| MPs ENJOYED a rare opportunity on Monday and Tuesday to exercise their consciences, in an official capacity, when they were given a free vote (or “conscience vote”) on sections of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
In a free vote, MPs get carte blanche to follow their inner moral sense. Of course, MPs can follow this whenever they want, but they may have to pay the price for defying the whips.
It may seem odd to us that MPs are not encouraged to use their consciences at all times and in all places, but there is a kind of logic operating here. It is one thing to follow the party line on fishing policy and the council tax, but quite another to vote for a Bill that will mean the extinction of another person. MPs should not be put in the position of being coerced by the whips to vote for the death of another human being. If you believe that abortion and euthanasia are murder, or that the death penalty is barbaric, then the party enforcers should not twist your arm to vote for it.
Like so much politics, this sounds good until we start thinking about it. Decisions on foreign-aid budgets will mean life or death to thousands in the world’s poorest countries. The allocation of NHS resources is directly linked to patients’ chances of survival. Roughly 3000 people will perish in traffic deaths this year — more than 200 will be children — but there will be no “conscience votes” on foreign aid, the NHS, or road-safety legislation.
On the other hand, all will recall the bizarre decision to allow MPs a “conscience vote” on that great moral issue of our age, the Hunting Bill.
CONSCIENCE VOTES are not really about conscience at all, but about political management. Isolated dissenters are normally frogmarched to the whips’ office and offered “incentives” to change their minds. More substantial rebellions can be settled with back-room deals and concessions. But when public feeling on an issue is running high, and rebels are unlikely to be bullied or bought off, party managers can use the free vote as a stratagem to manage dissent. In a free vote, dissent is not taken as a sign of disloyalty, and the Government can save face if the vote goes against it.
The conscience vote opens up a deeper problem with the very notion of conscience itself. Conscience is the sense of right and wrong within the individual, as opposed to the moral decisions that are taken corporately by organisations or governments. An individual who acts according to conscience is following his or her inner moral compass rather than the ethics of the crowd.
The trouble with conscience is that it can be used by anybody to give moral sanction to anything. Tony Blair remarked recently that his Christian conscience was untroubled by his decisions about the second Gulf war. All this meant was that Mr Blair’s inner voice thought that Mr Blair did the right thing. Big deal.
The appeal to conscience is a moral cop-out. When we disagree with the majority, or diverge from moral norms, we should offer reasons and arguments for our actions. We may have to make sacrifices, or pay a price for our dissent. But when we want to stand apart from the crowd, it adds nothing to call our position “conscientious”.
The voice of conscience can say anything, and since we are the only ones who can hear it, the veracity of the voice cannot be tested, disputed, or contradicted.
Were everyone to follow his or her own conscience, the logical consequence would be subjective moral anarchy. As the Beatles put it so memorably: “You say ‘Yes’, I say ‘No’. You say ‘Stop’ and I say ‘Go, go, go’.”
JUST LIKE the word “sincerity”, “conscience” is code for: “I really believe that what I am saying is true.” But neither sincerity nor conscience offers any guarantee of moral truth. The wicked can be as sincere and conscientious as the saints.
Hannah Arendt pointed this out in her controversial meditation on the Eichmann trial. Even Adolf Eichmann had a conscience. When he first heard of “the final solution”, his conscience was disturbed. But later, under the influence of Nazi doctrine, his conscience started telling him that killing Jews was good. Indeed, Eichmann’s conscience was so resolute that it prompted him to oppose orders from Hitler that certain Jews should be allowed to emigrate to Palestine.
Talk about “conscience” only confuses our moral and political thinking. In public ethical debate, our private convictions must be explained — in other words, they must become reasoned arguments like any other. These arguments may be either persuasive or unconvincing. But slapping the label “conscience” on my ethical reasoning adds not a cubit to its stature.
When Martin Luther famously said, “Here I stand, I can do no other,” he also published 95 propositions for public debate. And he believed that conscience must be subject to correction, saying at the Diet of Worms that he would be prepared to revoke his views, if it could be demonstrated “by manifest reasoning” that he was wrong.
Conscience votes should be scrapped, and MPs who want to dissent from official policy should summon up the moral courage to defy their party whenever they want to. Luther certainly didn’t wait for the Vatican to grant him a conscience vote. He took his stand, made his case, and accepted the consequences.
The issues before the Commons this week deserved to be discussed in the full light of reason and with all the available evidence and expert opinion to hand. It has added nothing to the debate to have MPs brandishing their consciences.
The Revd Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard is Vicar of St Clement’s, Notting Dale, and St James’s, Norlands, in London. |
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