And another thing…

Hear hear!

I agree that any constitutional reform must take place once the political atmosphere isn’t so highly charged, and it must be the result of a careful process of consultation and thought, but I disagree with your comments on the Lib Dems and voting reform. Put yourself in their position for one second. If you were the victim of a system which favoured the larger two parties, and made it practically impossible for any minority party to break that stranglehold or gain a fair representation of the public vote, then you would be pushing for reform too.

I think you’re right to say that large scale reforms like this must wait, but to dismiss it out of hand in the way you have done, shows small mindedness and tunnel vision. You benefit because you represent one of the larger parties, but I’m willing to bet that if the Labour party were not in such a priviliged position, you might feel the same.

Cannot disagree with that.

Are you feeing alright there Tom?
Not feeling a little under the weather?
You’re making far too much sense. You’re supposed to be a New Labour muppet, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be claiming that Labour have never done anything wrong, and look at the evil Tories with their huge jealousy-causing castles, complete with (clean) moats and duck islands?

Seriously though, tis true that those with an agenda to push have been at it the past week.
You attack the Lib-Dems for trying to get PR put in, but it’s acknowledged to be fairer than FPTP. Hence why we use it in Scotland, why the EU insists on it. The only reason Westminster won’t is because both of the parties that stand to lose the most from PR are the ones in control.
Democracy would be better served with PR. We’d have no more Governments that only commanded 40% of the vote; the Lib-Dems would be a much larger party, but then so would the SNP group, the PC group and others.
I suppose now would be a bad time to mention we’d also probably see our first BNP member, but that’s democracy for you. Sometimes the silly sods will elect these eejits.

On the expenses front, at risk of repeating myself ad nauseum, the answer is simple. Raise the basic pay allowance to something befitting a G8 nation’s leaders, then do away with any and all accommodation allowances, and either issue standing travel warrants like we do with the squaddies (to insure they don’t spend their ticket money in the bar), and build/buy a large ‘hotel’ in or near Central London, secure the hell out of it, and let MP’s stay for free if on business or a moderate fee if not. Hell, I’d even be forgiving if it was free as long as you’re a sitting MP.
Room service wouldn’t be, mind. Just the room.

I tend to agree with you here, Tom. In fact I wonder if these things are best left to after the election and we have a parliament which is not trying to out hairshirt each other.

It seems to me that the expenses system is the immediate problem, and that any measures should be a stop-gap until the report later in the summer. Perhaps an election then? October?

As to reform, I think something is needed so that the executive can be held to account more strongly by the backbenchers on all sides of the house. It saddens me to see those who are not willing to push themselves up the ladder by towing the party line left to languish. You might not like this, Tom, but I get the impression the backbenchers are bored by their (political) impotence.

In my more dreamlike moments I wonder what a parliament without whips would be like….

Just another thought – is there a role for the Privy Council in a consideration of parliamentary reform?

I know few constituents go around asking for PR, but as a student I can tell you most people don’t have enough of an interest in political/electoral theory to care. I doubt they even realise there are multiple electoral systems!

However, were political education more widespread I’d be very much willing to bet that attitude would totally change.

There’s a basic problem with our constitution, which has little to do with MPs expenses or behaviour.

Our head of state is not democratically elected. Like Saudi Arabia, one family alone is allowed to provide the person in that position.

Clearly, this would be preposterous and completely unacceptable were it not for the justifying contention that this particular family has been specifically chosen by God to rule over us.

I’m afraid I find that awfully difficult to accept on quite a few levels.

they’re LibDems and will use any event — expenses scandal, family funeral, natural disaster on the other side of the world, swine flue — to talk about “fair votes”.

Oh for heaven sake. There is NO argument against proportional representation and the issue should raise it’s head on an hourly basis.

Tell me, why should everyone’s vote not be equal? Why should the value of a person’s vote vary by constituency?

Why shouldn’t the make up of our elected officials directly represent the will of the people? 10% of the vote, 10% of the seats etc…

The ONLY argument i’ve heard against it is that governments won’t be able to dominate anymore because no party will be able to get more than 50% of the vote. My answer? So what? If being able to dominate against the will of the people is so important, let’s prorogue parliament and let the Monarchy lead us again?

I am sick to the back teeth with the illiberal dictatorial narrow minded country we’ve become, and I blame the political left in it’s entirity. Left wingers are a cancer. They are nothing but dressed up communists. The similarities between our once great country and the communist states of history is alarming.

What happened to the Middle Ground?

@Liberanos
But in actuality the monarch has very, very little power. The Queen’s role is purely ceremonial.

@John
While I’m naturally left of centre, I still find myself agreeing almost with everything in your first 4 paragraphs!

–

Respectfully, Tom, I must say this post reads like as if you are thinking “let’s get really angry about expenses so we forget about wider constitutional reforms that would weaken my party”.

I have a great deal of respect for you but I’m starting to get the feeling you are a little bitter towards the Liberal Democrats, for whatever reason. The only reason they seem so “irrelevant” is because of FPTP.

Tom,

I agree with you that half baked constitutional reform done in haste is likely to do more harm than good. Many of the areas being considered are actually very peripheral to the main problems.

The central issue is what is the function of a parliament in a democracy. Historically it has had two functions. To express the will of the people as best thyt can discern it, in legislation, and to hold the executive to account for its actions.

The first problem demonstrated by the expenses row is that the House of Commons has virtually no capacity to anyhing without the CONSENT of the executive. It has been unable to get the government to share with the people how their money is being spent by MP’s, and it has been impossible to debate related issues such as the role of the speaker without the government’s permission.

This has to stop. Government’s control over the timetable of parliament and the composition of its committees has to stop. The simple and most direct method of accomplishing this it disbar paid members of the government from voting on timetable motions, the selection of members of standing committees, and the approval of statutory orders which should be debated and voted on as routine.

The second major area is how to deal with the fact that 70% of new law does not originate in the UK parliament but is the UK adoption of EU directives. At present these seem to waived through with minimal consideration. While, if we want to remain part of the EU, the UK can’t reject wholesale reasonable attempts to harmonise law across Europe, these regulations should be subjected to more rigorous scrutiny to make sure that changes to UK law are the minimum necessary, and where justified to throw the directive back to Brussels to think again. There will be rows, but the UK governement’s hand wil be strengthened if the rest of the EU know that stupid ideas won’t be enacted without real debate in the UK.

Only once we have some clarity as to what Parliament is for, and have given it powers to do the job, is it worth spending time on the size and composition of the chabers and the way members are selected.

Have to agree with everything you said. I think that although the mainstream media got swept up in the “speaker must go” smokescreen the man in the street didn’t give a damn. Likewise “root and branch reform” is another smoke screen.

“they want to talk about anything other than the expenses system”
Hit the nail on the head again.

I care about proportional representation (no, I’m not a LibDem). I know more than a handful of people who also care about it.

I agree that we shouldn’t rush into consitutional change – but the major parties DO need to debate these ideas now, because at least one of them needs to come forward with a decent constitutional reform programme as part of their electoral platform. Ideally all of them will present us with such a programme for change. And then once they get in, it WILL be time for swift and serious reform.

So – the constitutional reform debate IS needed now, and then the public will make its mind up based on what it’s offered.

Rule No. 1 of British politics. Be suspicious of anything being promoted by the dastardly LibDems.

Another great blog post from Tom Harris, and I completely agree.

RobertD: This 70 of figure is nonsense – see my 14 May post “UK laws: made in the UK”

Tom,

I accept that I have been misled by the “commony accepted” proportion. However the data that you quote is nearly 10 years out of date, and only covers those matters passed through as secondary legislation and leaves out primiary legislation that is often heavily influenced by EU directives.

Whichever way one looks at it the proportion is significant and probably rising. The UK will never get general consent to EU regulation until Parliament is seen to be paying far more attention to scrutinising it and to rejecting the least acceptable parts. Just as the electorate won’t shut up about MP’s expenses until the worst culprits have been thrown out of the House or prosecuted common regulations across the EU won’t become accepted in the UK until Parliament forces some real fights over the least acceptable regulations.

@Ryan.

If the Queen has so little power, one has to wonder why she needs nine palaces, a huge retinue and an extended family to exercise it.

In any case,fecklessness cannot justify the total lack of democratic process at the pinnacle of our constitution.

Ryan, I find Tom’s attitude towards the LibDems rather amusing. It reminds me of Clive Anderson asking Charles Kennedy straight off – “The Liberal Democrats: what’s the point?”

I think that proportional representation gives us only a proportion of government.

Back room haggling produces a mish-mash of compromised policies and hung legislatures.

The brutal system of winner takes all is the direct route to effective governance.

Occasionally, this produces a turkey.

But with PR it’s built in.

See this, a digest of a podcast Tony Wright MP gave recently as a impassioned argument for a change of culture over reform.

http://wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com/2009/05/tony-wright-mp-blogosphere-could.html

“then it will have to wait until the electorate are ready to listen to us again. That moment is yet some way off.”

Tom

you have got your arrogant head on..we be the masters now some MPs took our sovereignty in vain and we want it back.and then we will decide who to lend it to again.

I will agree the people need to have ‘ALL’ the information out there and not the anti-Government pro-Tory presentation orchestrated by the Torygraph.

But the tenor of your post doesn’t reflect the mood of the British people or should i say ‘Electorate’.

and your one of the nicer MPs…..I do despair i really do

@John

The blue, 12.32 one.

‘Oh for heaven sake. There is NO argument against proportional representation.’

Except the one that it gives a minority party greater influence than their electoral base justifies. You know, that one.

If the Lib Dems got power it would be like the days of the Lib-Lab pact only worse. I mind o those days: women were forced to wear beards and sandals and all bald men had to wear beards and pony-tails. We all had to go camping once a year in the Brecon Beacons, drive 2CVs, and eat acorns.

I dunno if those arrangements would suit Rapunzel and Aunti Flo’, to think of just two of our esteemed colleagues on here. They wouldn’t suit me. Not again.

I’m a BMW man meself.

If you don’t think much of the standard of my argument then we’re quits.

Liberanos: “The brutal system of winner takes all is the direct route to effective governance.”

And also the direct route to brutal autocracy.
I favour a “top-up” system lie we have here. Probably one of the few good things I think Labour have done in the last 12 years was the voting system for the Scottish Parliament. OK, it should also have control over it’s own elections (and will do soon) and more powers, but the list/constituency system works surprisingly well. it not only allows people to elect their local member via a traditional FPTP system, but also makes sure the resulting government is balanced and reasonably similar to the popular vote figures.

Bear in mind that I’m a fervent SNP supporter and I’m saying this. If the Scottish Parliament was FPTP, the SNP would (by share of the vote) mostly likely have a much larger majority, possibly an outright one. Which would be nice. But I personally am willing to make the sacrifice in favour of a partially-PR system.
Besides, come 2011, we’re going to cream the floor with Labour, no-one in their right mind will vote Tory with a tory government down in London and the Lib-Dems don’t really matter in Scotland. Funny that, when you come to think of it. They don’t matter in London because the FPTP system means they don’t get many seats.
Here they don’t matter ’cause no bugger votes for them.

Totally agree Tom.

Nothing to add.

Thanks for reminding me of the existence of the word “eejit” in this post. You should use it a lot more when describing persons whom you don’t like – i.e. Tories.

Almost totally agree, though closing a bar because a PM gets assasinated seems an over the top response. You just pick another one.

THough there may be a case for amending how many MPs there are or curtailing the power of government, the present requirement is to clean out the rather messy stables you and your assosiates in the commons have created or by your inaction have allowed to develop.

I see your mentioned in dispatches this morning inthe Sunday Times for turning down ten grand!! Well done!

What’s a ’swine flue’? A sort of ungulate chimney?

(Pathetic trivial gripe. But heck, in the absence of an election we can at least hold you accountable for your spelling. You were a hack after all, words were your business, and it’s not as if it’s a typo. Besides I’m a Labour-despising Troll: it’s not my function to attempt to enhance your comments. Having said all that, as your post says, calls to widen the allowances -not expenses scandal into a Year Zero should be resisted. I imagine most MPs are still reasonably honest; that means certain aspects of the current system are working, don’t start ripping it all down. After all, Italy and France have had people at the very top flagrantly fiddling away and there was no scandal at all (Chirac & Jospin: utter, utter, utter shameless crooks. How the ******* hell did they get away with it?!). Something’s so far stopped us from being quite as bad)

Flue now changed to flu. Well spotted (he said grudgingly…)

Tom.

You could make a case for your spelling.

InFLUEnza.

But I doubt you’d want to.

Technically, since it’s an abbreviation, that’d be ‘flu.
But I won’t hold that against you.

Yep, still to hear any real (i.e non politically-active) person demanding PR as the response to the expenses revelations.

Just as well, really, since PR systems would make it harder, not easier, to get rid of an MP.

There have been many cases in the Scottish Parliament where people have lost the First Past the Post election, but have then been returned to parliament anyway on the “list” system to represnt the people who just booted them out.

Until we change our archaic first past the post system, the UK can only slide deeper and deeper. Any time is a good time.
I remember a very good TV programme presented by Enoch Powell – no, it was not about ‘that’. He very eloquently explained the British Constitution and voting system, which he passionateley believed in. They are however, in my opinion, not only out of date but preventing any progress.
With boundaries being changed, counties being renamed, and a more cosmopolitan, nuclear society, the idea of constituencies and their regional representative has long gone. I think it was in 1983 that I first became aware of the unfairness of our Parliamentary system, when in the general election the Liberals got 25% of the national vote and 5% of the seats. This is wrong, unrepresentative and undemocratic.

Mr. Mxyzptlk: “some MPs took our sovereignty in vain and we want it back [...] the tenor of your post doesn’t reflect the mood of the British people or should i say ‘Electorate’.”

You’re right. Sovreignty belongs to the people not to the polticians. If there are to be constitutional changes, such as a move to proportional representation, it should be for the people to decide, not for the polticians to decide for us on our behalf. Politicians cannot be relied upon to act in out interests instead of theirs — for a start they were all elected under the presrent system, which might make them reluctant to change it.