As the discussions on the regulation of the Press begin in the Privy Council today, there will be one Councillor unavailable to be called. As has been widely reported John Prescott has resigned from the group, apparently because the Prime Minister has colluded with the Press to allow their own code of conduct to be considered ahead of the one the three Political Party leaders have concocted. The Privy Council currently has around 600 members who include all current cabinet members along with senior Politicians from other parties and many Politicians like John who have now been elevated to the Lords. It also includes senior Church of England clerics including some who have retired and Judges and members of the Royal Family and their staff. Its membership is determined by the Prime Minister of the day and the Monarch. These men and women are not elected, nor are they accountable to you or I or even Parliament, yet they advise the Queen on matters that will become law. The whole Council rarely meets and in practice todays meeting will be of a committee of the Privy Council, consisting of four or five Cabinet  ministers led by the Deputy Prime Minister.

It is hard to know how much of an impact Prescotts resignation will have. It is equally hard to understand someone who disapproves of the political machinations of the current Prime Minister, missing the irony of his position bearing in mind some of the actions of a previous Prime Minister and his Deputy. One of Prescotts concerns relate to the lack of political accountability of the Privy Council. However he has been a member for 19 years as he explains in his column in the Daily Mirror on 6th July. Here is a man who wants to determine the limits of Press Freedom, writing as a Journalist for a Red Top Paper.

“When I became Labour’s deputy leader in 1994, I received a phone call from  the then Prime Minister John Major. He wished me well and said he was going to make me a Privy Councillor –  that’s what the Right Honourable stands for in some MPs’ titles. I refused. I didn’t want to join the Privy Council. It’s supposed to advise  the monarch on constitutional issues and the issuing of Royal Charters, but I  felt it was outdated. Surely the Government and Parliament could do that role? But Major explained if I didn’t join, I wouldn’t gain access to certain state  documents… so I reluctantly agreed.”

John Prescott left the Government in May 2010, which has given him plenty of  opportunity to resign from the Privy Council, yet for some reason he has remained a member until this week? One wonders if all of the members of the Council get access to the state documents that John Major referred to? If so that is particularly disturbing in the light of some of the members of this Council.

According to the Privy Council’s own website “The Privy Council is the mechanism through which interdepartmental agreement is reached on those items of Government business which, for historical or other reasons, fall to Ministers as Privy Counsellors rather than as Departmental Ministers” The website also provides other information that is helpful in understanding its nature. Interestingly the website address includes the word independent in its string of words. Is this to emphasise that they are independent of you and I as electors? or perhaps an attempt to suggest it is independent of the rough and tumble of party based politics? All 600 or so Privy Council members are listed on the site, two names that I spotted are Denis MacShane who cheated his Parliamentary  expenses and Michael Mates who intervened on behalf of Asil Nadir to help him evade justice. I suspect there are other names who have an equally interesting past. Perhaps this group needs a bit of scrutiny after all!