On Labour and the Tories, she was less kind: “The Labour and Conservative manifestos are very different. Labour’s was big on words – and detailed promises and commitments which we had heard before. It put government at the centre. The Conservative version is longer, but lighter. About a third of its 118 pages actually contains written text – the rest is made up of pictures, fun facts, and (yes) blank pages to give readers a rest. Their focus is on the private sector – and on individuals.

“But the two documents have one important thing in common: neither of them makes any further contribution to public understanding on how Britain’s £167bn budget deficit is going to be cut. And they both leave plenty out.”

The Lib Dem manifesto is about four key policies —

• Fair taxes that put money back in your pocket.
• A fair chance for every child.
• A fair future, creating jobs by making Britain greener.
• A fair deal for you from politicians.

In the words of Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats: “We’ve had 65 years of Labour and the Conservatives: the same parties taking turns and making the same mistakes, letting you down. It is time for something different. It is time for something better.”

The manifesto itself is a pretty hefty document — strengthened, as Stephanie Flanders points out, by pages and pages of detailed costings. This is not pie in the sky, these are workable plans which — if the situation did transpire that we were in government with members of other parties willing to work with us — would form the blueprint for economic recovery. Sustainable economic recovery that is, because, despite the promises of the last four chancellors (Lawson, Clarke, Brown, Darling) the Labour/Conservative or Labservative economics has done nothing but cycle us through boom and bust.

If the full document is more than you want to read right now, here are the key points in a bit more detail:
fair taxes
that put money back in your pocket
• The first £10,000 you earn tax-free: a tax cut of £700 for most people
• 3.6 million low earners and pensioners freed from income tax completely
• Paid for in full by closing loopholes that unfairly benefit the wealthy and polluters

a fair chance
for every child
• Ensure children get the individual attention they need by cutting class sizes
• Made possible by investing £2.5 billion in schools targeted to help struggling pupils
• Give schools the freedom to make the right choices for their pupils

a fair future
creating jobs by making Britain greener
• Break up the banks and get them lending again to protect real businesses
• Honesty about the tough choices needed to cut the deficit • Green growth and jobs that last by investing in infrastructure

a fair deal
by cleaning up politics
• Put trust back into politics by giving you the right to sack corrupt MPs
• Restore and protect hard-won British civil liberties with a Freedom Bill
• Overhaul Westminster completely: fair votes, an elected House of Lords, all politicians to pay full British taxes

Related posts

• Which David they choose will determine the campaign we fight (0)
• Wrong answer too late. (0)
• Tricky moment for the conscience party (0)
• The politics of hate (0)
• Leadership Contenders battle it out. (0)

But the elephant in the room (this cliché has become very common recently) is the question of what MPs actually do. Cabinet ministers, of course, run government departments. Sort of. Actually, civil servants run government departments, and cabinet ministers (if they are wise) set policy or (if foolish) get involved in top-level executive decisions. Junior ministers, naturally, do what their senior colleagues do, but less so. The opposition is there to hold the government to account, and back-benchers of the government are… well… to provide the necessary support for the government to be a government.

If MPs are merely voting fodder or some kind of inspection agency, then their senior-management level salaries look a bit over-priced. Some MPs ask barely more than one or two parliamentary questions a year — not the sort of thing which holds anyone to much account. There are All Party Parliamentary Groups on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from human trafficking (a substantially overlooked topic) to beer, a subject which is seldom overlooked. However, these APPGs have no direct influence on the activity of government. There are also select committees, which form part of the process of law-making. But, again, quite a few MPs are not members of any select committees. These are typically the MPs who ask the fewest parliamentary questions.

Members of Parliament have, at least since the war in most areas, supplemented their parliamentary duties with constituency duties. These range from holding surgeries as semi-surrogate social workers, to an endless round of openings and parties. MPs also respond to constituents’ letters, and raise issues of importance with local government. But, again, they raise issues, but have no direct authority. Naturally, in a public sector organisation, a letter from an MP carries a certain weight. But only a certain weight. It is soft influence, not hard impact.

Ask a member of the public exactly what an MP does, and you may get a fairly vague answer. Ask an MP what MPs do, and the answer can be equally vague. To restore trust in politicians, we need job descriptions.

To someone who has lived without one, a job description may seem threatening. MPs have muttered about the unfairness of being told what to do, and how to live. The phrase ‘living on rations’ has cropped up.

But the truth is, the entirely unregulated life of an MP can be as bad for them as it is for the people they serve. A friend of mine was told by his doctor that if he did not stand down as MP for a seat he had famously won a few years before, then he would be dead in five years. Endlessly late nights, a culture which emphasises alcohol consumption, and a demanding programme which is effectively a 40 hour week in Westminster supplemented by a 40 hour week in the constituency, is not good for the MP, nor is it good for the decisions they should be making on our behalf. There is a reason why good companies do not let their senior managers overwork — overworked managers gain progressively fewer results the longer they extend their hours.

The other benefit of a really clear job description is that, if an MP fails in it, he or she could actually be removed. The ability for the electorate to remove failing MPs is part of Liberal Democrat national policy. An MP who seldom turns up at the House of Commons, is rarely in the constituency, and whose letters are written by a team of poorly paid researchers working from a fairly elementary rule-book, is not earning the money we pay them. Worse, he or she is preventing a more diligent, hard-working person from representing the voters.

It is no surprise that all of the worst excesses of the expenses scandal were in ‘safe’ seats. An MP with no accountability framework, no means of removal, and no likelihood of even having to campaign hard when the General Election is called can casually disregard his or her duty. And, it seems, some, or even many, did.

Job descriptions, then. A simple summary of hours to be worked, outputs to be measured, methods of accountability, common standards and disciplinary procedures. Businesses discovered them decades ago. It’s time for the elected-sector to make its way into the late 20th century. Perhaps as a step (heaven help them) into the 21st.

Related posts

• Restoring trust – how? (0)
• Wrong answer too late. (0)
• Which David they choose will determine the campaign we fight (0)
• The politics of hate (0)
• The guilty should go, and this includes any Lib-Dems. The innocent should not (0)

But not all businesses are like this. There is always an undercurrent — and sometimes it is powerful and drags in whole communities — of businesses which make their money by tricking the customer, by preying on fear, on misinformation, on unethical selling tactics, or simply on the poor life chances of their victims. The Office of Fair Trading regularly shuts businesses of this kind down, but they persist, and, in some cases, gain the protection of the law, even when what they are doing is blatantly unjust.

In a deprived community, all of the following are probably acting:

unsecured, high interest loan companies
companies processing money transactions for a high fee for those without a bank account
employers who repeatedly hire staff for six months and then fire them, in order never to have to make redundancy payments
quasi-legal firms urging people towards unnecessary litigation
‘bait and switch’ online traders
landlords offering below-basic accommodation for prices designed to gain the maximum housing allowance
companies providing cash machines where there are no bank-supported ATMs, with a transaction cost sometimes 20% of the money drawn

Over the twelve and a bit years I lived in Stechford, one of the UK’s most deprived communities, I saw all of these, some quite regularly. By contrast with dodgy second-hand car salesmen, unhygienic restaurants, people selling contraband cigarettes and garages offering MOT certificates for dangerous vehicles, all of the above trade within the law. And yet they suck the life out of the communities least able to afford them, and least able to resist them.

This is legally sanctioned injustice. It engenders anger, and despair. I saw the anger boil over into rioting in the 1980s. In the 2000s, I more frequently saw a cold resignation. “They’ll always rip you, but you can’t do much,” is a phrase I heard all too often.

Should a nanny-state prevent people from spending their money however they like, even if it means they get perhaps just 70p in the pound in terms of value received? Or should predatory traders be allowed to get away with anything they like, so long as they stay within the letter of the law?

In the seminal book The Spirit Level, public health doctors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett examine the life expectancy, crime rates and other key metrics from the twenty most prosperous nations, and show, fairly convincingly, a strong correlation between larger gaps between rich and poor and poor overall life expectancy and societal good for the community as a whole. The UK, Portugal, and USA have the widest gaps in the Western World, and perform worst on almost all the metrics. Correlation, of course, does not demonstrate causation. However, it is fairly elementary to show that endemic injustice begets both violence and despair.

Government should be working on global warming, on the economy, and on rebuilding Britain’s damaged democracy, because these are big things which only governments are big enough to tackle. But government must also have a care for the little things. The answer is not additional legislation. Indeed, many of these companies prosper in the tangled world of badly drafted legislation which allow them to invoke clauses or style themselves as other kinds of businesses than they are. But we do need some of the collective intelligence of Whitehall and Westminster to be directed at these issues.

There is no armageddon waiting round the corner if we do not tackle these things. The British National Party may well elect its first MP at the General Election, as might UKIP, trading on false blame for the causes of deprivation. But it is almost inconceivable that they will ever have enough seats on anything, even the Parish Council, to actually set or influence policy. But we should tackle these issues because it is our duty to do so. Those who are elected are elected to serve the whole population, and to make decisions which benefit all.

Related posts

• Poor Gordon’s perfect storm — and heeding the lesson of history (0)
• Restoring trust – how? (0)
• Are single issue parties the answer? Not exactly… (0)
• Why tinkering with justice should alarm us all (0)
• Who now can claim that the Daily Telegraph helped democracy? (0)

The simple truth is that, in any other walk of life, a member of staff who is not available for work for the contracted amount of time is paid at a lower rate. Of course, many constituency voters might baulk at the fact that their MP was only part-time — if they knew about it. Although website www.theyworkforyou.com attempts to track MP outside employments, it will only be from 1 July this year that MPs are required to disclose them. Naturally, many MPs are now curtailing their outside interests to limit that damage this disclosure will bring.

Let me be absolutely clear about this. In my opinion, an MP who works an outside job, or who benefits as a company director (remembering that most companies want MPs as directors because they think it will benefit them) is not concentrating fully on the job.

Actually, I feel that differential salaries is only a step in the right direction. Who should decide which constituencies get part-time MPs, and which get full time MPs? Or should a part-time MP job-share with another part-time MP? In that case, which of them would get to vote on which issues, or would their votes only count for half? Surely the only logical solution is to ban MPs from outside interests all together. If we are to recover any kind of trust at all, we must absolutely decouple money from politics.

What would actually make the most sense would be to freeze a new MP’s assets when they entered parliament, and unfreeze them — fully index linked — when they left. If properly structured, there could be serious incentives to quit. If MPs lived simply as MPs, a generous pension would help those who realised that they had essentially finished what they joined the House for to move on, rather than hanging in for as long as possible, which is what many superannuated politicians seem to do now.

It’s often said that paying any less than the current salary would not attract the ‘right’ kind of people. Evidently there is a kind of person who can be had for £66,000 a year, but not for less. From my point of view, someone who believes that they should be allowed to supplement this income by spending less time on their duties is not remotely the ‘right’ kind of person. Whether they supplement their income through property speculation, or through milking the expenses train, or through outside jobs, what we are talking about is simply greed. And, in my book, greed is not the qualification which sets a man or woman apart as the person who should serve the public in Westminster.

But differential pay is a step in the right direction — provided that the differential is sufficient that the MP makes no profit from outside interests at all.

Money and power may mix now, but they should not in future.

Share/Save

Related posts

• Restoring trust – how? (0)
• Legit and illegit – expense omissions (0)
• Job Descriptions for MPs? (1)
• How much reform can we handle? (0)
• Cameron promises every kind of change except actual change… (0)

Legit, or not legit? Heather Brooke — lest we forget, the journalist who actually pressed for all this to come into the open, long before the Daily Telegraph took an interest — is none too impressed. “I can see that avoiding embarrassment has been the key motivating factor of what’s been deleted,” was her comment.

Here are my views on what should and should not have been omitted:

Reason for omission	Legitimate?	Commentary
Rejected claims	No
Any residential address	Maybe	General post-codes could have been provided, giving a picture of the kind of property
Regular travel patterns	Maybe	Exact routes could have been omitted, while preserving the type of travel -- eg, taxi, limo
Names of anyone delivering goods to homes	Yes	But this should not be extended to names of companies
Money spent on security	No	The exact items purchased should probably be kept hidden, but there is no reason to conceal the total amounts
Hotels or guest houses used	Maybe	If including the actual names is a security risk, a broader designation could be provided
Letters/emails to Fees Office	No	Why should letters and email be exempt? They aren't in the rest of the public sector. There is a case letters or emails with a particular type of content being exempt, but no more than that
Bank/credit card statements	Maybe	Non-expense items should be blanked out
Phone numbers on itemised bills	Maybe	Area codes should be included, even if numbers are blanked out.
Personal items not claimed for	Yes	There is no reason to include things which were not claimed on expenses
Staff names and addresses	No and Yes	Staff addresses could be given as a broad postcode. Staff names are fairly easy to acquire, so why bother to hide them?
Bank/Giro details	Yes	We don't actually need to know an MP's bank number
Landlord or mortgage provider	No	Why should this be exempt?
Photocopies of cheques	No	Where a cheque would fall into another category, certain aspects could be blanked out
Signatures	Maybe	There's no real benefit in us seeing the signatures. On the other hand, most MPs use their signatures in their correspondence. It's hardly a security issue.
Reference numbers ie NI	Yes	We shouldn't be disclosing confidential personal information, although the inclusion of this number shouldn't stop the rest of the receipt being shown

If you look at the actual expenses for MPs, it’s clear that the omission of details with no inclusion of covering details — for example, a general postcode rather than an exact address, mean that we have almost no power to scrutinise. We would not have seen, for example, where the fabled house of Boris Johnson was which was inside his constituency and yet more than 50 miles from London (Henley on Thames is 36 miles from London — perhaps he was confusing it with Henley in Arden, which is in my constituency Stratford on Avon). We would also not have seen the occasions when neither the MPs first nor second home was in the constituency or in London, nor would we have been able to identify flipping, or most of the other abuses.

This is simply not good enough. How does Parliament expect to restore public trust if it refuses to disclose the details which would exonerate at least a proportion of MPs?

Perhaps, in reality, Parliament has not yet faced up to the extent to which it has lost the public’s trust, and the parlous state of our democracy.

Quite simply, this must change. And soon.

Share/Save

Related posts

• After the fire… (0)
• Telegraph may have paid £300,000 to criminals for scandal leak, it emerges (1)
• Restoring trust – how? (0)
• Responding to the BNP (0)
• Michael Martin shows remarkable honour (0)

52% of people were prepared to vote for a candidate not caught up in the scandal, even if that meant voting against the party they want to win the election.

It’s not hard to see how we got to where we are. But the question is: how do we get away?

Given that only 1 in 4 people have said they trusted MPs in general to tell the truth, and this figure has stayed fairly constant since pollsters began asking the question, we could perhaps say that it is inevitable that voters don’t trust politicians. But this is clearly not universal. 51% of Americans think Obama’s leadership is excellent or good, and 47% think his ethics are excellent or good.

Are the British naturally more cynical than Americans? Most of the world — we are given to understand — still believes British democracy to be above par on its ethics and honesty. Or do they simply believe this because they just don’t pay as much attention to it as we do?

Certainly, right now, everyone who wants to distrust politicians (that is, 3/4 of us) can find lots of evidence for it. But, as Mori points out, even before the scandal, approximately the same number of people still distrusted politicians. It is therefore clear that it is something other than our observation of what politicians do that sows our distrust.

It was said of King John that nobody trusts a man who trusts nobody.

This struck me deeply when I heard it on Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time during the run up to the Euro elections. No-one trusts a man who himself trusts no-one. The more I consider it, the more I am compelled to believe that it is the culture of sowing distrust, innuendo, constant attacks on the character of opponents, and, worse, constant mocking, that makes all politicians (including those who don’t indulge in this, because all are tarred by association) appear to be untrusting, and therefore untrustworthy.

And yet, and yet. If we were to say that politicians were not allowed to be in conflict with each other, and to point out each other’s failings, then we would have no debate, and no means of holding government to account. The duty of opposition is to oppose, and it is one of the things which holds us back from tyranny.

So, are we therefore left with a choice: either our politicians by their behaviour will forever command our distrust, or, by their silence, will appear to earn our trust while, in truth, betraying it? This is a truly Shakespearian conundrum.

The answer, surely, is that there is a middle way. We are now engaged in a national process of hand wringing about standards in public life in relation to expenses. But it would not be beyond our power as a nation to start imposing standards on the the discourse of MPs. It was two elections ago that the Advertising Standards Authority threw its hands up and ceased to police political advertising. You can now, in a very real sense, say anything you want on a political poster, and get away with it. But the imposition of a standard of debate both in and outside the chamber of the House of Commons is something which could be done, and, for that reason, should and must be done.

At the moment, the only thing which limits a politician’s ability to make any accusation they want is the risk of being found out later on.

We are expecting the new Speaker of the House of Commons to reform members’ expenses. But we should also expect and require the Speaker to reform the standard of debate.

We, the electorate, should also seek to vote, in the new parliament, for new MPs who will not stop at nothing to obtain and maintain power. In this, in the past, we have signally failed, and we should therefore, collectively, accept a large part of the responsibility for the politicians we have elected. Because, ultimately, the electorate does not necessarily get the government it wants, but it always, collectively, gets the government it deserves.

Share/Save

Related posts

• Responding to the BNP (0)
• Poor Gordon’s perfect storm — and heeding the lesson of history (0)
• Job Descriptions for MPs? (1)
• Cameron promises every kind of change except actual change… (0)
• After 12 years in office, a senior Labour figure notices that the electoral system doesn’t really work… (0)

Which means not one person who has been implicated in MP expenses is standing. To be sure, MEPs have been questioned about their expenses in the past, most notably UKIP, whose value to the taxpayer in terms of cost for work done is lamentable.

Westminster must be reformed, but tomorrow’s vote will not have a direct bearing on it. We could, of course, vote to send a message, but, for once, it appears that all the major parties have got the message already — though, what they intend to do about it varies from the disingenous to the radical.

So, what are the issues for the European elections?

By number of parties standing, you would think the main issue is Europe — in or out. But it isn’t. Not one of the major parties suggests we should leave the European Union. UKIP may see itself as a major party on this issue, but, after a full term with members in the EU parliament, UKIP has yet to be able to show a single change to the European system which it can call its own. A vote for UKIP is, in every sense, a wasted vote.

The reason that the serious parties all agree on our membership of the EU is that, notwithstanding any number of pictures of Winston Churchill and British Bulldogs (now more commonly used for selling insurance), Britain needs to be at the head of an effective, negotiating Europe. No matter what we would love to believe, the USA, Russia, India, China, and the federations of South America and of Africa are much too big for us to negotiate with as a single player. Worse, climate change is much, much too big for us to deal with alone. And worse still, international crime has now successfully organised itself to slip by any single-government policing programme.

Of course, the serious parties disagree seriously on how we should be involved in Europe. To me, it seems clear that there is only one logically consistent position. If we accept at all that we should be in the EU, then we should be fully participating just as much as France and Germany. Otherwise, we will be second-class members paying the full membership fee. This means full co-operation on crime, a genuine collaboration to rebuild our economies, and a concerted approach to climate change. Pollution, drug and people trafficking, and the credit crunch are three things that will not stop at the white cliffs of Dover.

Various gradations of ‘not-really taking part’ seem to me to be more about being seen by the electorate to be just Euro-sceptic enough to vote for. But they will do us as a nation no good in the long run, nor in the short, as we have bitterly seen in the last years.

So what about the ‘consistent’ position not of Euro-scepticism, but of total Euro-phobia? I spent a bit of last Thursday handing out leaflets while the BBC filmed me as background material to vox-pops. It didn’t take long for us to spot which two people were (more or less) walking up and down, lingering, in order to get their chance on camera. And, of course, they launched a tirade against Europe, the Commission, MEPs, MPs expenses, etc, etc.

If you want to get really angry about something, Europe is always a good choice — after all, it’s not going to come round to your house later saying “what was all that about, then?”, nor is it likely to be on the committee of any club you might subsequently want to join. Europe is, in some ways, tailor-made for the English eccentric who wants to have a jolly good rant, and then get back to raking up the leaves or making cakes for a jumble sale.

But, in reality, the Euro-phobic parties do not go any further than that in terms of their real policies. Euro-phobia is just another manifestation of xenophobia. And, like xenophobia, the real problem is where you draw the line about who is ‘foreign’. In its extreme form, American survivalists end up drawing a line around themselves and their immediate family, and declaring cold-war on the rest of the world.

Neither UKIP nor any of the other fringe parties has ever put forward any kind of a credible process by which Britain could leave the EU, nor have they ever put forward figures that any independent commentator would accept about how much it would cost the British economy to do so. This is not simply because there is no credible process. It is because anyone who works to acquire sufficient knowledge to put together such a process learns quickly that the programme itself is nonsensical.

I used to know a lovely old lady who had (as anyone would confirm) a heart of complete gold. Occasionally, though, she would talk about Europe. “They should never have built the Channel Tunnel”, she used to tell me. “That was really the end of Britain as an island.” She never quite explained what the exact implications of the channel tunnel were. I’m not sure if she felt that European-ness — perhaps a fondness for olives, French bread and espresso coffee — would come wafting through the tunnel like a ground mist. I don’t think she knew herself. But I feel that her fears were of exactly the same kind as the Euro-phobic parties: ill-defined, unfaced, impossible to pin down to any specific threat that could be managed or mitigated.

Such is the way of fear. Fear, as we have seen too often in the 20th century, is the worst of all guides at the ballot box. Closely followed by fury.

Tomorrow, we must put aside both fear and fury, and face the issues. We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to each other.

Share/Save

Related posts

• Job Descriptions for MPs? (1)
• How much reform can we handle? (0)
• Forget ‘how to run a cheaper parliament’: how about ‘how to run a better parliament’? (0)
• Cameron promises every kind of change except actual change… (0)
• Who now can claim that the Daily Telegraph helped democracy? (0)

Reform is long over due, and the question is not really any more whether it will take place, but how far it will go. At the one end, David Cameron would like to change as little as possible and shift the bulk of changes away from MP remuneration. At the other end, persons such as myself believe it is high time for a fair voting system, a ban on MP second jobs, an expenses system which pays genuine expenses and nothing more, public accommodation for MPs, and an outright ban on profiting from the public purse. These are largely the views shared by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, names which are curiously untarnished by the current crisis, and who therefore doubly should be listened to.

Reform is all very well (and, very, very essential), but we are missing something more important and more profound. Even if the Daily Telegraph had only been able to point to light bulbs, trouser presses, scotch eggs and the costs of genuine mortgages on second homes which had never been flipped, where the mortgage arrangements had been made to place the least burden on the public purse — even if this had been the case, many people who still have been very angry.

As a general rule, people are angry at politicians, and (in my experience) even angrier at people who are trying to get elected as politicians but who have not yet succeeded. Last year a man stopped me and asked me if I was opposed to some local piece of Tory nonsense. I said I was. This did not satisfy him. “Would you be opposed to it in all possible circumstances?” He asked. I asked him what he meant by that. He insisted that I give him what he called a ‘straight answer’. I tried to explain to him that he could probably come up with some kind of circumstance in which I would change my view, but that I was, as things were, completely opposed, and in any probable circumstance, likely to remain so. He wasn’t at all satisfied, and told me that it was typical of politicians not to give a ‘straight answer’.

But the truth is, I gave him a straight answer straight away. He then changed the question to the point at which no meaningful answer could be given. Why? Possibly he’d seen Paxman do this on television, but, deep down, I think he was secretly disappointed that I had given him a straight answer, and wanted to find some form of the question for which there could be no straight answer, which would then justify his belief that, if I was in politics, I must be trying to trick him.

The funny thing was, this was a man who had never voted, and probably has not voted since.

Do we somehow, for some cathartic sociological reason, need a class of people who are always in the wrong, no matter what they say? Now that people are uncomfortable about sexual, racial, gender, disability or religious stereotyping, are we down to the ultimate outcasts, who can comfortably be blamed in all circumstances without the risk of the critic being criticised for his criticism?

There must surely be more to it than that.

I went to have a meeting about the budget a few weeks ago, with none other than Vince Cable. The first thing he said was that MPs really don’t get to comment on the budget. The budget is set by the government, and either accepted or rejected as a single piece of legislation. Here was the man who probably (and by popular agreement) understands more about our economy than anyone else in Britain, and yet he can have no useful input in setting the budget which is the government’s fundamental economic instrument.

The truth is that parliament is still locked into a medieval mindset, where the will of the crown is put forwards by legislation, and the only restraint on the power of the crown is also legislation. Therefore, all that parliament can do is make laws. In practice, the group in parliament with the greatest number of votes also gets to be the government, which has essentially limitless executive powers (since we have no written constitution), except as limited by parliament’s legislation, or, more likely, by the constraints of time, money, and a guess about what will play well with the electorate.

But very few people, when they talk to would-be MPs on the doorstep, enquire about what legislation they are thinking of passing. Rather, they want to know what they will do if they are in government. This is touching, but fanciful. Most MPs will never be in government, because, even if their party wins a majority, they themselves will be required to play the part of more-or-less loyal backbenchers, or possibly and at best, after the modern fashion, junior ministers who are a sort of lower management between cabinet and civil servants.

Is this really what we want? We are frequently told that the real work of parliament happens in committees, but this is not really the case. In the European parliament this is much more true, but in Westminster, at least in recent years, it seems that committees only have power to embarrass the government, which can still push through its programme if it wants to.

Those who advocate our ‘winner takes all’ style of government claim that it makes for strong governments, and anything else makes for weak government. But this is not borne out by history. Rather, what we saw with both the Thatcher and Blair governments, is that they won initially with big majorities and a huge amount of enthusiasm to unite Britain, seize the day, and do what must be done. But, as their time in office progressed, they gradually ran out of ideas. Thatcher’s reign ended in the debacle of the poll tax, and Blair, though he had the sense to get out while the going was good, would have finished up in the double crisis that Gordon Brown now finds himself in. With nothing to renew them, governments run out of good people, and so are forced to put progressively less suitable (but politically sound) people into key positions. Instead of the campaigning Clare Short, and then the (largely famous because of his father) Hilary Benn, we now have Douglas Alexander as minister for international development. Peter Mandelson, so closely identified with the original Blair victory, has wandered in and out of government, finally finding his way into the Lords. Estelle Morris, the last Secretary of State for Education that anyone can remember, quit the job because she didn’t feel up to it. John Prescott had to go. And so on. I don’t particularly mourn the loss of these people (well, perhaps Estelle Morris a little bit), because, by and large, I feel they were essentially bad at their jobs. But the bright constellation of Blair’s inner circle is now dimmed. Instead of prudent Gordon Brown we now have Alistair Darling, instead of the bright Blair smile we now have dull Gordon. Thatcher’s mob fared no better. By the time John Major came to office (but not, as was often pointed out, to power), there were very few left who could command the public’s respect.

And yet, parliament ought to have been able to attract the brightest and the best from all walks of life. So how come we don’t seem to be able to put together a half decent government?

It is high time for the British system to be transformed. We don’t run an empire any more. We don’t have local landowners representing the interests of their illiterate tenants. We are not trying to hold back the power of the barons, or of an unruly monarch with a penchant for raising taxes to fund more battle ships. Our system is full of checks and balances, but they are largely checks on the wrong things, and balances to forces which no longer exist.

Ask most voters to explain the way in which the Lords, the Commons, the Crown and the Courts interrelate, and they will look at you baffled. But this is not because voters are uninformed, uninterested or unintelligent. The system itself is ludicrously complicated, functions poorly, is hopelessly inefficient, and, as we have too often seen, results in the misapplication of poorly drafted legislation for a result far from the original intention. No wonder voters are apathetic. It would be like asking them to vote on who should drive a train that has no engine, or who should wash the dishes when there is no water.

There is now unprecedented energy in Britain for the debate on what politics is for. But we seem intent on diverting it into a discussion of whether the BNP will benefit from the protest vote, and how poorly Labour might do in a year’s time. These are interesting, to be sure, but bring us no closer to the fundamental reforms without which the last month in politics has been no more than an exercise in mass prudery.

Share/Save

Related posts

• In the nation’s interests (1)
• Enough of the talk, time for some action (0)
• Cameron’s False Step (0)
• Cameron promises every kind of change except actual change… (0)
• Telegraph may have paid £300,000 to criminals for scandal leak, it emerges (1)

David Cameron has been wrong-footed for once by Labour. In responding to Alan Johnson’s Lib-Dem inspired call for proportional representation, he has gone strong on ‘radical change’. Except that his changes are not radical at all.

Cameron, writing in tomorrow’s Guardian, and, if he hasn’t thought better of it by then, giving a speech in Milton Keynes, suggests fixed-term parliaments (yawn, everyone has agreed that ought to happen for years), less whipping of MP votes (Lib-Dems already do this, and it’s not a reform of parliament, it’s a reform of his own dynastic and hierarchical party), allowing backbench MPs to choose committee chairs (backbench MPs got to pick the Speaker — and see where that got us), limiting the number of decisions the prime minister can make without going to parliament (Tony Blair — yeah, him — already introduced that one), allowing local councils to reverse government decisions (radical, but completely loopy), and publishing the expenses of civil servants who get more than £150,000 salaries (not really a reform of parliament).

But he bitterly opposes a reform of the electoral system saying, with an enormous piece of double-think that would have done credit to George Orwell’s 1984 characters, “Proportional representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites.” Say what?

It’s quite bonkers, and I suspect that he knows it is. He goes on: “Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver the transparency and trust we need?”

But, David, voters don’t choose the government at all on the current system. And you know they don’t.

Cameron is hoping on the current system that 40% of the vote will give him an absolute majority in parliament. How can that be voters choosing the government, if 60% of them wanted someone else, but he gets the power to over rule everyone else? Sometimes, 35% of the vote is enough to give an absolute majority, on our current system. How can that possibly be allowing the voters to choose the government? In fact, it’s mathematically possible (and, heaven knows, after the Florida run off which got George W Bush elected, mathematically possible is something which needs to be taken seriously) — mathematically possible that a party which gets less votes than either of two rivals gains an absolute majority in Westminster.

What’s worse is that the first past the post system creates safe seats, at least for Labour and the Tories. If you look around the electoral canvas at who the worst culprits are for misuse of expenses, you see fairly quickly that they are concentrated in… yes, that’s right — the safe seats. A candidate in a safe seat need make no particularly strong appeal to the electorate. He (90% of the time it is a he, not a she) does not need (except now, since we are all alert) to publish expenses, account for the number of hours he spent in Westminster or in the constituency, or defend his apparent complete uninterest in discussing constituency related matters in the House. For example, at the last election, Andrew Mackay, now standing down in disgrace, polled 49.7% of the vote, which was 23% above his nearest rival. Derek Conway, famous for paying his son from the public purse even though his son did nothing, polled 49.8%, 22% above his nearest rival. Douglas Hogg, of moat fame, polled 50.3%. Sir Peter Viggers, known for his duck island, polled 44.8%. Nicholas Winterton polled 49.6%, while his wife Anne Winterton polled 45.4%.

I am not remotely suggesting that a safe seat made these MPs behave in the way they did, any more than the expenses system made them do what they did. But I am stating absolutely categorically that safe seats make MPs unresponsive to the electorate.

And it’s the safe seat system which David Cameron (polled 49.3%, lest we forget) is defending when he puts forward a series of relatively inconsequential changes to avoid the big change which he fears — proportional representation, otherwise known as a fair voting system. In a fair voting system, where the votes of the people really decide who is in and who is out, no seats are safe, and no MP’s career is ever in the bag — no matter how well he has sweet talked the local Conservative association.

So far in this crisis, David Cameron has played a master game, giving the impression of strong leadership despite the fact that it is Tory MPs who have notched up the most ridiculous claims, and had the least grace in accepting the public’s anger. Poor bumbling Brown has never got close to him. But, now he is beginning to reveal what he really thinks, and it is incumbent upon us as the voters to read carefully what he is proposing:

Not one of the changes he is putting forward would have the slightest effect on making MPs more honest or less likely to misuse the public’s money, and not one would make them more responsive to the voters. Cameron’s eye is on government. It’s what he really wants. But, in this crisis, it is for once not the government, but the ordinary MPs who have let us down. Cameron’s solution — reduce the power of government, increase the power of MPs — is curiously disconnected from the real problem.

Share/Save

Related posts

• In the nation’s interests (1)
• How much reform can we handle? (0)
• Which David they choose will determine the campaign we fight (0)
• MP Conway has not “done the right thing” (0)
• Decade of distrust reaches an end (0)

How much do we really want to spend on government? Or put another way, would it be worth saving 10% if it meant the government was really rubbish? Would it be worth spending 10% more to have a really effective government, as opposed to the usual run of the mill incompetence?

No business that meant business would consider economising on talented staff — although lots of business which are busy going down the tubes get locked into a cycle of threatening redundancy, which results in the most talented staff leaving first (they can more easily find other jobs), leaving the business with the less talented, which means profitability drops, followed by another round of redundancy, and so on.

I overheard a conversation in Westminster on Thursday between two glossily attired parliamentary researchers on exactly this topic. How much should MPs be paid, they were asking? They decided that the current amount was the correct amount — any less, and the ‘right’ people wouldn’t sign up, any more, and there would be no particular reason to believe that you would get better MPs. I suspect them of being Conservatives — the notion that the situation we have now is the best one, and any change will wreck things, is written deep into the Tory DNA.

But, ultimately, it’s the same question.

Of course, the answer is not about reducing or increasing the money we spend on MPs, but (as any business can tell you), but using whatever system of rewards and allowances is introduced to favour the right kind of MP activity.

The current system encourages MPs to play the housing market, invest in interior decoration, and experiment with the rules to maximise personal profit. Unless this is actually what we want our MPs to do, it’s clear that, abused or not (and it certainly has been), the system does nothing to make our MPs better MPs.

Of course, the notion of performance related pay for MPs is instantly laughable. And, like most instantly laughable ideas, it pays rather closer consideration than might first appear. The instant response is ‘how can you possibly measure what MPs do?’ But, in the business world, performance related pay yields the best results when applied to the least measurable things. Performance related pay for widget operation on a production line just makes a soulless job even more soulless. But rewarding the PR or marketing manager for performance results in greater creativity, and, when done right, better real results.

To suggest that MPs could not have performance targets is essentially to admit we have absolutely no idea what we expect MPs to do. Perhaps this is one reason why we are always dissatisfied with them. But, actually, the introduction of basic voting and attendance targets would be a start. It would not be difficult to measure in some way the responsiveness of an MP to their constituents. And, of course, measures such as these would strongly discourage prospective members whose main aim is to join the luxury gentleman’s club, and live at the public’s expense for little work.

Yet even these things encourage MPs to be more active, not to become better at being MPs.

Most organisations or professional associations now reward staff who develop new skills, and many actively manage out the staff who have no intention of keeping their skills up to date. For MPs, not only do we have no accepted picture of what they should be doing, but we have no assessment of what abilities they should have to do these.

I was forcibly reminded of this during the second Gulf War. Every day, Saddam Hussein’s wretched government was able to put up a minister who could brief the world’s press in English. Neither we nor the Americans, however, could put up a single elected official who could speak Arabic. In the greatest international crisis of recent decades, with Al Jazeera watched by millions of Muslims, we could find no-one to speak the language. The bizarre thing is, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office have probably the most powerful and effective language-learning programmes in the world.

Suppose that MPs were rewarded for learning languages, acquiring skills in economics, getting inside information on farming and understanding manufacturing? Nobody (surely) can argue that the country benefits from having MPs that know almost nothing about most of the topics they discuss. Our current system for MP career progression is all about political patronage, popularity, and paying back hidden debts. Again, surely nobody can argue that this benefits us as a nation. Suppose that MPs had to satisfy a threshold of ability and dedication to the House of Commons before they could become ministers?

There’s more that we could do in this direction. School governors get chucked off governing bodies if they fail to attend enough meetings, even though they get neither pay nor expenses for their voluntary involvement. Suppose that an MP who failed to attend parliament sufficiently became ineligible to stand for re-election? Suppose that this applied to cabinet ministers and to the Prime Minister. We might quickly discover a much greater degree of accountability to parliament.

As long as we limit ourselves to the question: ‘how much should MPs be paid?’, we will always come to confused and unsatisfying answers. The real question must be ‘what do we expect MPs to do?’, followed swiftly by ‘how can we monitor that?’ and, finally, ‘how do we organise their remuneration to make them more eager to do it and to become better at it’.

Our current system rewards mediocrity. If we are going to change it, which we must, let us make a system which breeds excellence.

Share/Save

Related posts

• Responding to the BNP (0)
• How much reform can we handle? (0)
• Decade of distrust reaches an end (0)
• Cameron promises every kind of change except actual change… (0)
• Still no action that deserves the name (0)