towards a blueprint for reforming government...

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The Guardian | Thursday 21 May 2009 1

Towards a blueprint for reforming government

These are exceptional times. You have to go back to the days before the 1832 reform act, to the “old corruption” with its vote-buying, electoral intimidation and rotten boroughs, to fi nd an era in which

the British way of politics was as widely discred-ited and in need of reform as it is today. Two cen-turies ago, the answer to the scandals seemed plain – systemic reform and, though it was 100 years coming, votes for all. Today, faced with an alarmingly comparable collapse of esteem for politics under the democratic system, the answer to the new corruption is the same as it was to the old: systemic political reform and a modern, reinvigorated, devolved democracy.

Amid the continuing torrent of jaw-dropping expenses revelations, it is hard to comprehend how so many apparently decent MPs could each have set aside their capacity for moral judgment about their own actions . Even so, the expenses crisis is not simply a set of personal failings and transgressions, occasionally exaggerated. That is why it is not enough to call for heads to roll. The deeper problem is systemic. It is rooted in the whole way we do our politics. A general elec-tion is certainly not irrelevant to addressing that problem; but it is not a fundamental solution either. In the end, we need a new politics more than we need a new government.

The mood of anger is understandable. Moods of anger often are. But they are rarely good guides to wise action. That is why it is far more impor-tant to focus on what should be built rather than on what should be destroyed. The White House chief of staff , Rahm Emmanuel, observed last

year that one should “never want a serious cri-sis to go to waste”. A crisis is not just an occa-sion for blame and punishment. It is also, as Mr Emmanuel added, “an opportunity to do things you could not do before”.

That insight has been powerfully borne out by the expenses crisis. Agendas that for years had seemed trapped on the political margins have suddenly been swept into the mainstream and have captured the public mood. Radical pruning of MPs’ allowances. An end to parliamentary self-regulation. All-party agreement in advance to accept Sir Christopher Kelly’s report. A Speaker driven from office for the first time since the 17th century. Party leaders calling on local par-

ties to purge errant MPs. Approving references to Oliver Cromwell. Genuine all-party agreement on reform. None of these things happened before the publication of MPs’ expenses. All of them have happened since.

The reform agenda can go much further. It must now do so. Fixing the expenses system is not enough. The reformers who urged the case for radical reform of MPs’ fi nances have also earned the right to have the rest of their menu of politi-cal reform taken more seriously and urgently. The reactionaries who opposed change, often on the grounds that these are not “real” issues of interest to “real” people should have learned that reality bites hard and that reform is not a side issue. Nick Clegg yesterday called this a once-in-a-generation moment to change politics for good. He was spot on.

Today, Guardian and Observer writers map out some of the possible moves. They range from the composition of select committees through reform of the House of Lords to the role of the press. Online debate on the ideas is already vig-orous. Some proposals are systemic; others are more focused. Some, such as Lords reform, would take some time to implement; others, such as reform of the role of the attorney general, could be made today. Most require all-party agreement, while some could properly be initiated by the government alone. All of them are urgent.

Public life matters. It should be a high calling, not a base one. Gor-don Brown often speaks for the better angels of politics, but he presides over an unprecedented pandemonium of its fallen ones.

His handling of the expenses crisis has often been clumsy. This week, however, largely because he listened to others and learned from his mistakes, he fi nds himself in the right place on these issues at last. He must now go much fur-ther on the equally imperative reform agenda. He has the means, motive and opportunity to help shape the new politics that modern Brit-ain, so diff erent a country from the Britain that spawned our broken parties and our discredited institutions, craves. It took the founding fathers of the United States four months to agree their constitution. Mr Brown has longer than that. He has a year in which to cement his place in history as a great political reformer or as a great political failure. These are exceptional times. And this is an exceptional opportunity.

TYPOGRAPHY: KITCHING/STOTHARD THE TYPOGRAPHY WORKSHOP 2009


2 The Guardian | Thursday 21 May 2009

Written constitution

The great goal

Timothy Garton Ash

We need a written constitution . That is the largest conclusion we should draw from a crisis that is also an opportunity. Our legislature has compromised itself. Our executive has long been over-mighty. Our judiciary remains largely credible, but its independence needs to be reinforced.

In 10 years’ time, I wish to walk round Westminster and show a visitor three great buildings housing three separate powers of a renewed democracy. Every schoolchild should know what each does, by what explicit rules, and how they relate to each other. And how our individual rights and liberties are secured within this constitu-tion. Nothing less will do.

This need not be a revolution. Most ele-ments of a constitution are there already. Unlike many countries after wars or dic-tatorships, we won’t have to rebuild from rubble. Many British institutions function well, and even many aspects of our parlia-ment . We should beware the hyperbole of crisis. But we do need to put together these elements as we never have before, add a few, reform some, and make the whole thing explicit, clear and transparent.

The question is how we go about this. W e will need a government ready to pro-pose to parliament a new great reform bill. We must build a constitution by constitu-tional means. But before we reach that point, we need a great debate. That can start right now, and right here.

Local government

Restore power and accountability

Simon Jenkins

At the root of this scandal has been a transformation in the role of a member of parliament: MPs have become the leading citizens of their municipalities. They are the fi rst port of call for citizen complaints. Their surgeries deal almost entirely with local matters requiring complex nego-tiation with councils and agencies. They have become what in any other European democracy would be the local mayor, the best-known elected person in town.

The result has been a steadily more shrill demand for them to “live in the constituency”, unheard of 50 years ago. The erosion of localism has sucked MPs into the vacuum, and they are now paying the price. An MP’s job is hopelessly con-fused, as a party hack in London and as a prominent civic leader back home. The consequence is two homes, two lives, two expenses rackets and misery.

This will only stop when locally elected offi cials – I am convinced this means may-ors as in most other countries – are intro-duced to relieve MPs of their local duties and thus of some of their pre-eminence. Their present agony is entirely the result of their resistance to local democracy. Political Britain needs a whole new cast list of local mayors, governors, parochial and municipal leaders to return status and political accountability to the local level.

House of Lords

We must be able to choose our rulers

JonathanFreedland

You would think it was a sine qua non of a democracy that those who write the laws of the land would be chosen by its people .

Imagine if MPs were not elected but emerged through some other cloudy proc-ess – because they were one of 92 people with aristocratic blood , one of 26 bishops affi liated with the state-approved version of Christianity, or picked by the prime minister.

If anyone suggested that be the process by which we pick members of the British legislature there would be howls of laugh-ter and outrage. It would be an aff ront to democracy. Yet, t hat is how one half of our legislature is chosen. The House of Lords is often presented as some ceremonial body of sleeping old gents who add to the dig-nity of national life. But the upper house shares in the writing of our laws .

Th e principle – that, in a democracy, the people elect those who govern them – should trump all others. E lecting mem-bers of the second chamber creates com-plications in our constitutional set-up ( wouldn’t an elected “Lords” threaten the primacy of the Commons? ) have held back reform for at least a century.

It is not impossible to devise an election method that would preserve what people admire , ensuring the new second chamber does not comprise party hacks , and still has access to the wisdom of elders. But what comes fi rst in a democracy is the right to elect – and remove – those who govern us. It is long past time that we demanded it.

The monarchy

A corrosive symbol

Gary Younge

Thanks to hanging chads and the supreme court, the left could poke fun at the credi-bility of George Bush ’s fi rst term. But when it comes to Britain, there can really be no debate about the democratic credentials of our head of state. She has none.

For all the fetishisation of modernity , there is one glaring omission – the abo-lition of the monarchy. Power has been devolved to Scotland and Wales; there will soon be a supreme court . But when it comes to the little things like declaring war , dissolving parliament and ratifying treaties, all power lies with the monarch.

Those who insist the role is merely symbolic miss the point. It symbolises something extremely corrosive in our history and culture: that your life chances are determined not by what you can do, but to whom you were born . Moreover, it enshrines the notion that power can be unaccountable .

T he tendency to point out the personal defi ciencies of the nation’s fi rst family is understandable, but fl awed. “Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793,” wrote Albert Camus, referring to Louis XVI’s execution. “But regicides of earlier times … were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. ”

The issue is not the individuals but the institution, not personalities but politics. A call to remove the Queen’s constitu-tional powers may well attract broad sup-port, leaving the ceremonial and symbolic and little else. That would be a start.

The Speaker

Redefi ne every part of the role

Jackie Ashley

If M Ps, the press and the public are agreed on one thing, it’s that the new Speaker should be a reformer. That means a change in each and every aspect of the Speaker’s role . It’s already clear that the new Speaker will not be in charge of M Ps’ pay and expenses. Within hours of Michael Martin announcing his decision to quit, the prime minister made it clear that an independ-ent commission will take over the day to day administration of the Commons.

The Speaker’s main role will continue to be chairing debates and keeping order. But he must do much more that: dragging parliament into the 21st century , he should ensure that procedures and debates are comprehensible to all, inside and outside the chamber. No more “remaining orders” that no one understands .

He would do well to put a total stop to all that yah-booing, too. For years it has put the public off Westminster – not sur-prisingly. The new Speaker can also take a leaf from the Lord Speaker’s book . Since 2006, Lady Hayman , as Speaker of the Lords, has made it clear that her job is to act as an ambassador for the Lords, with a full programme of speeches, conferences, outreach events, charity work, engage-ment with young people and foreign visi-tors. Now, more than ever, the House of Commons needs an ambassador .

Electoral reform

Our system is bust

JohnHarris

Above all others, there is one institutional wrong that sits underneath the sickness of our politics. It enables governments to claim thumping mandates while they attract the support of a small minority , thereby facilitating rule-by-clique. It results in focusing on marginal seats and scything out whole swaths of voters, from residents of the o ld Labour heartlands to suburban middle-class liberals – and, truth be told, right wing Tories. I t has led to too many “safe” seats, creating the climate in which MPs stretched or broke the rules, with little thought of their constituencies.

Self-evidently, our fi rst-past-the-post model is as busted as the allowances sys-tem, and now is the time for a new elec-toral settlement. I’d settle for a version of alternative vote plus ( but with the propor-tional “top-up” share of MPs bigger) o r the additional member system of the Scottish parliament, and the assemblies in London and Wales , but the practice of closed party lists should be binned .

Al though David Cameron has made most of the recent running on political reform and a quick general election, the Tories’ likely success would be based on the usual grim mathematics – a big Com-mons majority on a minority of the vote, and all the dysfunction that implies – but given that change would tear up so many of their standard calculations, will either of the main parties listen?

Parliamentary protocol

Earth callingPlanet Westminster

Hugh Muir

Who, designing a representative body for the 21st century, would start from here?

Who would allow the House of Com-mons to be run by the Speaker as we know the role, the candidate of least resistance,

Democracy

Reorchestrating the second chamber

Will Hutton

Democracy is a process and an attitude of mind. It understands that the to-and-fro of argument is the best way communities feel their way to good decisions and good law. It holds executive power to account day by day for its actions, and periodically through elections. It protects liberty.

British democracy falls short of these aspirations in many ways. I t is a two-cham-ber system that may genufl ect to the role of deliberation and argument, but the House of Commons is ruthlessly controlled by the executive while the Lords is a useful revis-

using the same principle under which we organise the refereeing of football ? Who would have Black Rod , with his tights and mace? Would anyone bother with that blather about “honourable ” and “right honourable gentlem e n”?

If it didn’t seem ridiculous before, it certainly does now. Why go on with those interminable maiden speeches? The pat questions to ministers planted by the whips ? The ritual investigation of the prime minister on his engagements ? This is a body barely recognisable to most people: Planet Westminster.

There is a modernisation of the house select committee system under way – proof that the wheels turn slowly. Our courts can hardly be held up as an example but they have recognised that arcane practices and language can cut ordinary people off . Have our courts been rendered less eff ective by the shift away from wigs and gowns, or by allowing solicitors directly to represent cli-ents? People will leave court unhappy , but few complain they didn’t understand it.

Let the honourable member for Black-burn become plain Mr Straw , let the Speaker be independent of the parties and let’s have members of both houses discussing the issues inside parliament in the terms they might use outside it. As for Black Rod and those tights – what a gift to cabaret.

ing chamber, but essentially a democratic cipher. That must change.

The British will always site the govern-ment of the day in the Commons. As a result, its capacity to revise, deliberate and argue will always be weak. The role must fall to the House of Lords. Its standing must be raised to become the co-determiner of British law. The Commons must lose its power always to trump the Lords.

That will require that the Lords is com-posed through democratic mandate. But to avoid relative party strengths predeter-mining outcomes so that it becomes a mere simulacrum of the Commons, there need to be substantive innovations. The fi rst is that a critical mass of Lords – say, a third – must be elected as independent crossbenchers so that the government must win assent for its legislation through force of argument and not political arm-twisting.

The second is that each nation and region of the UK must be represented , so larger interests are considered. The third is that its select and working committees should be able to co-opt external experts as members. Britain would then have a 21st-century democratic chamber of which it could be proud.

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MP numbers

Slash the head-count to 400

Polly Toynbee

In the sea of faces on the green benches, how many of those 647 MPs can you rec-ognise? Most will never be ministers. We have so many, they say, because of the sacred link between MP and constituency, one to roughly every 60,000 voters. But that mystical bond is mostly the wishful

Here, Guardian and Observer writers launch a major debate on renewing British politics. With your help, we hope to build a blueprint for reform. Join the discussion on each of these topics at guardian.co.uk/anewpolitics – and tell us what we’ve missed. We’ll keep you informed of progress


The Guardian | Thursday 21 May 2009 3

MPs’ pay

Boost salaries and abolish allowances

JenniRussell

It’s not a popular moment to suggest such a thing, but MPs’ headline salary should be raised and allowances cut. There’s nothing honest about the current system, in which most MPs treat second home allowances as an integral part of salary, in eff ect rais-ing their income to £104,000 before tax.

The danger is that representing people in parliament will now look so tarnished that talented potential candidates will be put off – being an MP should attract people of the same calibre as those who work at high levels in public service: sen-ior civil servants, judges, headteachers of large schools. Consider this: the civil servant who ran the fees offi ce was earn-ing £125,000 a year, nearly twice as much as the MPs whose expenses he oversaw. The heads of large London schools get £107,000. Judges and senior doctors get more than £100,000 a year.

If we pretend that pay shouldn’t matter to MPs, we’ll end up with a high propor-tion of low-calibre candidates, or those who have suffi cient private incomes not to care . Don’t forget that Lloyd George introduced payments for MPs in 1911 pre-cisely so that the pool of politicians could extend beyond the privileged class.

Let us be brave now. Remove the second home allowance, and make offi ce travel as transparent as it is in any company. Link MPs’ pay to those of civil servants’ grades, or those of judges, and fix them some-where in the region of £85,000-95,000 a year. Take that issue out of the political realm – and free us from the demeaning spectacle of MPs arguing that bathplugs, antique rugs and £8,000 TV sets are a nec-essary requirement for doing their jobs.

The executive

Let MPs reclaim control in the house

Martin Kettle

Parliament exists to sustain a govern-ment by passing its bills and approving its actions. But it also exists to hold a govern-ment and its ministers to account. M odern parliaments have been infi nitely better at the former than the latter – think of Iraq , think of some anti-terror laws , and think, in particular, about the needless prolifera-tion of laws and regulations .

MPs need to stop being sheep and start being watchdogs. The rest of us, the media in particular, need to assist them .

Parliament should draw up its own bill of parliamentary rights to control the executive. It should limit the power of the prime minister to alter Whitehall. It could restrict the number of ministers . Select committees could sit many more days and ministers could be required to account them more regularly.

MPs should reclaim control of parlia-mentary business, giving the Speaker more routine power to set the Commons agenda. MPs should remove the government’s patronage over who sits on and chairs committees . In the end, we should go the whole hog and move towards a more com-plete separation, along US lines, in which MPs are no longer ministers . That would remove a lot of the current confl icts .

A change of political culture is needed, too. Everybody knows ministers and MPs have diff ering views on most issues. So be more grown -up about allowing those views to be heard in public. W hy not modify the doctrine of collective responsibility so that ministers and MPs can speak their minds more freely without losing their posts?

The current system stifl es debate and public engagement. A new system would throw the windows open.

Party whips

A devilish discipline

David Hencke

The whips are essential to the running of an effi cient political process in the sense that elected governments need to push policies through parliament . However, they have too much power and too much say over what happens to MPs .

Whips have myriad ways of taking revenge on or rewarding people. An accom-modation whip, for example, can decide which MP gets what room – a suite for the helpfully toadying member or a hole-in-the-corner offi ce for a troublemaker . Though not the root of the current malaise , the power of the whip – unrecognised as a par-liamentary post – rules supreme, inhibits democracy and encourages a herd instinct and mindlessly partisan behaviour .

A major reform is essential to bring back meaningful debate to parliament. At present, both government and opposition chief whips – who, incidentally, receive additional salaries from the taxpayer – are creatures of the political party . They have a stranglehold over the committee system in the House of Commons – infl uencing who sits on committees and having some say over who becomes chairman . They are also good at arm-twisting MPs to follow the party leader on motions, which means debates in the Commons – as opposed to the Lords, where there are more cross-benchers – are often stilted events, where real issues are ignored.

Those perks that presently lie within the gift of the whips’ offi ce – rooms, travel, committee places – should be apportioned by an independent parliamentary body, not by party apparatchiks. Party discipline should be enforced by appeal and persua-sion, rather than by patronage and the granting or withholding of favours.

Representation

The House should refl ect those it serves

MadeleineBunting

We need a House of Commons that refl ects the people it is designated to represent and serve. Voters need to see in this institution a closer refl ection of themselves, instead of the anachronisms of a macho, predomi-nantly white culture that still owes many of its characteristics to the English tradi-tions of public school and Oxbridge.

We need many more women in the place and a much wider variety of back-grounds. It’s not that they will be made of better moral fi bre, but that such an infl ux will disrupt the cosy, self-referentialism that has done so much damage.

All parties should sign up to a quota for female candidates – it could be for a lim-ited period of, say, 10 years. Over the past 25 years, Norway , Sweden and Denmark have all achieved high representation of women through quotas of 40% on candi-date lists .

The UK parliament is currently 58th out of 187 democratic countries in the world for its meagre 18% female representation in the Commons. Only quotas will bring the big breakthrough. Alongside more women, concerted action is needed to improve the paltry 2.1% of MPs from eth-nic minorities – just 15. All-black shortlists in key areas is the kind of measure that could crack this long-running issue.

Direct democracy

Use the jury system as a model

JulianGlover

Bill Clinton put it most snappily: “If you want to change the world,” he said, “join a focus group.” He had something in com-mon with Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who commented: “The people of England think they are free . They are gravely mis-taken. They are free only during the elec-tion of members of parliament.”

Both were getting at the same thing : the people are asked to pick other people to take decisions for them. While their choice – Britain’s parliament – implodes under the strain of the expenses scandal, the public can only watch and howl.

Constitutionalists propose all sorts of fixes: proportional representation; devolved assemblies; an elected Lords; a smaller parliament or a bigger one. But in every case they still ask voters to choose someone else to do the governing .

Think of that revered constitutional linchpin, the jury system. We are happy for randomly picked, untrained members of the public to weigh the evidence and the

MPs’ pay

Link to average earnings

AdityaChakrabortty

Easily the most galling aspect of the expenses debacle is the way MPs defend their abuse. Our politicians really mean it when they say these outlandish claims were only to top up inadequate wages. Hang on, MPs not paid properly? The £64,766 salary puts them comfortably into the top 5% of all single earners. The median salary in the UK is £25,100; take into account pensioners and others living off benefi ts, and the average person lives on less than £16,000.

As for parliamentary pay lagging behind other industries, that is a canard. MPs’ pay rises between 1990 and the end of 2006 far outstripped increases in infl ation, average earnings and public-sector pay. If parlia-mentarians want to claim, as the late Tony Banks did , that they are “a sort of high-powered social worker”, they should note that a social worker’s position in Camden (a borough that neighbours Westminster) is advertised on the Guardian’s jobs web-site for between £30,045 and £39,228.

If MPs complain about constituency work, they should be given more case-workers . If the Westminster working day is antisocial ), then it should be changed, by shortening recesses. True, the life of an elected representative is an uncertain one , but that is compensated for by one of those increasingly rare creatures, a gener-ous fi nal-salary pension scheme.

A pay regime for parliamentarians should refl ect the work carried out, and be democratically justifi able. The solu-tion is to link MPs’ wages to average earn-ings. Put backbenchers on, say, two times

MPs’ hours

Shorten the holidays

AnnePerkins

One of the better parliamentary reforms of the past 10 years has been changing the hours to refl ect a normal working week , rather than the traditional arrangement of the day around 18th-century gentlemen’s clubs and society hostesses’ drawing rooms, slightly modifi ed in the 20th cen-tury to allow lawyers to get in a day’s work before turning up in the late afternoon.

The reforms (take a bow, Harriet Har-man ) removed a hurdle for people with young families taking part in Westmin-ster politics, either as MPs or as offi cials, or even journalists. Along with other reforms, of which easily the most important has been the dramatic – if still insuffi cient – increase in the number of women, this change has slowly softened the culture of the place.

But it came at a high cost. T he change to the working day removed probably the most powerful weapon an ordinary back-bencher had – the power to delay, some-times to derail, the government’s busi-ness. The balance is now heavily weighted against the ordinary backbencher and in favour of the executive. No longer could a Michael Foot talk for hours in order to prevent a half-baked plan for reform of the Lords going through. In fact, half -baked plans speed through nowadays, with ministers often redrafting important bits of legislation in the fi nal stages . So much for better scrutiny.

Don’t make MPs’ days longer. Cut the holidays, change procedure and give MPs back the chance to get right up the execu-tive’s nose.

the average wage and increase their salary in line with average earnings . That would remind politicians that their job is to repre-sent their constituents – and give them a n interest in improving the lot of voters.

Select committees

Backbenchers need to wrest control

MichaelWhite

Congressional committees in Washing-ton have sweeping powers to tackle the executive. But the US constitution rests on a separate executive, judiciary and leg-islature, whereas Britain’s remains inte-grated , a medieval legacy the Americans rejected in 1787.

MPs are paid, of course, to represent their constituents , to vet the government’s legislation and hold the government of the day to account. If necessary, they do that by turning off the tax revenues . Charles I even-tually discovered that hard fact when he tried to manage without them. The basics of politics never change. But it needs a John Pym or an Oliver Cromwell once in a while to give the system a well-aimed kick.

All models have problems, but parlia-ment’s select committees could benefi t from the conviction among backbench-ers that being a committee chairman is at least as useful a public career as being a junior minister in charge of paperclips. “Ministerialitis” is a curse.

MPs have the power to summon wit-nesses – as they demonstrated with the errant bankers – and issue severe reports . But committee membership is still con-trolled on all but rare occasions by the party whips. Labour’s chief whip, Nick Brown, explicitly argues that serial rebels should be denied a committee place. Tory governments have removed troublemak-ers such as Nicholas Winterton.

Reform will require backbenchers to take control of committee membership and the appointment of chairmen away from the party whips and hand it to their own committee of selection .

It’s small constitutional beer compared with sweeping proposals such as demands for proportional representation voting at Westminster , but modest changes often matter more than dramatic ones. That coupled with changing attitudes.

thinking of self-deluding MPs. Both the good and the useless are swept in and out of offi ce on their party’s coat-tails. We need fewer , representing larger areas, to make them more powerful national fi gures.

If there were, say, 400, most would have a valuable role to play in party and parlia-ment. Their business should be governing the country: too much time is spent now as advocates for individual local cases on housing, benefits and vast numbers of immigration pleas, often queue-jumping existing appeals and complaints proce-dures, to the aggravation of offi cials . Some casework should go to councillors, if more power is to be devolved. Good MPs say they need some casework, to see at fi rst hand where government departments are fail-ing, but the balance is out of kilter.

A proportional representation system, such as the Jenkins plan , means grouping MPs together in clumps of six, in larger constituencies, so that voters are repre-sented by someone they voted for . No system is perfect, but fewer MPs grouped in larger constituencies would better rep-resent more people.

argument, and imprison someone for life . It works. Why not for goverment, too?

Gordon Brown did once talk of what he called citizen’s juries, but they turned out to be nothing more than state-funded party political focus groups. A bad start, though, should not ruin a good idea. We could give such juries real power – if not to swing deci-sions, at least to contribute to them.

In a democracy, ruling and being ruled should be part of the same thing.

Comment is free The debate continuesPut your mark on the blueprint guardian.co.uk/anewpolitics


4 The Guardian | Thursday 21 May 2009

Secondary legislation

Cancel ministers’ blank cheques

Henry Porter

Any reform of parliament should urgently include means to restrict the use of second-ary legislation – usually statutory instru-ments (SIs) – and provide better ways of scrutinising what are essentially minis-terial edicts. Most bills contain clauses that allow for secondary legislation to be drafted in certain vaguely specifi ed areas at a later stage – a blank cheque, if you like. Eventually these refi ned measures are pre-sented to parliament and made law with almost no debate. Research shows that in the last two decades SIs have doubled, with a noticeable spike at the beginning of the Blair era. In 2005, there were an incredible 14,580 pages of legislation, of which nearly 12,000 were SIs.

Much of this amounts to harmless regulation but increasingly we are seeing criminal off ences created by un scrutinised measures that ride into the law on the back of primary legislation. The general point about SIs is that they greatly increase the power of the executive and allow minis-ters to avoid unfavourable publicity and critical examination.

A statutory instrument should be pub-lished in draft form giving MPs the chance to look at the measure on its merits and describe in simple terms what it means . A sifting committee should apply a sys-tematic scrutiny and decide whether the measure should be debated.

To restore power and respect to MPs , SIs should be amendable by either house and both houses should have the power to refer back to the ministry concerned with precise suggestions. Once the measure becomes law there should be opportuni-ties for post legislative scrutiny to see how it is working in practice.

Lobbying

Full disclosure and scrutiny

Peter Preston

There are constant themes to any West-minster reform : transparency, rigour, out-side independent monitoring and enforce-ment. And that, in turn, means members’ interests and lobbying rules require few key changes. Much of the work was done 14 years ago by the committee on standards in public life (set up after the Guardian’s cash-for-questions revelations in 1994 ).

Still, some holes need fi lling: post inter-ests on the net within a week, not a month; declare gifts under 1% of a parliamentary salary (you can buy lots of bath plugs and toilet seats for £640); inspect lobbying fi rms prior to access to the Commons – and withdraw access if they transgress; make it impossible to pay lobbyists and also con-tribute to political party funds .

But then – most crucial of all – comes the need for independent outside con-trol. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is just another “servant of the House” chosen by the House itself. But blow away their rotten expenses system and, in grim logic, members’ interests have to be policed by outsiders as well.

So, bring in servants of the public and publish every ruling they give. Give com-missioners job security: no more ditching Elizabeth Filkin if she makes too many waves, no more neutering of high-profi le heads of the committee on standards (such as Sir Alistair Graham ).

Oh, and no more politicians on the standards committee either. They’re our watchdogs now. Not poodles playing on College Green .

The press

The vanishing reporter

Ian Aitken

A factor in the present collapse of public respect for parliament that is rarely dis-cussed is the shrinking – almost vanishing – of the coverage of parliamentary debates in national newspapers. Defenders of the press argue this is down to MPs’ lack of interest in day-to-day business , demon-strated by the chamber’s emptiness during debates and the generally poor speeches. They are simply not worth reporting.

T his is partly true, but it is a two-way process. Many MPs don’t bother to par-ticipate in debates they know will not be reported. W hy spend hours preparing speeches to appear only in Hansard ?

There is solid factual evidence for this assertion. In the 50s a strike in Fleet Street ’s print shops closed down the national press for nearly three weeks. During that time there was a noticeable fall in the attendance of MPs , with an even sharper fall in ques-tions tabled for ministers. In those days, even the popular newspapers maintained one or (in the case of the Mail and Express) two gallery correspondents. The Times and the Telegraph had teams of shorthand reporters. The Manchester Guardian had the incomparable Norman Shrapnel .

Today the gallery correspondent is vir-tually extinct. Instead, there are sketch writers whose job is to be funny about par-liament . I have no objection to sketch writ-ers. But if a paper is going to make fun of MPs , it owes it to parliament to report what actually happens – which means rather more than recording the twice-weekly slapstick of prime minister’s questions.

Most of the reforms must come from MPs. But this is one that could come from the press, and it is crucial not just to restor-ing the perception of parliament but also to reviving its function as the watchdog of the nation. You can’t be a successful watchdog if no one can hear you bark. Political parties

Reach out afresh to the public

AndrewRawnsley

A parliament of independents: what an attractive idea. The Right Hon Martin Bell . Hooray! The Right Hon Esther Rantzen . Er, well, maybe. The Right Hon Russell Brand. Hmm. Perhaps this idea needs a rethink.

Political parties are here to stay. An assembly of independents may be an Athe-nian ideal, but even in ancient Greece it wasn’t much put into practice. It isn’t going to work in a complex modern democracy.

We need parties to guide, lead and clar-ify debate. When the talking stops, some-one has to take a decision whether to sign that treaty, change that tax level, increase that budget and decrease that one. The trick is to reduce what’s bad about them and accentuate what’s good. All the parties desperately need to modernise their rela-tionship with the public, not least because boosting membership is one way to reduce dependency on funding by vested inter-ests . Parties need empowering so that it is worth being a member again.

We need parties to supply MPs who can provide a pool of talent to become minis-ters and supply the Commons with quality invigilators of a powerful executive. The people the parties send to parliament need to be both more representative of the country and of a higher calibre.

That means no more of MPs taking money in chandeliers, plasma screens, massage chairs and all the scandalous rest of it. It also means paying them a good sal-ary. Would we like to see a Commons with fewer party hacks and more people with experiences, skills and perspectives devel-oped in other walks of life? Would we, say, like to make it more attractive for the accomplished head of a comprehensive to make the career switch into politics?

Then we should pay MPs that sort of salary.

Party funding

Beware shovelling state money

SeumasMilne

Before it was cash for MPs’ moats and fl at-screen TVs, there was cash for questions and cash for honours . The growing con-viction that infl uence can be bought by handouts from billionaires and corporate donors has been at the heart of the collapse in confi dence in mainstream politics . Any reform has to include action to bring party funding and spending under control.

That means tighter caps on national and local expenditure . The arms race between parties is the main factor feeding demand for dodgy donations. Closing it down would also make it easier to limit funding: you can’t buy much infl uence if personal donations are capped at, say, £1,000.

Larger-scale funding should depend on transparency and accountability: share-holder endorsement, at least, in the cor-porate world; democratic backing in the voluntary sector. Which is already what happens in the trade unions. The demand to clamp down on union funding – the only clean money left in politics – would be to miss the point of the political crisis.

Union funding is already open, regulated and accountable. It’s also one of the few factors kicking against the monopolisation of parliament by the professional middle class. Extending the model could help to open up Westminster’s magic circle.

Far better than extending the dead hand of state funding, which tends to lock out new entrants, freeze the existing setup and make it less dependent on public participa-tion. Quite apart from that, shovelling more money into the parties after the events of the past fortnight is surely a non-starter.

Communications

More transparency, new technology

AndrewSparrow

Democracy only works if voters can access information that allows them to exercise choice . The problem is that parliament is institutionally hostile to scrutiny by the media. In recent years, parliament has become more open and the old lobby system, involving collective, unattribut-able briefi ngs on a daily basis, has been scrapped. Political correspondents can still

MPs’ staff

Don’t hire relatives

CatherineBennett

Each day, as more names are added to the villainy index , the reputations of the MPs who disdained to join in the great fi ddle rise in public esteem. The Telegraph calls them “ the saints ”. But is it possible to be both virtuous and a specialist in nepotism?

Hilary Benn , for instance, is one of many MPs who couldn’t think of a better parliamentary assistant than the person he had married. Not that one can deny the economies that must come from key staff sharing beds, free food and stimulating DVDs with their line managers.

In fact, to listen to Margaret Beckett, explaining what fabulous value her hus-band, Leo, represents, being available to the minister at all hours, even on caravan-ning holidays , is to wonder why more pub-lic servants aren’t encouraged to recruit within the home. Don’t most have a spouse,

Attorney general

One law for all

TomClark

The outpouring of rage over MPs’ expenses refl ects the sense that there is one set of rules for the people in charge, and another for everyone else. To rebuild trust, politi-cians must show that they understand that legal processes will always apply without fear or favour – including to themselves.

The Iraq war and the pulled prosecu-tion of BAE Systems are the two recent instances where this principle has been most egregiously breached. The attor-ney general was at the heart of both , and reformers would do well to start here . The attorney has three traditional tasks – to pro-vide rigorous legal advice, to oversee pros-ecutions in the public interest, and to serve No 10 as a loyal minister. There is an urgent need to split these jobs up, a task Gordon Brown started but failed to fi nish.

The criminal probe into BAE’s Saudi dealings was dropped after Tony Blair had personally written to the attorney . In the case of Iraq, the attorney was called into No 10 for talks on the eve of war, twice changing his mind on the legal position before fi nally giving the green light .

Strengthening the rule of law must be at the heart of constitutional reform. A new respect for the courts, and perhaps new powers to strike down laws may eventu-ally be part of the mix. But there is no bet-ter starting point than completing the half-fi nished reform of the attorney general.

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have a cosy relationship with sources, but that’s inevitable anywhere where report-ers are “embedded” with their contacts. The solution is more transparency: Access Parliament should let virtually any journalists in. If there aren’t enough desks, there should be a press centre for bloggers – even Guido Fawkes . Lobby Ditto lobby briefings. Officials worry about single-issue obsessives , but everyone would soon get used to them. TV The rules on the use of footage from the chamber should be abolished. Have I Got News for You should be able to use the pictures and it should be easy for MPs to put footage on YouTube. The Tory MEP Daniel Hannan could off er some advice .Announcements Statements should be published well before a minister speaks at the d ispatch box, so that MPs have time to think up good questions. Cameras and laptops MPs should be allowed to sen d pictures from the green benches. And journalists should be allowed to blog from the press gallery overlooking the chamber. I’d love to be the fi rst.

child, sibling, or even, like Peter Hain, an elderly parent, who could use the money?

MPs’ patronage, under the guise of a “staffi ng allowance”, is up there with their expenses as an insulting, salary-boosting scam parading as baroque parliamentary tradition. They should sack any relations in their employment and replace them with properly recruited staff , to be paid directly by the House of Commons. And that includes the saints.

Entertainment

Settle votes with swordplay

Simon Hoggart

What parliament needs to reconnect with the public is more fun and more entertain-ment. The Commons is competing with a host of other entertainments and, of course, the internet. The public gallery usually has half a dozen people in it listening to a bill written in antique language being debated according to antique procedures. So, my suggestions are: Britain’s Got Legislators An annual TV series including tests for debating, com-mittee work, expenses-claiming, etc. The winner spends the next year as an MP, sit-ting in the chamber, debating, asking ques-tions, raising points of order and voting.Better costumes Bring back wigs – not just for the Speaker, but for everyone. It could resemble the start of the London marathon, with MPs turning up in clown costume, diving suits, baby nappies, etc.Music There should be musical interludes between debates.Swords MPs already have hooks on which to hang their swords, and the chamber famously has red lines to keep members two sword-lengths apart. Settling votes with cold steel instead of ballots would get the viewers in and, by reducing the numbers of MPs, would save money.Sponsorship This would bring in huge sums, enough for any number of chande-liers, fl at-screen TVs, Christmas decora-tions, etc. The Sainsbury’s Sunday open-ing debate, for example, or the Boursin cheese appropriations bill. The new Speaker would say, “Order, order. This supply day is brought to you by Blossom Hill, the wine for when old friends get together for good times. Mr Cameron ... ”

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