to allegations in The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches of rape and sexual assault which took place in the early 2000s. No police investigation was underway, much less a trial in a court of law when one MP, the chair of the Culture Media and Sport Committee, wrote to Rumble requesting that Brand be de-monetised. (YouTube had already done this.)

That MP is Caroline Dinenage, the principle politician behind the Online Safety Bill. Of all the MPs’ responses to my letter, hers stands out. When I received the Parliamentary Fallacy response from her office, I replied, explaining that I was not a constituent seeking help but simply a citizen conveying my feelings on a matter of policy. I had done the same with Matthew Pennycook, who got it. But Dinenage’s office doubled down on their mistake, insisting: ‘The role of an MP is to represent their constituents, and as such it is strict Parliamentary protocol that an MP cannot enter correspondence with constituents of another MP’s constituency.’

*

I’m not sure I’m quite done with Britain’s rogue MPs yet. The need to record and bear witness is a powerful human impulse, and one that is particularly strong in me. We love people to witness our joys and successes, but the need for others to witness disappointments and injustices is possibly even stronger. I’m toying with a few ideas as to how to record this moment in the decline of British democracy. Some kind of time-capsule preserving MPs’ responses for future generations? A pamphlet lodged in the British Library, in the manner of my ancestors? Feel free to share any ideas you may have in the comments below or email me directly.

Equally, please pass on any corrections or different experiences of MPs on this subject. And if anyone wants the reply of a particular MP that I’ve received, I’ll be happy to forward it to you.

I’ll leave the last word to the CEO of Rumble, in his response to Caroline Dinenage: