Rolling Reform Programme

We are only 8 days into a 34-day contest for the Speakership. Already two characteristics stand out.

The first is the lack of declared candidates. Sensibly the potential aspirants to the Speaker's chair are seeing what support they have. The successful candidate needs to have good support across all three main parties.

A second characteristic is how the reform agenda is developing or, rather, how the party leaderships are responding to rapidly changing events.

There appears to be a growing agreement that the Commons needs more control over its own timetable. The leaderships are offering more time for backbencher measures and, perhaps, a secret ballot for select committee membership and chairmanships. Nick Clegg is proving to be the most radical on this issue.

What is not being conceded yet is for all Commons' activities to be controlled by the Commons itself.

This is crucial for a healthy realignment of power between Commons and Government. Governments have a right to get their mandated election programmes through. How else can they be held accountable by voters at an election? No, or less whipping, as the Commons considers the details of a Bill, would be a good move.

But what of measures that have never been presented to the electorate? Given the volume and importance of the swathes of European legislation, how can the Commons get real and devote what perhaps might be one or two days a week, to debating, deliberating, changing, and if need be, rejecting European legislation?

Reforms on this front are all issues that, in normal times, could be considered by a Speaker's Conference. But, given the mire we are in, the next Speaker needs to develop his or her role in becoming the voice of the House, not only in the media, but in extending the reform agenda and enabling MPs fully to make such a programme their own.

In the past Speaker's Conferences have considered a single aspect of reform and have had small membership. A 21st Century Speaker's Conference could divide itself into a number of working parties each considering part of the emerging reform agenda. It will be the new Speaker's task to bring these working party reports into a coherent reform programme.

Such a Speaker's Conference could involve all those backbench MPs willing to play a role in one or more aspects of developing a truly revolutionary change in how politics operates in this country. Such an agenda would cover the following.

• How voters select candidates - should this be by open primaries or are other, better, methods available to candidates to be more representative in their views of the constituents who return them?

• How would this reform on open primaries reflect how MPs are elected? Much of the debate now is how to make MPs in safe seats more accountable to voters by changing the voting system. Would open primaries change this aspect of the debate?

• Voters are increasingly footloose with respect to party loyalty. Will this willingness to vote for third party candidates give such groups a fairer representation? Or are new measures necessary? To what extent should the Boundary Commission be asked to take into account third party representation when drawing up new boundaries?

• Increasing voter power over the selection of candidates would impact on the whipping system. Successful candidates, while still coming in on party labels, would feel more independent than candidates chosen by small and often declining party memberships. What other measures are necessary to strike a more mature balance between being able to hold a government accountable for its programme and treating MPs as mature specimens of the human race? David Cameron is moving on this issue.

• To what extent would open primaries serve as an effective recall measure on poorly performing MPs? Is mid-term recall necessary and, if so, how can MPs representing unpopular views, and who make our national debates more representative by sticking to their line, be protected against intolerant pressure groups who could wield power way beyond their true influence? Gordon Brown is right to stress the dangers of reform here.
  

There are still 26 days left in debating what sort of Speaker we need in the next parliament. What could be one of those once a century flowering of debate on parliamentary reform looks as though it is going to take off, thank goodness. Hence my delight in seeing a rolling reform programme. Let's hope much of what is proposed here may look old hat by the time MPs choose the next occupant of the Speaker's chair. I am sure in 26 days time my blog entries will show just such a progression.

My next entry will be on how the Government needs to clean up its act.

Date added: Wednesday 27th May 2009