Nick Clegg shocked the House of Commons yesterday by the simple act of behaving like a grown up. The Deputy PM was making his statement on the legislation for the AV Referendum, fixed term Parliaments, equalisation of constituency sizes and the reduction of the number of MPs. I still think it's a relatively modest package of proposals, but it's still the most major reform of Westminster in my lifetime.
In summary, these proposals mean that:
A referendum on AV will take place on 5th May 2011. Yes it's the same day as other elections around the country, notably Scottish and Welsh elections, but, you know, I have a lot more confidence in people's ability to give their views on a straightforward question in addition to choosing their MSPs etc. In fact, in Scotland, where we only use First Past the Post for Westminster, we are all well used to different electoral systems. We didn't have a referendum for the Scottish Parliament constituency + top up list AMS system so it's kind of nice to be asked about this;
The next general election will be on 7th May 2015 and fixed term Parliaments of 5 years will be the norm unless 2/3 of House of Commons vote for earlier dissolution or a new Government is unable to be formed within 14 days of the passing of a vote of no confidence;
Reduction of MPs from 650 to 600; to put that into perspective, the US, which is almost 5 times bigger than us in terms of population, already has 115 fewer members of Congress (100 Senate and 435 House of Representatives). I have concerns about what a 10% increase in electorate will mean for constituency casework when the MPs' staffing allowances have been cut by 10% even under the current system. All Governments, and Councils, of whatever political hue balls things up from time to time. MPs have priority access into these departments to try to sort things out. This takes time because admissions that mistakes have been made are not often freely forthcoming and finding a satisfactory resolution can take some doing.
Equalisation of constituency boundaries with the exception, for obvious reasons, of Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles. If you have an issue with that, I suggest you ask Angus MacNeill and Alistair Carmichael for an example of their weekly diaries and ask if you seriously think they could take on a bit of the mainland as well.
You may remember that Labour went absolutely berserk about the Government's initial idea to have a 55% threshold. So the Government, with Nick Clegg in charge of this proposal, listened to the concerns and took them on board, increasing the threshold to 66%. This to me is mature, considered evolution of a proposal, not a U turn. Labour can't credibly oppose it either, given that this is exactly the same system they introduced for the Scottish Parliament.
Let's look at what happened when Labour faced knife edge votes in the House of Commons, on things like 42 days' detention, ID cards and the Gurkhas. Then Ministers refused to even enter into any sort of dialogue about their proposals until their whips told them that they didn't have the votes. Then there were unseemly behind the scenes deals and concessions in the hours before the vote. One of the things I've always found very uncomfortable about the Labour Party is their horribly macho way of doing things. It's their way or no way.
I rather like the new, mature grown up style of ministerial dialogue as practised by Nick Clegg - and other ministers too, to be fair. As the Opposition fractiously disintegrates into chaos, we're seeing sensible, sensitive behaviour from members of the Cabinet. I don't think that this would have happened in a Conservative Government either so I think it's another benefit of having Liberal Democrats in the coalition. The willingness of the executive to listen and take on board concerns can only be healthy for our democracy.
Showing posts with label Political Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political Reform. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Did I miss Labour's Holyrood Democracy Riots?
I am willing to accept that I am remarkably unobservant. I am perfectly capable of being so absorbed in my own little fairytale dream world that I could quite possibly not see Michael Schumacher or Tom Baker, both long term idols of mine, if I walked past them in the street.
I find it hard to believe that even I could have missed a series of pro democracy riots in the late 1990s inspired by the Labour Party, angry at the provisions for ending a Holyrood Parliament possible only by a 2/3 majority of the Chamber. Surely they must have been mad about it then because only that would explain their hysterical outrage at the Goverment's plans to introduce fixed term Parliaments witih a provision that a dissolution could only be obtained by a 55% majority of the House of Commons.
I can't really do this better than Scott at Love and Garbage or Duncan Borrowman, both of whom have shown that there needs to be some mechanism to stop a Prime Minister abusing Parliament to force an election if he feels like it. I tend to share Scott's view that the 55% figure is too closely wedded to current circumstances and I think if anything it could have been higher.
So why are the Labour party, who in 13 years did so much to rig the balance in favour of the Government, against Parliament, whipping up such condemnation of this move across the entire interwebby? Even people who are generally quite sensible, like Eric Joyce are going on as if we're trying to create some sort of banana republic. Honestly. I mean, who else is going to change the constitution? It's about time we had a proper one anyway. The Labour Government gave more and more power to ministers to change rules at will without referral to Parliament - it almost treated the House of Commons as a minor irrelevance at times and tried to do things it really had no business doing. Look at their disgraceful treatment of Gwyneth Dunwoody after the last election, when they tried to replace her as Chair of the Transport Select Committee.
I wonder if it's less to do with democratic principle and more to do with trying to incite rebellion amongst Tory MPs who might be feeling, shall we say, a little unsettled at having shacked up with these Lib Dem upstarts. After all, Labour had fixed term Parliaments in its manifesto so it had accepted the priniciple. I'd be willing to lay bets that they would have brought in a proposal similar to the Holyrood arrangement if they had formed the Government. Labour were bad in Government but it looks like they will be more vicious than constructive in opposition, trying at every turn to destabilise the coalition government.
This is the party which cynically walked away from a progressive coalition, putting its own party self interest above what the country needs and is now spitting dummies here, there and everywhere. It's so not a good look and my view is that voters, who tend to like co-operation and dislike the yah boo shouty shout stuff, will see through them.
I find it hard to believe that even I could have missed a series of pro democracy riots in the late 1990s inspired by the Labour Party, angry at the provisions for ending a Holyrood Parliament possible only by a 2/3 majority of the Chamber. Surely they must have been mad about it then because only that would explain their hysterical outrage at the Goverment's plans to introduce fixed term Parliaments witih a provision that a dissolution could only be obtained by a 55% majority of the House of Commons.
I can't really do this better than Scott at Love and Garbage or Duncan Borrowman, both of whom have shown that there needs to be some mechanism to stop a Prime Minister abusing Parliament to force an election if he feels like it. I tend to share Scott's view that the 55% figure is too closely wedded to current circumstances and I think if anything it could have been higher.
So why are the Labour party, who in 13 years did so much to rig the balance in favour of the Government, against Parliament, whipping up such condemnation of this move across the entire interwebby? Even people who are generally quite sensible, like Eric Joyce are going on as if we're trying to create some sort of banana republic. Honestly. I mean, who else is going to change the constitution? It's about time we had a proper one anyway. The Labour Government gave more and more power to ministers to change rules at will without referral to Parliament - it almost treated the House of Commons as a minor irrelevance at times and tried to do things it really had no business doing. Look at their disgraceful treatment of Gwyneth Dunwoody after the last election, when they tried to replace her as Chair of the Transport Select Committee.
I wonder if it's less to do with democratic principle and more to do with trying to incite rebellion amongst Tory MPs who might be feeling, shall we say, a little unsettled at having shacked up with these Lib Dem upstarts. After all, Labour had fixed term Parliaments in its manifesto so it had accepted the priniciple. I'd be willing to lay bets that they would have brought in a proposal similar to the Holyrood arrangement if they had formed the Government. Labour were bad in Government but it looks like they will be more vicious than constructive in opposition, trying at every turn to destabilise the coalition government.
This is the party which cynically walked away from a progressive coalition, putting its own party self interest above what the country needs and is now spitting dummies here, there and everywhere. It's so not a good look and my view is that voters, who tend to like co-operation and dislike the yah boo shouty shout stuff, will see through them.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Power 2010 - your last chance to have your say on cleaning up politics
For the last few months, Power 2010 have been consulting the public on the reforms they'd like to see to make politics fairer. They first collected ideas and the voting process is in its final stages and you only have until midnight tonight to vote.
The top 5 ideas will be part of the organisations pledge that they'll want candidates in the to sign up to. The top 5 at the moment are:
A proportional voting system (ie not the Alternative vote, or first past the post)
Scrapping ID cards and rolling back the database state
A fully elected second chamber
English votes for English laws
A written constitution.
One idea I really want to see in there, fixed term parliaments, is currently just outside the top 5, only by 120 or so votes. A written constitution is really important, but I'd say that taking away the Prime Minister's power to call elections on his whim is vital to a healthy democracy.
If you haven't voted already, please head along here and make your views known. You can vote for as many ideas as you like but only once for each idea, if that makes any sense.
The top 5 ideas will be part of the organisations pledge that they'll want candidates in the to sign up to. The top 5 at the moment are:
A proportional voting system (ie not the Alternative vote, or first past the post)
Scrapping ID cards and rolling back the database state
A fully elected second chamber
English votes for English laws
A written constitution.
One idea I really want to see in there, fixed term parliaments, is currently just outside the top 5, only by 120 or so votes. A written constitution is really important, but I'd say that taking away the Prime Minister's power to call elections on his whim is vital to a healthy democracy.
If you haven't voted already, please head along here and make your views known. You can vote for as many ideas as you like but only once for each idea, if that makes any sense.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Summertime - and reforming is easy
I have to say I'm impressed that a group of politicians, particularly in some ways Lib Dem politicians, have come up with a quick, easy and achievable way of carrying out at least some of the reform to clean up politics that is so badly needed. I know how much Lib Dems love to discuss the minutiae of the relative merits of electoral systems and other sorts of geekery, so this clearly and briefly worded programme is even more of an achievement than it looks.
All it takes is a good dollop of political will and a willingness to postpone their Summer holidays and look what could be achieved by the beginning of September:
1. Commitment to accept Kelly expenses reform in full
Come on, that should be a no brainer. They could decide to do that now with the briefest of debate. It's time to take decisions on expenses out of the hands of politicians and give that power to an independent body.
2. Recall power for MPs suspended for misconduct
This gives constituents the power to sack MPs if, and only if, they are found guilty of misdemeanours by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The process of determining guilt is thus carried out by an independent body. Then it would take something like 3 or 3,500 voters in the constituency to trigger a by-election. I'm slightly concerned about this proposal on 2 levels: that the process for implementing this is too quick - does there need to be a right of appeal, and should the threshold be higher? I think that there would also have to be a way of checking that the people signing the petition were who they said they were which would mean that they would probably have to be administered by the local council otherwise the system is open to total abuse.
3. House of Lords reform
Long needed - how ridiculous is that we have a chamber of our parliament which is made up of political appointees? We need to have a system where we can have confidence that the members are there because the people put them there and not because of what they may or may not have done for political parties.
4. Party funding reform
This badly needs cleaning up. It's not right that big business and unions can buy themselves so much political power through massive donations to political parties. Everything must be transparent and the proposals include a cap on donations from individuals per year and, importantly, caps on the amount of money political parties can spend in total over the course of a parliament. That latter cap would be set at £100 million which would cover Council, Scottish, Welsh, Westminster and European elections. There would also be a spending limit per constituency. That would effectively curtail parties sending voters in target seats loads and loads of mailings which don't count against election expenses.
5. Fixed term Parliaments
Another no brainer - why on earth should the PM have the total power when to call an election?
6. Enabling legislation for a referendum on AV+
Ok, STV is better, but AV+ is better than what we'e got, it's the system that was arrived at by an independent commission and it's the best we can get agreement on at the moment. I think the top up list system for electing the Scottish Parliament is pretty much an abomination, but it's still better than First Past the Post. We can campaign for STV at a later date, but I wouldn't turn down the opportunity for electoral reform that could be put to the electorate in a referendum soon and implemented for the next but one election.
7. Changes to House of Commons procedure to reduce executive power
This again is very important - the Committee system is very strong in the Scottish parliament and we want that for Westminster to make sure that the Government listens to MPs and doesn't completely dominate the parliamentary agenda. Backbench MPs would be given more powers too and Parliament should effectively have the final say on the appointment of ministers. These measures give a much needed check on the power of the Executive and increases the power of elected representatives.
There's no way on earth that any of this goes as far as Lib Dems want. There's so much more that needs to be done, but politics, as they say, is the art of the possible - and this lot really is possible if all parties get their backsides in gear and show willing.
What are the chances? We'll wait and see but if Labour and the Tories refuse the opportunity to take action to clean up politics, then they will have to justify themselves to the electorate when they finally do have their say.
LibDig This!
All it takes is a good dollop of political will and a willingness to postpone their Summer holidays and look what could be achieved by the beginning of September:
1. Commitment to accept Kelly expenses reform in full
Come on, that should be a no brainer. They could decide to do that now with the briefest of debate. It's time to take decisions on expenses out of the hands of politicians and give that power to an independent body.
2. Recall power for MPs suspended for misconduct
This gives constituents the power to sack MPs if, and only if, they are found guilty of misdemeanours by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The process of determining guilt is thus carried out by an independent body. Then it would take something like 3 or 3,500 voters in the constituency to trigger a by-election. I'm slightly concerned about this proposal on 2 levels: that the process for implementing this is too quick - does there need to be a right of appeal, and should the threshold be higher? I think that there would also have to be a way of checking that the people signing the petition were who they said they were which would mean that they would probably have to be administered by the local council otherwise the system is open to total abuse.
3. House of Lords reform
Long needed - how ridiculous is that we have a chamber of our parliament which is made up of political appointees? We need to have a system where we can have confidence that the members are there because the people put them there and not because of what they may or may not have done for political parties.
4. Party funding reform
This badly needs cleaning up. It's not right that big business and unions can buy themselves so much political power through massive donations to political parties. Everything must be transparent and the proposals include a cap on donations from individuals per year and, importantly, caps on the amount of money political parties can spend in total over the course of a parliament. That latter cap would be set at £100 million which would cover Council, Scottish, Welsh, Westminster and European elections. There would also be a spending limit per constituency. That would effectively curtail parties sending voters in target seats loads and loads of mailings which don't count against election expenses.
5. Fixed term Parliaments
Another no brainer - why on earth should the PM have the total power when to call an election?
6. Enabling legislation for a referendum on AV+
Ok, STV is better, but AV+ is better than what we'e got, it's the system that was arrived at by an independent commission and it's the best we can get agreement on at the moment. I think the top up list system for electing the Scottish Parliament is pretty much an abomination, but it's still better than First Past the Post. We can campaign for STV at a later date, but I wouldn't turn down the opportunity for electoral reform that could be put to the electorate in a referendum soon and implemented for the next but one election.
7. Changes to House of Commons procedure to reduce executive power
This again is very important - the Committee system is very strong in the Scottish parliament and we want that for Westminster to make sure that the Government listens to MPs and doesn't completely dominate the parliamentary agenda. Backbench MPs would be given more powers too and Parliament should effectively have the final say on the appointment of ministers. These measures give a much needed check on the power of the Executive and increases the power of elected representatives.
There's no way on earth that any of this goes as far as Lib Dems want. There's so much more that needs to be done, but politics, as they say, is the art of the possible - and this lot really is possible if all parties get their backsides in gear and show willing.
What are the chances? We'll wait and see but if Labour and the Tories refuse the opportunity to take action to clean up politics, then they will have to justify themselves to the electorate when they finally do have their say.
LibDig This!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Dave the Reformer - Don't make me laugh
The idea that the Tories could deliver the major constitutional reform we need in this country is the funniest thing I've heard in ages.
Cameron's thoughts today - which, remember, aren't actually proposals, just vague commitments from the Tories to "look seriously" at certain issues - are lukewarm and unambitious to say the least.
They're going to look at considering fixed term parliaments - that sounds a fairly tortuous process for what should be a no brainer. Of course the PM shouldn't have the power to decide when to go to the country - fixed term parliaments has been Liberal and Liberal Democrat policy for decades.
Certainly any opening up of the Committee structure in Parliament is welcome, but the devil will be in the detail. Is this a genuine devolution of power or will the Government be able to control them rigidly by using their majority to reduce the effectiveness of their scrutiny.
Then there's publishing the expenses claim of public officials earning more than £150,00 - which, of course, would no include MPs. I'm sure he couldn't be quite that stupid, would he?
And giving local councils the power to re-open things like post offices sounds great, but how does that work? Will they be given money to do so? Doesn't sound like it - they will have the power to raise money to do it. From where? Is this creating a process which sounds good but in practice is completely unworkable.
I don't trust the Tories when they talk about political reform. I haven't seen anything from them that makes me think that they genuinely get the principle of empowering people.
And of course, no mention of PR at all. If he were serious about giving power to the people, that's where he should start.
In contrast, look what Nick Clegg has been saying about reform, and how he challenged Gordon Brown and David Cameron at PMQs last week. It's not like he'd had some damascene conversion, either - all the stuff he says about political reform and freedom of information has been Lib Dem policy for donkeys' years, as have the concepts outlined in the Freedom Bill we would bring in.
So, there you go, Dave, you don't have to spend any time looking at considering evaluating analysing and cogitating, ruminating and digesting as Lloyd Grossman used to say. Just take on board the long-standing proposals of a party which has empowerment and decentralisation in its DNA.
LibDig This!
Cameron's thoughts today - which, remember, aren't actually proposals, just vague commitments from the Tories to "look seriously" at certain issues - are lukewarm and unambitious to say the least.
They're going to look at considering fixed term parliaments - that sounds a fairly tortuous process for what should be a no brainer. Of course the PM shouldn't have the power to decide when to go to the country - fixed term parliaments has been Liberal and Liberal Democrat policy for decades.
Certainly any opening up of the Committee structure in Parliament is welcome, but the devil will be in the detail. Is this a genuine devolution of power or will the Government be able to control them rigidly by using their majority to reduce the effectiveness of their scrutiny.
Then there's publishing the expenses claim of public officials earning more than £150,00 - which, of course, would no include MPs. I'm sure he couldn't be quite that stupid, would he?
And giving local councils the power to re-open things like post offices sounds great, but how does that work? Will they be given money to do so? Doesn't sound like it - they will have the power to raise money to do it. From where? Is this creating a process which sounds good but in practice is completely unworkable.
I don't trust the Tories when they talk about political reform. I haven't seen anything from them that makes me think that they genuinely get the principle of empowering people.
And of course, no mention of PR at all. If he were serious about giving power to the people, that's where he should start.
In contrast, look what Nick Clegg has been saying about reform, and how he challenged Gordon Brown and David Cameron at PMQs last week. It's not like he'd had some damascene conversion, either - all the stuff he says about political reform and freedom of information has been Lib Dem policy for donkeys' years, as have the concepts outlined in the Freedom Bill we would bring in.
So, there you go, Dave, you don't have to spend any time looking at considering evaluating analysing and cogitating, ruminating and digesting as Lloyd Grossman used to say. Just take on board the long-standing proposals of a party which has empowerment and decentralisation in its DNA.
LibDig This!
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