MPs should be free to vote in line with their best judgment and should not be sanctioned for not obeying any party whip on issues not in their party manifesto.
Parliament was designed to debate and as appropriate agree or disagree with the proposals of the monarch and his or her ministers. The ministers then oversaw the implementation of the agreed legislation by collecting taxes, organizing collective activities such as armies or construction projects and ensuring the administration of the law.
For 500 years after Magna Carta, Parliament had no political parties. The battles fought by the British people over the centuries were to bring the monarchs and their Privy Councils under the scrutiny of Parliament. Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by the time of the accession of George III in 1760 this principle had been largely won.
Parliament was based on individuals in the legislature being representatives of their constituencies who could challenge and determine the correctness of the proposals of the monarch and ministers. MPs had the freedom to vote as they saw best in all the circumstances. In his 1774 Letter to the Electors of Bristol, Edmund Burke stated about MPs: 'His unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you or to any set of men living.'
Nowadays of course current Members of Parliament almost entirely do sacrifice their judgment to 'any set of men living', they being the party to which they belong. It is very rare for any Government to suffer any defeat in a Division in the House of Commons and indeed the Labour Government suffered no such policy defeat throughout its first two terms from 1997-2005.
In 2007-8 there were 341 Divisions. MPs were characterised as early as 1946 by the Conservative MP Christopher Hollis: 'On most votes it would be simpler and more economic to keep a flock of tame sheep and from time to time to drive them through the division lobbies in the appropriate numbers'.
Lord (Robin) Butler, who served as Cabinet Secretary from 1988 to 1998 with Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, and who therefore observed the modern process as closely as anyone, stated in a 2004 interview in The Spectator: 'I think we are a country where we suffer very badly from Parliament not having sufficient control over the executive and that is a very grave flaw. We should be breaking away from the party whip. The executive is much too free to bring in a huge number of extremely bad Bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever it likes — and whatever it likes is what will get the best headlines tomorrow. All that is part of what is bad Government in this country.'
In a January 2010 interview on the BBC Today programme, Sir John Major said that politics needed to reassert the 'independence of mind of the backbencher' so the whole House of Commons was not governed by the executive and whipping system. It was 'degrading' for MPs to have to respond to the party line with the 'parrot slogan of the day', he added.
A January 2009 YouGov poll graphically demonstrated that the public believe that politicians currently act overwhelmingly in the interests of their political party and themselves rather than of the country or their constituents: When acting in a political capacity which ONE of the following BEST describes whose interests you think politicians generally put first?
|
|
Total |
Male |
Female |
|
Their party's |
44% |
42% |
45% |
|
Their own |
42% |
44% |
41% |
|
The
country's |
8% |
8% |
8% |
|
Their
constituents' |
5% |
5% |
4% |
|
Other |
2% |
1% |
2% |
44% of all respondents therefore stated that politicians generally put their party's interests first. 86% of all respondents, and of both male and female respondents, stated that politicians generally put either their party's or their own interests first. Only 13% of respondents stated that politicians generally put first the interest of the country (8%) or their constituents (5%).
This policy will apply to all Jury Team MPs other than on the policies set out in this document, to which they will have agreed on nomination. In this way the electorate will know that the Jury Team MPs will back the identified Jury Team policies, all of which will anyway be subject to a referendum, but will be able to use their best judgment on other policy issues.
The Jury Team Latest
Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://www.juryteam.org/blog/?feed=rss) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error in /var/www/juryteam/comn/func.inc.php on line 461
Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://www.juryteam.org/blog/?feed=rss" in /var/www/juryteam/comn/func.inc.php on line 461
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/juryteam/comn/func.inc.php on line 463
Follow The Jury Team
ABOUT
The Jury Team is a political movement created with the goal of making politics more accessible, politicians more accountable and political institutions more transparent.
JOIN THE JURY TEAM
Are you unhappy with the way things are? Do you believe they can change? By joining the Jury Team, you are becoming part of a political party like no other.
JURY TEAM BLOG
All the latest goings on within the Jury Team and our reaction to the big political stories as they break.
DONATE
The Jury Team relies on donations to keep running, but unlike other political parties, we abide by the recommendations of the Hayden Phillips report on party funding.