Strengthening Parliament

'If the turkeys won't vote for our Christmas,

we need to change the turkeys.'

The third set of Jury Team Proposals is designed to encourage more MPs with experience of the world outside the 'Westminster Village' into the House of Commons by providing the opportunity for proper debate, rather than being 'lobby fodder', in the same way as is achieved by the non-party crossbench members of the House of Lords.  The expenses scandal has accelerated the idea of a new style of politician going into Parliament.   The Jury Team Proposals will base MPs pay and expenses on civil service guidelines, introduce term limits for MPs, make deception by elected representatives a criminal offence, set up an independent Politicians Complaints Commission, cap political donations, improve the operation of Select Committees, restrict gold-plating of EU directives and provide a fixed Parliamentary term.

18. MPs to be free to vote in line with their best judgment except when bound by their manifesto
19. MPs to be paid according to civil service pay scales
20. MPs to serve for only three full terms of five years
21. Elected Representatives (Prevention of Deception) Act
22. Independent Politicians Complaints Commission
23. Cap donations to political parties
24. Members of Select Committees to be elected by MPs
25. Gold-plating of EU directives to be stopped
26. General elections to take place every five years

The Loss of Parliamentary Power

For 500 years after Magna Carta, Parliament had no political parties.  Each MP voted according to their own conscience.  Even during the 19th Century, many of the most important initiatives, such as the abolition of the slave trade or the development of the railway system, were the result of private members' bills. However as the electoral franchise was extended in the last two centuries, and the secret ballot introduced, the central party political organisations became more powerful.  They now have a stranglehold not only on the selection of Members of Parliament but also through the whipping system on the way in which they must vote once elected.  

Graham Allen, the Labour MP, says in his book The Last Prime Minister:

'Political legitimacy became synonymous with directly elected representation and as the franchise got wider electoral legitimacy was monopolised by the Commons, who in order to execute their parties' objectives, in turn ceded their political sovereignty to their leaderships.  The more the MP's electability depended upon the public perception of the Prime Minister, the more exclusive became his power.  Thus was completed the vacuous circle which characterizes British politics today.'

In his speech at the Haltemprice & Howden by-election in July 2008, Bob Geldof identified that Parliament is no longer standing up to the executive:  

'Let us be grand for once then, for we talk of great subjects. Let us ask 'what is the point of England' now that Parliament, whose primary purpose is to defend the liberties of the people, have so gratuitously, so wantonly, so casually betrayed that trust and taken from us that same liberty which above all else defines this country and its constitution, and that which has been its greatest gift to the world: its freedom, its tolerances, its civilisation which William Wilberforce so forcefully argued from this town so many centuries ago.'

Bill Cash, the Conservative MP, wrote in October 2008 about the 150th anniversary of the launch by John Bright of his historic campaign for working men to get the vote.  Cash said:

'Bright, with Richard Cobden, his fellow believer in free trade, had in 1846 saved the masses from starvation by forcing Peel to repeal the Corn Laws.  So if Bright were alive today what would he be fighting for?  His absolute priority would be to restore respect and authority to the Commons.  The man who coined the phrase 'the Mother of Parliaments' believed that the most precious thing that a person possessed was the right to vote for the laws that governed him and his country.  Bright's first allegiance was to his conscience.  He would have no truck with the modern whips system and the surrender of parliamentary business to the executive, nor the fixing of timetables to prevent debate - such as the mere nine minutes given to the third reading of the Embryology Bill last week.'

At an October 2008 conference, Martin Bell, the former Independent MP, spoke about the growing need for people who are free of political sway, and 'only want to serve the people who voted them in'. He said:

'Negative 'Punch and Judy' politics are not working anymore.  Independents practice a different kind of politics, gentler and closer to the people, and we need that now more than ever before.'

The Lack of Scrutiny of the Executive

The strident 'yah-boo' party political nature of modern UK politics has led to the country facing serious problems.  The unchecked and unscrutinised concentration of party political power results in decisions being made for the benefit of a political party rather than in the national interest throughout Parliament and Government in areas including:

-  the approval of legislation

- taxation, spending and investment

- public services such as health, education and transport

- departmental announcements and use of statistics

- regulation and enforcement

- appointments

The Better Government Initiative, chaired by Sir Christopher Foster, includes current and former senior civil servants and other interested participants in government and has stated in its report Governing Well:

'The capacity of Parliament to scrutinise the proposals of the Executive and to hold it to account for its decisions should be strengthened.  Parliament should provide for more rigorous initial analysis of policy proposals and retrospective review, after a suitable period of time has elapsed, of the costs and outcomes of policy and legislation actually achieved against those in the initial proposals.'

In particular the Commons has minimal input to the crucial issue of public spending which is negotiated between the Treasury and individual departments without any real Parliamentary scrutiny.  Nevil Johnson referred to this lack of scrutiny of expenditure by Parliament when he said in 1980:

'Its influence over proposals for expenditure is virtually nil and has been for decades.  It has a marginal post-facto influence on spending procedures through the Public Accounts Committee, but all attempts to strengthen its position before financial commitments are given statutory force have failed.'

The Need for Individual Judgements

The philosophy of the 'wisdom of crowds', well described in James Surowiecki's 2004 book, endorses the concept of a Parliament as a place for discussion by demonstrating how large groups of independently acting individuals are likely to make decisions better than either small groups or individuals on their own.  Surowiecki shows that the three elements required to get the best decisions are that the large group should have:

Diversity of Opinion - Each person should have private information even if it is just their own interpretation of the known facts.

Independence  - People's opinions should be individual and not determined by the opinions of those around them.

Decentralisation - People should be able to use their own specialisation and local knowledge.

In contrast, the current party political system in Parliament negates any 'Diversity of Opinion' or 'Independence' and fights any 'Decentralisation' and is therefore the exact opposite of what is required to make the best decisions.

Indeed there is also clear evidence that party politics is positively harmful to achieving balanced decisions: people who are not independent tend to converge on an extremist position.  This has been shown in the book Going to Extremes by Cass Sunstein, the renowned legal scholar and author of Nudges who has been appointed by President Obama as Director of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Sunstein set out to answer three questions: Why do people become extremists?  What makes people become so dismissive of opposing views?  What leads groups to take extreme positions or unnecessary risks?  He marshaled an abundance of evidence that shows that when like-minded people talk to one another, they tend to become more extreme in their views than they were before. This point applies to such diverse groups as religious organizations, corporate boards, investment clubs and political officials.  He showed through original research, for instance, that when liberals are brought together to debate affirmative action, they end up more supportive of it, while conservatives brought together to discuss same-sex unions become more sceptical about them.  Without any knowing reference to the UK Parliament he states that a good way to create an extremist group, or a cult of any kind, is to separate members from the rest of society, either physically or psychologically.

The Career Politicians

'A political party is now a sort of glorified employment bureau for political careerists'

~ Jan Marijnissen

People believe in democracy and expect their elected representatives to demonstrate its ideals.  Unfortunately politicians are not now generally seen as sufficiently experienced or competent for the offices which they hold, as operating in a trustworthy manner or as being in the job for the benefit of their constituents rather than for themselves.  Voters feel let down by pronouncements which turn out to be spin, by a quest for publicity rather than for real change, by pledges which are not kept and by personal issues such as corruption and seemingly extravagant expenses. Many of these issues result from the generally little proper prior career experience which MPs have had before entering the House of Commons.

Joan Bakewell wrote in The Times in January 2009:

'It is the Commons that cries out for change. The electoral process is now so honed to serve the interests of political careers that MPs are growing more and more like each other. Learning the trade in university debating clubs, a year or two in a think-tank, then as political advisers, or rising through the grinding ranks of local councils, the political careerist is a clear type: focused and ambitious, fluent in the jargon of procedure and points of order, glib with amendments and early day motions.'

The current system of political parties does not allow MPs much opportunity to make known their individual judgments and one consequence of this reduction in the role of an MP is that the job now attracts less prestigious candidates.  Historically many people decided to become an MP after a successful first career as a way of involving themselves in the life of the country and of giving back some of their experience.  Nowadays such people tend to choose to move into the charity world or into retirement.  

An Editorial in The Times in August 2009 stated;

'Where the party machine has the whip hand, too few independent-minded candidates are selected. If selection becomes, as in all parties it has, a conspiracy for the benefit of the mediocre party hack at the behest of a tiny band of activists, then the wider public interest is being neglected'.

The Image of Parliament

The particularly serious issues with the UK Parliament were confirmed by the Eurobarometer survey published by the European Commission in June 2008 (even before the 2009 expenses scandal).  This was based on over 30,000 interviews across the EU with a minimum of 1,000 interviewees in each country, including 1,306 in the UK.  One of the sections was: 'I would like to ask you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions.  For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it.'  Only 27% of UK citizens said that they trusted the UK Parliament.  This result was the lowest of any country in the EU and demonstrates that the UK electorate has a much deeper suspicion about its political system than in other broadly comparable countries.  This is a very sad position and should be a wake-up call for all of those who believe that the UK deserves a better system of Government and that the 'Mother of Parliaments' should be reformed in order to gain greater respect.

Not surprisingly, UK surveys in 2000 and 2004 showed that 54% and 55% of voters thought that 'this country is getting less democratic' with only 22% and 24% having the opposite view.  63% of people polled in 2004 said they thought 'the present system of governing Britain' 'could be improved quite a lot' or 'needs a great deal of improvement'.  Respect for politicians has however deteriorated even further following the revelations about MPs expenses from April 2009.  There is now little confidence at all in the political class and politicians are even less trusted than they were previously.

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