Ken Clarke, responding to a question from Gary Gibbon that these petitions
could all be orchestrated by tabloid newspapers, said that there would be
filters from a 'Legislative Business Committee'. Parliament, he said,
should not be debating whether West Ham should have points deducted.
Quite right. Always liked that Ken Clarke...
Seriously, his Democracy Task Force proposals are absolutely excellent. I won't detail them all here as ConservativeHome has done a comprehensive summary HERE. I particularly like the petitions idea, whereby petitions which get huge numbers of signatories would then be debated. I refuse to cover any Number Ten online petitions as they are just a PR gimmick, but if there was a serious point to them, that would be different. The US style appointments scrutiny would also be a welcome move. It also seems from what I have seen that in general the power of whips would be reduced and that Parliament would be given the opportunity to reassert itself over the Executive. I would also like to see a return to a twice weekly Prime Minister's Question Time. It would be largely symbolic, but would demonstrate a greater commitment to parliamentary accountability.
You can download the PDF of the document HERE, courtesy of Guardian Online.
17 comments:
They should be welcomed but are merely scratching the surface until parliamentary supremecy is restored.
Until people realise that parliament itself becomes ever more irrelevent and superfluous with every EU power handover and do something to reverse this situation things cannot improve.
Parliament hides behind the EU, behind quangos, behind special advisors and the election turnout figures suggest the public have noticed.
Until parliament regains its responsibility for the running of this country it will ever be able to be held accountable
PMQ's is about holding the government to account and we must put a stop to the pathetic government bench questions designed to waste time and give the PM of the day to deliver a prepared answer.
The biggest problem with the Democracy task force is that the report is not about democracy, it is about Parliament. That is not to denigrate the proposals it has come up with. But so long as the ambition is limited to shuffling the way that Parliament works and is not concerned about the way in which the people who sit in Parliament are chosen and how the public reacts with politicians (with the exception of the petition idea) then it will be a side show.
Why are so few people voting? Is it really because select committee chairmen are chosen by the whips?
The reality is that there needs to be a better debate within the Conservative Party about matters such as proportional representation (or indeed other forms of electoral reform). Yes, the debate may come down in favour of the the status quo, but Clarke's commission did not examine the arguments on this subject with any sort of open mind.
The same can be said of the voting age. There is a significant problem with non-voting among young people. A significant section of the population believes that one of the ways to tackle this is to reduce the voting age to 16. I would have liked Clarke to properly examine the arguments on this.
Finally, where was the proper discussion of compulsory voting. It might well have been rejected, but it is a matter which desevres detailed thought.
Clarke suffered from a Parliament-centric view of democracy. The world out there does not share his limitations
PMQs should not be limited to 30 mins per week. Perhaps it should be scheduled for a couple of hours a week so that a proper debate can take place.
Does this mean the people will be able to vote on whether they want to remain in the EU?
Our Dear Leader-In-Waiting Gordon hopes to quietly drop PMQs.
Apparently he said he'll attend PMQ's when "his family commitments allow"
I particularly like the petitions idea, whereby petitions which get huge numbers of signatories would then be debated.
It's a step in the right direction. I don't see what could be achieved by simply debating petitions with no end purpose in mind. The petitions should be refocussed to actually influence some form of change - Private Citizens' Bills.
Although this will lead to tabloid style politics which may not be a very good thing.
Still nothing on answering the West Lothian Question then?
Debated and then ignored .
Business as usual, this is all a bit rich coming from a person who is on record as stating that he would be happy to see the HoC reduced the status of a local council chamber with all the big decisions taken in Europe.
All these proposals do is muck around with Parliament a bit. The bottom line is that a govt with a majority could still effectively do whatever it liked, the Opposition would be helpless and the ordinary citizen unable to challenge any law however unjust. What is required, and what this utterly ignores, is the limiting of the powers of the Commons as a whole.
Come on, Iain, you cant really think this report is "excellent", can you?
It's a rehash of old ideas (eg business committees; petitions etc);
It wants greater connection between parliament and public, but says nothing about the main issue in that regard, David Maclean's undemocratic FoI Exemption Bill (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/foiparliament/);
It displays either ignorance of, or disdain for, any other parliamentary experience in the rest of the UK (eg no direct mention of Holyrood, where some of the proposed reforms are already standard practice, eg business committees, except for the off-hand and unsupported reference to its "modest but useful role for public petitions");
"Any elected government is entitled to get its legislative
programme passed by the Commons but only after full scrutiny and debate" - Says who? Not even the Modernisation Cttee, which, in 1997, got the current constitutional position more right when it stated, as one of its main principles, that "(a) The Government of the day must be assured of getting its legislation through in reasonable time (provided that it obtains the approval of the House)." That is a point about the procedures not preventing or delaying Govt Bills that are supported by a majority, not a claim that Parliament has a duty to pass all Govt Bills;
It isn't even internally logical or consistent - it harps on about the need for greater independence of Parliament from Government, such as removing the Leader of the House from chairing Modernisation Ctteee, and then suggests that a beefed-up Group on Information for the Public be chaired not by the Commons Librarian, but by ... the Leader of the House!
True parliamentary autonomy can only come with the removal of the Government from the institutional control of Parliament, which it has by, for example, almost total control of parliamentary time (S.O. no. 14(1): "Save as provided in this order, government business shall have precedence at every sitting."); control over motions to amend procedures, establish committees etc; unilateral declaration of business, and by the totally illogical and anachronistic post of 'Leader of the House'.
I'm surprised that Andrew Tyrie signed up to such a mouse of a report, something that is not even as 'radical' as the earlier Norton Report under Hague.
T'was good to hear Ken giving that ZanuNL crony Naughtie a slapping on Today this morning.
Parilament should not be debating the points deduction for West Ham, because it shouldnt have been necessary for them to do so. It should have happened anyway
;)
I detect a Scottish lilt to Barry's comment at 2.03 pm.
They are all good ideas, but jilted john, anon 12.42 and Barry are right. What's the point of offering MPs more theoretical power over scrutiny and scheduling if the dead hand of the Whips will be as powerful as ever in coercing backbenchers? Why hasn't Clark recognised that our constitutional conventions about ministerial decision making and accountability are little more than fictions in so many cases and should not be regarded as sacred cows?
I don't think these proposals will restore trust and interest in politics and government:
a) We need to end the assumption that Ministers are geniuses who know what every official in their Department is doing on the most complex issues. While Oppositions like to make capital at a Minister's expense when an IT contract has gone wrong, no-one really believes that they would do any better, so let Ministers set parameters and budgets and allow real experts to make and manage the detail of policy and then account direct to parliamentary committees and the NAO. Ministers should have to make a case for having a statutory right to intervene rather than the reverse. It's worked with interest rates, so let's see more of the same.
b) Instead of a tighter ministerial code, let's have legally enforceable rules of procedure to safeguard against funding favouring Government marginals, evidence being shelved if it doesn't suit the party line, and so on.
c) I like the idea, put forward by someone on Vox Politix this week, of ending suspicions of cronyism by strengthening the honours scrutiny committee and giving it vetting responsibility with a single criterion of service to the national interest. So people could still donate to parties but they could not expect a gong unless they could demonstrate that they have served the nation, not a party.
The Swiss system - referenda at every level.
Now wait for the clowns to solemnly prenounce that referenda "undermine the perogatives of parliment".
Referendums (not referenda - there is no Latin plural for this particular gerund) are majoritarian tools and generally produce lower turnouts than in elections of candidates to public office.
And what exactly is the power of the whips? They have few sanctions, other than bluff and persuasion. They have a massive effect because MPs believe that they are powerful. As long as they think the emperor has clothes, they worship him.
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