Gwyn Prosser

Working with the people of Dover & Deal

 

Time to change for the better

This week the Prime Minister set out the next stages of Labour’s agenda for constitutional and parliamentary reform which revolves around the fundamental issue of how we restore the legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness of Parliament, through reform of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. It involves clarifying and codifying our constitutional rights and responsibilities and creating a publicl ife that better reflects the dynamism and diversity of Britain. But it must also address how we distribute power between individuals, neighbourhoods, regions and the centre.  

We all know that many people have lost faith in Parliament and in our political parties and that is bad for democracy. If we are to start restoring the credibility of parliament we have to create a new kind of politics which re-engages the public. Gordon Brown and a lot of people outside Parliament believe that re-engagement involves changing the electoral system. So early in the next Parliament he wants to hold a referendum on whether to change to the Alternative Vote system for future elections to the House of Commons – the AV system. Moves which could lead to the abandonment of our traditional ‘first past the post’ voting system will be resisted by the Tories and will not find universal support on the Labour benches, but more of that later.

We will also continue with our proposals in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill which will –at long last – put an end the hereditary principle in the House of Lords and replace it with a democratically accountable chamber. There will be sanctions for gross acts of misconduct by a peer and the Civil Service Code will be tightened up and put on a statutory footing.

We intend putting before Parliament draft legislation to allow for the recall of MPs in grave situations where gross financial impropriety has been proven, and where Parliament itself has failed to act. This will allow constituents to trigger an election at any time during a parliamentary term and remove errant MPs.

There will be other proposals to reform Parliamentary Procedure, including the election of Members and Chairmen of Select Committees by secret ballot of MPs, and it’s proposed that a Backbench Business Committee will take over the scheduling of some House business and the debates of Public Petitions.

Most of these changes are well overdue and I welcome them but I’ve never been enthusiastic about changing the voting system for parliamentary elections. I accept that the alternative vote option  has the advantage of maintaining the benefit of a strong constituency link and it also offers voters increased choice with the chance to express preferences for as many of the candidates as they wish. The  AV system also ensures that the winning candidate achieves at least 50% support but it  can also produce perverse outcomes in some circumstances.

Despite my own reservations I see no reason why we shouldn’t allow our constituents to decide on which voting system we should adopt and to this end I will be supporting the Government’s proposal to hold a referendum in the next parliament.