Nick Clegg: Don't waste our time... bring forward real reform
This rump Parliament, brought to its knees by scandal, has one final chance left to redeem itself
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Independent Minds
On Wednesday, all the pomp and ceremony that Parliament can muster will be rolled out for the Queen's Speech, setting out the Government's list of new laws for the coming year. But the glitz and glamour will be based on a complete fiction. Parliament will find it difficult to pass any of the bills promised in the Queen's Speech this year – there are just 70 sitting days left before it is dissolved for the general election, too little time to debate and approve the Government's latest legislative shopping list. The current average time taken for laws to make it from first reading to royal assent is 240 days.
Gordon Brown's Government is running out of time. The Queen's Speech will be dressed up as the way to "build Britain's future" when it will be little more than a rehearsal of the next Labour Party manifesto, an attempt to road-test policy gimmicks that might save this Government's skin. It is a waste of everyone's time, and should be cancelled in favour of an emergency programme of reform.
After the expenses scandal, this Parliament has destroyed its own legitimacy. Not in living memory has confidence in politicians, trust in the system, or faith in the Government's capacity to change things been as low as it is today. People are no longer willing to respect the will of this failed Parliament. This Parliament has forfeited the right to do anything but focus on political reform.
The one gift this failed Parliament can give its successor is a fresh start. When you move out of a house, you clean it for the people moving in. Seventy days may not be long, but it is long enough, with strong political will, to clean up politics once and for all. We need an action plan to save Britain's democracy in time for the next general election so that the new parliament commands full support.
The beginnings of change could be in place before Christmas. Next week, a committee led by Labour MP Tony Wright will produce a report on reducing the power of government in Parliament. It should be adopted immediately so that governments can never again use whips to ride roughshod over the views of elected representatives. Then, in December, amendments to introduce fixed-term parliaments and party-funding reform should be tabled – with cross-party support – to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, the only piece of ongoing legislation that should be carried forward. Fixed-term parliaments are vital so that the date of the general election is no longer the plaything of prime ministers. On party funding reform, significant cross-party consensus was achieved under the leadership of Sir Hayden Phillips, but dropped for political expediency. We should return to these proposals, with some significant additions, and introduce them in time for the 2010 general election, ensuring that this election is a competition of ideas not of marketing budgets.
In the early part of next year, the parties should agree a Code of Conduct for candidates, so that everyone standing for public office commands public confidence. The Code should be based on the Nolan Principles of Public Life and it must, as Sir Christopher Kelly recommended, require candidates to publish a declaration of their financial interests so people know about issues that might affect their MP's independence before they decide to vote for them. Then, we should introduce a Bill to allow MPs to be sacked if they are found to have seriously breached the rules.
The final task will be to address our electoral systems. Now is the time to reform the House of Lords. MPs have voted decisively for direct elections of all peers, and there is cross-party agreement on the powers of the upper chamber. Then there is the question of elections to the House of Commons. There is growing consensus that a new electoral system is needed. Given the diversity of opinion but the need for swift action, the time is right for the people to decide. Parliament should establish a Committee on Electoral Reform composed of 100 randomly-chosen citizens, as pioneered in British Columbia. It would be given a year to consult and take evidence, and produce proposals taken to the electorate in a referendum.
These changes would be a tall order but with political will they could transform our threadbare democratic institutions. Instead of being just a sorry footnote to a shameful year at Westminster, these months would become a moment of great change in British political history. This rump Parliament, brought to its knees by scandal, has one final chance left to redeem itself. It must provide a golden legacy to the next Parliament so that we can all be proud of our democracy once again.
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Comments
Otherwise he'll dissolve parliament, dissolve the monarchy and declare hiself President for life. Anyone dissenting that view is an enemy of the state and will either be shot on sight by their stormtroopers of else exiled to France to sit and mourn at the refugee camps along the coast.
Voters concerned about this issue need to ask themselves next May a simple question. Who, amongst the candidates before me, is going to support the radical reform to our political system that we need? It may throw up some interesting answers and produce a different cross-section of MPs very different to what we have become used to.
Change is in our hands next May. It's your vote, so think about its use carefully.
Privatise everything. That's the agenda.
The real power now lies with big corporations and all the political parties end up doing whatever the big corporations want them to do.
Her and all her heirs and successors. The monarchy is dragging this country down. The last little bit of the British Empire that has still not been liberated is.....Britain !
I do disagree on two points, however. Clegg states that "This Parliament has forfeited the right to do anything but focus on political reform." I disagree, we are fighting a war in Afghanistan and there are certainly many issues other than reform that are important, perhaps more important than reforming parliament which I don't expect to occur quickly. Its not as if government could just focus on reform 100% for two weeks and it all be done properly. The best we can hope for is that the reform of parliament will be a slow but steadyprocess incrementally increasing accountability and transparancy, and through many of the reforms Clegg suggests, gently changing the public's minds. Putting faith back into politics cannot be rushed as it must be done properly and that takes time. This wont be achieved by the time the next parliament is in.
The other thing is that I am a lot less optimistic about the existence of the political will. We know there are decent numbers of politicians who are upset about having to pay back expenses. If Clegg is merely claiming that reform requires the political will then I agree with his point, though it does strike me as being of merely academic importance. I would like for him to have explained how he might summon the political will or even offer evidence that his party has the political will to do this, otherwise his words are just pie in the sky.
Why does Clegg wish the Government to forget all other aspects of the nation needing legislative attention, and instead spend the next months on intense navel-gazing? Especially when Parliament has already handed over the key aspects of pay and expenses to an independent body? There's no doubt that this fit of populism from Nick Clegg has produced an idiotic proposal.
Well done Nick for presenting it in an attention grabbing way, a talent that will be vital if the Lib Dems are to present themselves as they should, as the real champions of reform.
A word of warning though. Any proposal for electoral reform needs to be very carefully thought out. The British Columbia initiative is not altogether encouraging.
The recommendation: STV in multi-member constituencies was duly put to the popular vote. The first referendum approved PR but the system was rigged so that even 57% didn't count as a sufficient majority. The second referendum, where the opposition banged on about the large constituencies needed by STV, the vote was decisively lost.
Personally I think the Jenkins recommendation, which is already on the table, might be the best bet. Product of one of the best political minds of the past 100 years, it really goes out of its way to answer the legitimate (as opposed to vexatious) objections of those opposed to PR.
Electoral reform, above all for the Commons, is not the final task - it is very much the overwhelmingly priority task.
A rational representative system should have been introduced 13 years ago in accordance with Labour’s 1997 unequivocal commitment which however was cynically abandoned following pressure from the tribalists in the party. However this is now past history and the question which must be asked is how in the present circumstances a suitable PR system can be assured in the not too distant furture.
It is not clear (to me at any rate) whether there will be a referendum on the subject at the same time as the general election in 2010; or whether there will be a Labour manifesto commitment to such a referendum. Neither of these courses would be anything but a futile gesture since it is virtually certain that the Tories will get in in 2010; and in the former case theTories will just ignore the result of the referendum whatever it is; and of course any Labour manifesto commitment would be irrlevant
It seems to me that we should, for the present, abandon the referendum idea and instead adopt the pragmatic course of lobbying Labour MP’s to press the PM to introduce AV BEFORE THE NEXT ELECTION. There is a lot of support in the LP for this system (no doubt not for particularly democratic reasons!)
AV is of course not proportional but it would be better than FPTP in that the WEIGHT of left-of-centre and right-of-centre opinion would be much more fairly represented. Every candidate elected would have to have more than 50% of the vote And the need for tactical voting would also disappear as would the present marginal seats. Moreover AV (STV in single member constituencies) could - when circumstances are more favourable - be easily converted to the proportional STV in multi-member constituencies.
In this regard here is what the Elecroral Reform Soociety had to say in the last paras of the executive summary of their study of AV:-
18 AV could be introduced quickly and simply - it would not require complex legislation, new boundaries or a referendum.
19 There is valid debate on whether or not AV would hasten the introduction of a more proportional system. Its intrinsic merits may mean that it persists for a considerable time. But there are avenues that lead from AV to further reform, such as hung parliaments, anomalous results, and harmony between component parts of the UK.
It is my guess that, once AV was introduced, its generally accepted merits - limited as they are - would mean that the Tories would find great popular resistance to any proposals to revert to FPTP; so if in 2010 they were elected under AV, the road to STV in multi-member constituencies would still be open when more favourable circumstances arose.
Simplest reform will be to make every county a single constituency with 1 MP per 100000 voters. Seats allocated by electoral strength. Voters to choose which candidates nominated by their respective parties actually get elected. Large counties such as Greater London could be subdivided, grouping boroughs together to make electorates of roughly half a million.
Around 200 fewer MPs, roughly representing electoral strength and all dependent on the votes of electors not just party officials and members. The safe seat abolished.
And a Fixed term parliament of 3 years.
That's SEVEN SECONDS.
What I don't understand is how Clegg one the one hand says that there's no point to this as there is no time to pass any laws but then suggests that the parliament instead introduces reform; changes that would seem to be the hardest to enact. How does he think they are going to have the time to pass them?
I'm also not sure about set parliamentary terms. There is something to be said for giving the leaders time to achieve their goals, and in so doing offer some realistic chance to get things done in governance, instead of just a rudimentary change every four years bang on the date. I'm sure they would want that opportunity if in power.
All that said though, I dearly hope they can finally bring around the democratic reforms this country desperately needs, and break the Labour/Tory stranglehold on our government.
Nick Clegg's little proposal is an irrelevance until this fundamental reform is carried through.
The danger in a closet system of government based on quangos, secretly appointed over the last ten years by Labour apparatichiks, eg Will Hutton gone from independent voice to Work Foundation Labour Apparatchik is that it enables government to remove hard fought for rights under the cloak of disillusionment.
This country needs to move forward and at the moment there are too many people "Leading without Authority" Leadership means you speak for the people who vote for you, not impose an agenda from the centre under the Command and Control mandate of New Labour.