Just last month MPs backed plans for a Backbench Business Committee to determine the parliamentary agenda, but Harriet Harman failed to include a motion to provide for it in the remaining parliamentary business before dissolution.
Shadow Leader of the House, Sir George Young, has attacked her failure to do so:
“This is a deeply disappointing moment that undoes a lot of the progress that we have made to reform Parliament over the last few months. The creation of a Business Committee for backbenchers was the centrepiece of the Wright Report, which we supported from the start, and was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Commons.
“The Government said they would respect the decision of the House but instead they’ve ignored it. Harriet Harman should have apologised for not finding the time, but all we got was a complacent statement that progress had already been made on other issues. Labour talk about parliamentary reform but then duck the big decisions. Gordon Brown simply has no credibility on this issue”.
Jonathan Isaby