IT has been fashionable in the last few years with Tony Blair as Prime Minister (just as it was with Margaret Thatcher) to say that Parliament matters less than it used to.

Ministers -- some claim -- can do what they want, act secretively, and get away with it. I'd be very interested to know what Evening Telegraph readers think.

My own view -- trying to be as detached as I can -- is that people like me in senior positions in government are much more accountable to Parliament than ever before.

The book I'm reading at the moment is the new -- and very good -- biography of Barbara Castle (Red Queen by Anne Perkins).

When Barbara was making her name in the 1950s, and was a Minister in the 1960s, Ministers were answerable only in the Chamber of the House of Commons.

There were big set piece debates -- and rows -- there; but the place was neither televised nor on radio.

There was a culture of secrecy which meant that Ministers refused -- astonishingly -- officially to admit that our intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, even existed, still less answered for them.

And, above all, there were no Select Committees there to interrogate Ministers about the conduct of their departments.

It was in fact Margaret Thatcher who made the major change, agreeing in 1979 to the establishment of Departmental Select Committees: Twenty-four years on they really now show their teeth.

This week I'm up before the Foreign Affairs Committee twice -- for two hours on Tuesday and three hours tomorrow, on the decision to go to war in Iraq, and those now famous dossiers.

I know all members of the committee. Some -- like Hyndburn's Member of Parliament, Greg Pope -- are close friends.

But when they get into committee, friendship is rightly left outside the door.

Greg was asking me as many searching questions as any. And to prepare for these sessions takes hours of work.

I had, literally, three feet of documents, minutes, transcripts, to wade through. (It took me back to the time when I was cramming for my law exams.)

And these days on the stand, it's not only what you say, but how you say it, how you look. Live TV coverage will pick up every raised eyebrow, frown or twitch!

What Parliament wants is the truth, and it is essential that this is given -- even if it is, at the time, embarrassing. MPs accept that mistakes can honestly be made; government is not perfect, neither can any minister be.

But what MPs will -- rightly -- not accept is a lack of candour on evidence which does not fit with the facts.

Higher levels of Parliamentary accountability -- as we now have -- are good in themselves. But they also in my view lead to a better quality of decision-making.

As a minister you always have to be conscious, at the time of taking decisions, that you may have to answer for what you have done, not just in a 15 second answer to a quick Parliamentary Question but in hours of cross-examination by a Select Committee.

There is, however, one other difference between the time in the 50s when Barbara was a rising star, and today, which I cannot fully explain.

It's a great paradox. Though Ministers are much more accountable and answerable than ever they were -- and I believe the standards of conduct by politicians are in fact much higher and more closely monitored -- the public appear to trust us less.

Perhaps it is partly explained by much more critical media scrutiny and the decline of deference since the 1950s -- both of which are a good thing in themselves.

But I do not believe the decline in trust is good for the functioning of our democratic system as a whole.