Following on from potential Labour leader Alan Johnson’s call for the implementation of proportional representation in the House of Commons, Conservative leader David Cameron has proposed his own raft of reforms:
- Limit the power of the prime minister by giving serious consideration to introducing fixed-term parliaments, ending the right of Downing Street to control the timing of general elections.
- End the “pliant” role of parliament by giving MPs free votes during the consideration of bills at committee stage. MPs would also be handed the crucial power of deciding the timetable of bills.
- Boost the power of backbench MPs – and limit the powers of the executive – by allowing MPs to choose the chairs and members of Commons select committees.
- Open up the legislative process to outsiders by sending out text alerts on the progress of parliamentary bills and by posting proceedings on YouTube.
- Curb the power of the executive by limiting the use of the royal prerogative which allows the prime minister, in the name of the monarch, to make major decisions. Gordon Brown is making sweeping changes in this area in the constitutional renewal bill, but Cameron says he would go further.
- Publish the expenses claims of all public servants earning more than £150,000.
- Strengthen local government by giving councils the power of “competence”. This would allow councils to reverse Whitehall decisions to close popular services, such as a local post office or a railway station, by giving them the power to raise money to keep them open.
I think some of these ideas are genuinely very good. Fixed term parliaments is a good step towards improving democracy, particularly if it entrenched the recent reality that most governments choose to go to the polls after four years. Other changes to the role of local government and the power of the executive likewise are a good step.
Some of them, however, seem gimmicky or impossible to maintain. The idea that sending out text messages and posting Parliament on Youtube is a major reform seems just silly. While I like the idea of MPs having a free vote when amending legislation and allowing backbench MPs to elect chairmen of their committees, they seem completely at odds with the current electoral system, apart from really being the responsibility of party leaders rather than the Prime Minister. A Conservative PM can’t force a Labour Opposition to allow its members a free vote.
Any future Conservative government will hold a majority in Parliament and will need to maintain it to stay in power. While it may be easy in his early days to grant his MPs this freedom, as soon as Labour begins to threaten him, and the day-to-day battle of winners and losers returns, pressure will come to bear on MPs with theoretical independence to not rock the boat and be a team player. Such a system would not be very different from the current reality. Likewise, a Conservative government faced with the embarassment of a party opponent winning the chair of a major committee could easily put pressure on its MPs.
You can’t create an independent legislature in a political system where a government is part of the legislature and the electoral system gives the party of government a majority. If you want to give MPs independence from the executive, you have two options:
- Separate the executive from the legislature, as the US does. This would remove the close connection between the votes of MPs and the existence of their government. It would also reduce the ability of the executive to control MPs through the giving away of government offices and reduce their incentive to devote energy to maintaining rigid party discipline.
- Change the electoral system so that most elections do not result in a government majority. Even if a significant minority of MPs are members of the government party and even ministers, a hung parliament is independent of government. Even a loose coalition or a minority government with agreements with minor parties produce vastly more accountability than a majority government.
There is actually a compromise option. I would argue that we have effectively created a hybrid model in Australia, with a separation of powers between the executive and the legislature, if you consider the legislature to be the Senate. Effectively the House of Representatives’ only real role in government now is as an electoral college and a pool of potential ministers.
In contrast, the Senate functions as an independent body in two ways. Firstly, it is proportional, and thus is usually independent of the government. Even though a large minority are loyal to the government, the body as a whole is independent. Of course, like any independent legislature, a dominant government can occasionally take control of the legislature (as, you could argue, the Nationals have effectively now done in New Zealand). In addition to that, even though ministers sit in the Senate, the government is not responsible to the Senate, thus Senators are elected without consideration of whether they will make or break the government, although, like any legislature, in extreme cases they can undermine the government beyond simply blocking legislation (think 1975, or Bill Clinton’s budget crisis in 1995).
Of course, it doesn’t deal with the issue that governments still hold power with minority support, and it doesn’t deal with the major issue that you have a chamber with so much of the power and resources reduced to an echo chamber and electoral college. But it could be a first step in the UK, by replacing the House of Lords with an elected Senate, along the same lines as the Australian Senate, or possibly the way that the UK elects it’s Members of the European Parliament.
