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1 comment from readers

Frederick Roots
06 November 2009 at 13:55

Never mind electoral reform - what use is that when

the concept of voter representation is all but wiped out

by the way our political system works? In practice, our

once every five year vote counts for nothing since the

Commons in particular virtually never holds the

government to account. I heard David Starkey on

Question Time in April (see Youtube for the detail)

advocating constitutional changes that would make

our democracy come alive). We should, he said have

an elected Prime Minister - elected by us, that is; a fully

elected House of Lords, and MPs reinvigorated so that

they hold the executive to account. This is a sort of copy

of the American system where the people's votes do

have an impact on what is done by government.

Why do we have 643 MPs, when as in the current

parliament, a huge amount of legislation goes through

on the nod and much of it never comes to the

commons for debate at all? Virtually all of the freedom

sapping legislation of the Labour government has

been generated and discussed only by the ministries

themselves. Who had any say about the Vetting and

Barring regulations as a case in point? Only the

people in the Home Office. Who had any discussion

on RIPA that was used by a local council to spy on a

lady in Poole and her family for twenty one days? I

wonder how many of the three and a half thousand

new crimes enacted by New Labour in the last eleven

years were actually debated in the Commons.

Precious few, I'll warrant.