6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010 : Pt.5

Reason 5: Time for the House of Commons to Reassert and Reform itself

After the expenses scandal the House of Commons will be one of the least experienced in recent times. How will they adapt to the rigours of parliamentary life and more particularly the dreaded Whip System and 'toeing the party line'? There was a lot of talk by the time the Euro elections arrived of more independent candidates standing and there night be one or two. Not as many as I was hoping for back at that time and it will take a while to see how many party rubber stamps make it to the chamber. More importantly, how many of them wish to get promotion to the front bench via the many career moves towards a Government post and pension. It will take a while to establish who these are but if there are a great many of them the old old problem with Parliament will continue, namely, 'never mind the merits', think of your career'. As so many new MP's will have been on the usual political training routes and have not had established careers, saying 'yes' to their could well be an automatic response.

If this were not enough, the amount of legislation government's seem to want to pass has reached a ridiculous level. If it is true that a lot of EU material just passes though for approval with little scrutiny, why is it that the House of Commons so often gets passed by when legislation is being discussed. A great deal of rubbish reaches the statute book without our elected representatives getting much of a look in. If this is inevitable then there is either something wrong with the system or the amount of legislation is too great or is rushed through. Granted, the House of Lords does a lot of scrutiny in committee as does the House of Commons, but it is the Government which dictates the timetable, which amendments will be discussed and when the guillotine will fall to push the Bill through to its next stage. When measures involve civil liberties, criminal liability and human rights the missed provision can be disastrous in the long-term. Governments fully understand their short term aims are best enacted in haste, leaving the rest of us to put up with the results at our leisure.

All the parties are promising one form of constitutional reform or another. Having fixed term Parliaments is one such idea as is the reduction of the number of constituencies. I cant help feeling that many of the reforms that are out there are rather cobbled together without looking at all the variables which the present constitution embodies in its conventions. When a manual working system is being transferred to a computer based system it was always my understanding that a Systems Analyst was the person who set out what the old system did. I remain to be convinced that those suggesting constitutional reform haven't done any in depth analysis. As a half baked idea House of Lords reform will take some beating as it has ended up stalled, but with a second chamber that has excelled at delaying legislation with more legitimacy than the old hereditary dominated chamber. Any reforming government must come to terms that a second chamber that is merely a rubber stamp is a waste of money and a dangerous constitutional omission from the few checks and balances that are left, after it is realised that a Government can almost always on the House of Commons as its lap dog.

The problem to be confronted is how our elected chamber can acquire some credibility, sandwiched as it is between the remote Leviathan of the EU's institutions on the one hand and the emasculated local authorities of England and the aspiring Welsh and Scottish legislatures, on the other. How reducing the number of Parliamentary constituencies will help, inevitably making them bigger, is a puzzle. Distancing electors still further from their representatives doesnt seem a good idea in the light of the invisibility achieved by Euro MP's. Should the Westminster Parliament ever make provision for dealing with English matters without the interference of Scottish and Welsh MP's, representative proximity will be essential as will the need for a proper system of proportional representation so that one party will not predominate to the exclusion of all others.

In the meantime I will enjoy the coming election not only because it will prompt so many of these speculations but it will also be entertaining in spotting how many of these would be political animals have failed to understand the constitutional and political cage they are about to enter.

Dacier