Podium: How to liberate the people of Britain

PADDY ASHDOWN Extract of a speech by the Leader of the Liberal Democrats to the Westminster Forum, London, yesterday

MY SUBJECT is the way we run our country. The Thatcher years were about the financial empowerment of the citizen through share ownership and other measures, while the present programme of constitutional reform is about matching that with the political empowerment of the citizen.

Britain probably now leads Europe in our modern business structures. But we're far behind almost every other free democracy when it comes to the openness and structure of our politics. It's time to catch up.

We have our first "fair votes" election within a year - for the European Parliament. And this autumn, the Jenkins Commission on the Voting System will recommend a proportional voting system for the House of Commons to be put to the British people in a referendum.

The Government of Britain will never be the same again.

The onus is now on those of us who believe in reform to set out why we believe, and to set out the big picture of the kind of society we are trying to build.

We should be prepared to allow communities to experiment with new ideas. Take the idea of elected mayors. I have some doubts about these. But I believe the risks could be worth taking if they lead to more awareness and accountability in local politics. At the local level, we should be prepared to use referendums much more often to give local government wider powers of expenditure on capital projects, subject to certain safeguards, provided they had first obtained the agreement of their voters in a referendum.

But increased limited use of direct democracy at a local level does not mean that we should leave our representative system as it is, because our electoral system does not provide for majority rule as democracy is meant to require. Most of the time, it lets the strongest minority rule. Polling experts predict Labour could win the next election, even if they get less votes than the Tories - just because their votes are in the right places, and the Tories' aren't!

It is very odd. The 21st century voter marches down the aisle of their new supermarket polling station on election day. What do they see? Twenty brands of washing powder. Thirty flavours of soup. Forty kinds of microwave meal. But at the ballot box only two choices of government.

Think about it. How should a true socialist have voted at the General Election if Peter Mandelson was their Labour candidate? Or a pro-European Tory in John Redwood's seat? Or an anti-European in Ted Heath's?

There are huge numbers of people in Britain who look at ballot papers and find no candidate to reflect their views. And there are many more who have no candidate to vote for who stands a chance of winning, and therefore feel they have no way of making their vote count.

Does our electoral system ensure all significant minorities are fairly represented? No.

Proportional representation is the politics of inclusion. It's about giving people a chance to vote for what they believe in. Some say PR will mean weak government. John Major, of all people, had the gall to claim this in Parliament last week. PR, he said, leads to governments which are "unstable" and "uncertain", "coalition, compromise and indecision". Even, he said, to governments "hamstrung by small religious parties". Not like his then!

All governments are coalitions. What PR actually leads to is not weaker government, but more considered government, open coalitions, without the opportunity for a government elected with minority support to railroad through proposals which lack broad, popular support. We would not have had either the poll tax or rail privatisation under PR.

And government should concentrate on providing less active, but more effective, administration. Government that steers, but doesn't itself row. I do not believe we need all 100 of the ministers we have now. It is absurd that the number of ministers has increased while the number of civil servants has shrunk. It should be a principle that the number of ministers does not exceed a tenth of the number of MPs. We don't need them.

What does all this add up to? It can be summed up in a single sentence.

Our aim is a Britain built around a single concept - that of the powerful free citizen, living in a strong community and supported by an enabling government.