Posts in Category ‘Politics’

Reactions to e-petitions

The reaction to the UK Government’s introduction of a new e-petitions initiative has been quite interesting. You can read my original post about the e-petitions initiative here.

Government House Leader Sir George Young wrote in this piece in the Daily Mail that:

The site has been widely welcomed as a realistic way to revitalise public engagement in Parliament. But there have been some who have been concerned by some of the subjects which could end up being debated – for example, the restoration of capital punishment.

The last time this was debated – during the passage of the Human Rights Act in 1998 – restoration was rejected by 158 votes.

But if lots of people want Parliament to do something which it rejects, then it is up to MPs to explain the reasons to their constituents. What else is Parliament for?

People have strong opinions, and it does not serve democracy well if we ignore them or pretend that their views do not exist.

Young concludes that “if politicians want to regain the trust of the public, then they need to trust the public. Giving people more power is the right place to start.”

However, a former Tory MP disagrees. Paul Goodman writes that e-petitions could actually harm the House of Commons. Goodman asks what would happen if the House did debate, and then reject, a petition which received the requisite 100,000 (or more) signatures? While Sir George Young argues that the simple fact that the House would debate a petition would help demonstrate that Parliament was listening to the voice of the people, Goodman believes that rejecting the premise of a petition would only demonstrate that the Commons was “even more remote from voters than it was before the scheme was launched”, especially so if “it denies debate on the motion in question”:

All would depend, in my view, on the number of signatories.  (I’m assuming that the overwhelming bulk of those who sign a petition backing a debate on capital punishment, for example, want it restored.)

A hundred thousand signatories is not, in my view, a significant percentage of a nation of roughly 50 million adults.  However, five million (say) would be: others will cite their own figure.

Goodman isn’t calling for the required number of signatures to be increased to five million from 100,000, he’s simply indicating that 100,000 people does not constitute overwhelming support for a given cause in a nation of 50+ million adults (read voters – the actual population of the UK is over 60 million). Goodman concludes while some petitions will be popular, demand for whatever cause they espouse won’t be overwhelming. Because of that, the move to e-petitions will do no harm and might even do some good if only because “[I]mportant matters are likely to be debated that wouldn’t be otherwise.”

The Independent, however, is rather dismissive of the whole e-petitions idea. The editorialist dismisses Sir George Young’s claim that ignoring people’s views damages democracy:

This is a bogus notion. In a civilised society, important issues are decided after diligent research, considered debate and the careful weighing up of arguments and counter arguments. That is what we elect our MPs to do. Of course those signing e-petitions on the Government’s official website may do that. Or they may vote out of knee-jerk prejudice. Inspect the latest round of petition subjects and you may form a shrewd idea of which approach dominates. The subjects raised include the return of the death penalty, withdrawal from the European Union, a householder’s right to kill burglars, restricting prison diets to bread and water, and more of that ilk.

The editorial concludes: “The only online petition that deserves to succeed will be the one that demands an end to these exercises in specious democracy.”

New Stateman blogger Dan Hodges isn’t any more supportive of the idea:

The e-petition system is a grubby, tacky, sordid, sleazy, headline-grabbing gimmick. It is the worst sort of X Factor style politics, cheapening and debasing our politicians and our political process.

Far from placing power in the hands of the people, e-petitions serve only to put more power in the hands of those who have ways of influencing the people. The lobbyists, the activists, the business interests; those who have the time, money and resources to manipulate them in their favour.

If our politicians want to demonstrate empathy with those who elected them, they should get out into the country and engage with them, not lock themselves in the Cabinet Office, hiding behind a website. And they can explain face-to-face how they have absolutely no intention of withdrawing from the Human Rights Act, re-opening our libraries or abolishing the monarchy.

Meanwhile,  over at the Guardian, Anthony Barnett has a rather bleak view of all forms of petitions – paper and electronic:

Parliamentary petitions modernise and intensify the old reactionary political culture rather than replacing it. The notion of the petition takes us back to the “popular touch” of monarchy with cult of supplication. It is a device of subjecthood, not citizenship. It delivers neither democratic power nor popular deliberation. It reproduces the backwardness of Britain in constitutional terms. Indeed, by taking the UK in a plebiscitary direction, it infantilises voters and weakens understanding of democracy. For this does not mean the rule of majority, which has long been known as another form of tyranny; “democracy is constitutional or it is nothing”. It protects minority rights and entrenches fundamental laws. To take a current issue it is illegal to torture people. Even if 90% of the public supported British officials torturing people, those 90% would be supporting something illegal.

Most of the UK media coverage has focused on the petitions calling for the reinstatement of capital punishment. As of writing, there are approximately 25 e-petitions currently active calling for the return of the death penalty, with total signatures adding up to 8,415. There are seven e-petitions opposing the reintroduction of capital punishment, and together, they have a total of 12,635 signatures (note that I opted to not include in this count a petition which calls for public hanging for those who call for public hanging, since, if you read it, it’s more of a joke petition). Indeed, the petition with the most signatures at the moment is this one, which calls on Parliament to retain the ban on capital punishment.

Obviously, the Government will have to do something about the number of duplicate petitions. While some of these may well be attributable to the problems the e-petition site was experiencing yesterday, which meant that many weren’t able to search to see if a petition on a given subject had already been created, I think it’s fairly clear now that people aren’t bothering to search at all and simply going ahead and creating new petitions.

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HM Government E-Petitions go live – sort of

(Note to readers: This site is not in any way affiliated with the UK Government or its e-petitions website. If the e-petitions website is experiencing technical problems, please do not email this blog as there is nothing the blog administrator can do about that. If you wish to complain to someone about problems with the e-petitions website, please contact Directgov.)

The UK Government’s new e-petitions have gone live, and the initial interest in this initiative seems to be causing some problems.

My first attempts to access the list of petitions repeatedly resulted in the following message:

Sorry if you’re experiencing problems accessing e-petitions. There is currently a much higher level of demand than we expected.

However, I have been able to get various parts of the petition site to work, at least sporadically, which has allowed me to make a few early observations. Please note that as I write this, the site is still experiencing problems due to heavy traffic load, and so if you click on any of the links herein, you may only get an error message.

Quickly perusing the list of accepted petitions, I noticed that there seem to be a lot of petitions addressing the same issue. This is not supposed to be allowed. On the How e-petitions work page, the first step is to “Search existing petitions before creating a new one”. If you click on the little information icon, you are informed that:

Before you create a new e-petition, search the site to make sure there isn’t one that covers your issue. If a new e-petition is the same as one that’s already on the site, it will be rejected.

Yet, perusing the list of submitted petitions submitted to the Department of Justice (at least the first page – trying to get subsequent pages to load results in the aforementioned “Sorry…” message), there are certainly more than one petition calling for the reinstatement of capital punishment/the death penalty. Quite a few more, in fact.

If these various petitions on essentially the same topic are allowed to stand, it could well undermine efforts by pro-capital punishment supporters to garner the required 100,000 signatures. Or, the government could end up with several petitions calling for essentially the same thing, which all end up with the required number of signatures.

It is quite likely, however, these identical petitions are appearing because the site is having trouble coping with demand. Every time I have attempted to use the search function, it has resulted in an error message. Therefore, I am assuming that people are unable to search for existing petitions and so are simply going ahead with creating new ones. I won’t be at all surprised if in coming days, once the novelty has worn off and the site stops breaking down, many of these repeat petitions will disappear.

Calls for a return of the death penalty aside, I have noticed a few amusing petitions listed (when the site cooperates, that is). There are at least three e-petitions about e-petitions. One calls on the government to do away with e-petitions while another asks that the Government remove “the requirement for citizens to find out which department deals with the subject of their e-petition” – I guess because a lot of people simply don’t have any idea which Government department does what. The third petition asks that the Government revise the 100,000 signature requirement, since this may be difficult to achieve for some petitions that are nonetheless very good petitions.

I have to say that I am surprised that the Government didn’t properly anticipate that traffic to the e-petitions site might be quite heavy. They’ve had issues previously. When the Your Freedom site, which asked people to tell the government which laws and regulations it should get rid of, was launched in July last year, high demand in the first 24 hours caused the site to crash repeatedly. One would hope governments would learn from experience.

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Some interesting links

1. Time to salute the post-2010 election Parliament

BBC parliamentary correspondent Mark D’Arcy has a good column providing an interesting overview of the current UK Parliament and an assessment of some of the many reforms introduced in the dying days of the previous Parliament and at the outset of this one: “So I’m afraid, as I head off for my holidays, I’m going to indulge in a little optimism. A stronger Parliament is doing a better job. And that is a good thing for the country.”

2. The Death Penalty: A Matter of Emotion, Not Reason

With efforts underway by pro-capital punishment forces to force the House to debate the issue by gathering 100,000 signatures on an e-petition, the Spectator’s Alex Massie provides a thoughtful piece on the subject: “I have a little more faith in the British justice system than I do in its American counterparts but not so much that I’m happy to grant the state this kind of sanction. If I won’t trust the state to issue an ID card why should I trust it with the death penalty?”

3. Can David Cameron and George Osborne defy history and remain friends?

The Guardian’s Nicholas Watt looks at the long history of Prime Ministers falling out with their Chancellors of the Exchequer, and ponders if Cameron and Osborne can avoid a similar outcome.

4. MPs find their voice at last

Complementing Mark D’Arcy’s article about how reforms have made the UK Parliament stronger, Steve Richards writes in The Independent about how these reforms have shifted power to MPs and away from the executive: “Until recently the committees were something of a backwater for MPs, largely ignored by the media and viewed with indifference by ministers. They produced their reports. Some of them were extremely insightful and provided an important alternative commentary on various governments. Rarely did they get much publicity. No member acquired such an aura that he or she became associated with sex appeal. This has changed. Suddenly committees are sexy.”

5. An interview with the creator of PMQs – The Game

Helen Lewis-Hasteley interviews Mark Richards, creator of the PMQs computer game I’ve previously blogged about: “I had really enjoyed doing retro video game-style caricatures of political figures and, one day, it just occurred to me that Prime Minister’s Questions is a real-life turned based battle, like those bits from the old Pokemon games.”

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Is the grass really greener, Part 2

In an earlier post, I discussed Question Time, the Australian House of Representatives oral question period, which a British blogger had described as “unbelievable behaviour” and attributed much of the problems to the Speaker himself. After listening to a few archived Question Times on the House of Representatives website, I ended up agreeing with that assessment.

Today, I’ve come across an article by Katharine Murphy, the national affairs correspondent at Australia’s The Age, in which she sharply criticizes Question Time. Some of her observations:

Question time in its contemporary manifestation symbolises everything that’s wrong with political discussion in Australia — an exchange of manufactured sound bites and confected television “moments” signifying nothing at all. It is at once uncomfortably aggressive, spiteful and gladiatorial, and completely soporific.

(…)

As a mechanism for genuine accountability, it’s a joke. As a spectacle, it’s pathetic — community theatre, not even Off Broadway. As a focal point for the political day it confirms the most crushing of truths: politics is progressively breaking all of our hearts.

(…)

Its sheer awfulness has a strange lulling effect — like the victim of an abduction, you slowly develop Stockholm syndrome, becoming too worn down to hope for something better.

Murphy then goes on to heap praise on proceedings in the UK House of Commons. Like many Canadian political correspondents, Murphy became enthralled with David Cameron’s performance in the House in the wake of the phone hacking scandal:

In two gripping hours, British Prime Minister David Cameron answered 138 questions pertaining to what he knew, his decision-making and his relationships with executives from News International.

The exchanges, moderated by an adroit Speaker with well honed reflexes for containing frippery and grandstanding, was fast, free flowing and informative. Oddly, given the high political stakes involved for Cameron, the tone of the debate was respectful; striking a functional balance between persistent interrogation, critique and basic civility.

Watching that broadcast was more effective than a dose of smelling salts. Water-cooler discussion in Canberra the next day was alive with it. Did you see the Commons debate? Did you see politics actually working?

Murphy also comments on the independence of backbenchers in the UK to ask actual questions “seemingly beyond the control of their puppet masters on the frontbench.”

As impressed as she is with the spectacle she witnessed, Murphy cautions that it is unfair to compare “a special sitting of the British Parliament in some extraordinary circumstances with a routine question time in Australia” and that the “British outing last week was a special debate, with conditions allowing spontaneous questions and free-flowing exchange”. Perhaps I am misreading her, but this isn’t entirely true. Yes, it was a special sitting since Parliament had been scheduled to adjourn for summer recess the day before, and was quickly recalled to sit one extra day to address the phone hacking issue, but ministerial statements are not what I would classify as a special debate, but rather routine occurrences in the UK House of Commons. The format they follow, as I have previously discussed, is quite different from the ministerial statements we have in the Canadian House of Commons. It would seem that Ministerial statements in the Australian House of Representatives more closely resemble their Canadian counterparts:

By leave of the House Ministers may make statements concerning government policy or other matters for which they have ministerial responsibility. Ministerial statements are often made after the presentation of documents, however they may also be made at other times. An opposition spokesperson is usually granted leave to make a statement on the same matter or a motion may be moved ‘That the House take note of the document’, on which debate may take place either at that time, at a later hour or at a later sitting. On occasions leave has not been sought by the Government or has been refused by the Opposition and standing orders have been suspended to enable a statement to be made. Ministerial statements are not an everyday occurrence and their frequency has decreased in recent years. (House of Representatives Practice, 5th ed., p. 254)

Ministerial statements in the UK House of Commons are not daily occurrence either, but as I have stated, at least during this current Parliament, they are fairly regular occurrences. It is not unheard of to even have two or three ministers delivering ministerial statements one after the other, and at the end of each one, MPs are free to question the minister on its contents.

I also disagree with Murphy that this was an exceptional example of a ministerial statement, and because of this, the House of Commons rose to the occasion. I have watched many such statements delivered in the House over the course of the past year, and while the subjects were perhaps less high-profile (and that is somewhat debatable), the conduct of the MPs was as commendable. Backbenchers still freely asked whatever questions they wanted, debate was respectful, the ministers did their best to answer the questions asked. Nor was this the first time that the Prime Minister has delivered a ministerial statement to the House. The only real difference about proceedings on 20 July was that the phone-hacking had become an international story, consequently, the world was watching, to an extent anyway. Ministerial statements on reforms to the NHS, or the UK’s military efforts in Afghanistan and Libya played out to much smaller audiences.

I’ve noted with some dismay that many of the readers who have commented on Murphy’s story are confusing the ministerial statement with Question Time, and in some cases, even PMQs. This confusion is perhaps due to Murphy’s contrasting Question Time to the ministerial statement, which is understandable since Question Time may well be the only real opportunity Members get to question ministers, including the PM. I got the sense here in Canada that many of our journalists also failed to understand that Cameron was not participating in an extended round of PMQs, but delivering a ministerial statement. This is one area were proceedings in the UK House of Commons are clearly superior to proceedings in the Canadian House of Commons (and by the sounds of, the Australian House of Representatives). MPs have far more opportunity to question and hold the government to account. Everyone seems to forget about the daily Questions, focusing only on PMQs, but as we have seen here, there are also ministerial statements and urgent questions.

Urgent questions are dependent on the Speaker being willing to grant them, and current Speaker John Bercow certainly has been willing to do just that. He has granted 60 urgent questions debates since May 2010, compared to only two granted by the previous Speaker over the course of the nine years he presided over the House.

As I’ve written many times on this blog, when you combine the UK House of Commons’ focused, ministry-specific form of oral questions with the regular use of Urgent Questions and ministerial statements, there exists far more opportunities for the Opposition to hold the Government to account in the UK House of Commons than there are in the Canadian House of Commons or, by the sound of it, the Australian House of Representatives. Sometimes, the grass really is greener.

 

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HM Government e-petitions

(Note to readers: This site is not in any way affiliated with the UK Government or its e-petitions website. If the e-petitions website is experiencing technical problems, please do not email this blog as there is nothing the blog administrator can do about that. If you wish to complain to someone about problems with the e-petitions website, please contact Directgov.)

(Note for Canadian readers: only two legislatures in Canada – the Quebec National Assembly and the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories – currently accept e-petitions. For all of the others, if you want to petition the federal or a provincial government, you have to do it the old-fashioned way and collect signatures on paper. Please see my post on How to petition Canadian legislatures for more information.)

On 29 July 2011, House of Commons leader Sir George Young announced the launch of Parliament’s new e-petitions website.

This replaces the Number 10 e-petitions site set up by former Prime Minister Tony Blair. When the Coalition Government was formed last May, the Number 10 e-petitions site was mothballed, pending a review. In late December of last year, Young announced that a new e-petitions site was pending in the new year.

What is different about the new e-petitions is that if petition garners more than 100,000 signatures, notice will be sent to the Backbench Business Committee informing them of this fact, and allowing them to consider scheduling a debate on the subject matter raised by the petition. It will be up to the Committee to decide if the subject matter of the petition merits being brought forward for debate in the House. It is important to note, however, that debate is not guaranteed to occur, and even if it does, it may be in Westminster Hall rather than the main chamber of the House of Commons. As well, a debate on an issue raised in a petition does not mean that there will be a vote after the debate that will change the law affected. Most importantly of all, while much will be made of the 100,000 signature mark, there is no restriction on the number of signatures required for the Backbench Business Committee to consider scheduling a debate based on petition. In other words, garnering 100,000 signatures will not guarantee a debate, and garnering fewer than 100,000 does not exclude the possibility of a debate.

An obvious criticism of this plan is that this will open the door to all sorts of frivolous petitions. Many Canadians may recall the “Stockwell Day petition” incident. For non-Canadians and Canadians too young to remember this, the former Canadian Alliance Party had a manifesto policy wherein any petition signed by 3% of eligible voters (roughly 350,000 people) would automatically trigger a referendum on that issue. A Canadian satirist, Rick Mercer, immediately launched a petition to get then Canadian Alliance Party leader Stockwell Day to change his name to “Doris Day” after the Hollywood legend. The petition easily surpassed the required number of signatures that very night.

The new e-petitions initiative hopes to avoid potential abuse by setting forth clear Terms and Conditions, including a section on “offensive, joke or nonsense” e-petitions which will be rejected if they include:

  • Language that may cause offence, is provocative or extreme in its views
  • Wording that is impossible to understand
  • Statements that amount to advertisements
  • Joke or nonsense content

Even then, obtaining over 100,000 signatures does not guarantee that a petition will be debated in the House. Such petitions will be referred to the Backbench Business Committee which will determine if the petition is worth being debated in the House.

I have previously written about petitions, mostly from a Canadian perspective, and noted that for the most part, petitions rarely lead to any concrete government action. In the UK, the procedure for dealing with the traditional paper petitions presented in Parliament is as follows. After the petition is presented:

a copy of the petition is sent to the appropriate government department, for example, a petition against smoking would be sent to the Department of Health. Government departments are expected to offer observations on all substantive petitions, these are also printed in Hansard.

Please note that the Government departments “are expected” to offer observations on all substantive petitions – they aren’t obligated to do so. In the UK, as in Canada, the majority of the time, the only response received by petitioners was a statement from a department official. If this new e-petitions does actually lead to the occasional petition-driven debate in the House of Commons, that in itself will be somewhat of an improvement.

I must note that one thing I have found rather curious when reading through the Terms and Conditions for the e-petitions is the disclaimer at the very bottom:

The e-petitions system is not intended to replace the current paper based system of public petitions in the House of Commons.

For more information about the paper based Parliamentary Petitions, you can visit the UK Parliament website.

Yet, if one follows that link (which takes you to the petitions page I’ve linked to above), there is no indication that a paper-based petition which receives over 100,000 signatures will be referred to the the Backbench Business Committee for consideration for debate in the House. Indeed, I have found no mention anywhere if this new policy will be extended to paper petitions as well. It strikes me as a bit strange if only e-petitions were deserving of such consideration. It will be much easier for an e-petition to get the required 100,000+ signatures, so if a paper petition manages that feat, surely that too would merit possible debate in the House of Commons? Perhaps the overall goal here is to gradually do away with paper petitions completely.

There are already concerted efforts afoot by certain groups to get the required number of signatures on some rather controversial topics, such as capital punishment. Another topic that is bound to be part of another such campaign will be a call for referendum on the UK’s continued membership in the EU. It should also be noted that the 100,000+ signatures requirement might be amended in the future:

However, Sir George said: “Of course, parliamentary time is not unlimited and we want the best e-petitions to be given airtime – so we will monitor the site closely over the coming months to assess whether the 100,000 figure is an appropriate target.”

This could be interpreted as meaning that if the Government feels too many petitions on issues it does not like come forward, it might increase the required number of signatures in order to make it more difficult for certain issues to receive the needed endorsement.

Still, it is an interesting initiative and one that I will be monitoring closely.

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PMQs – The Game

For political geeks, summer is tedious. The Canadian House of Commons adjourned for the summer recess back in June, and they won’t be back until 19 September. Luckily, we still had the UK House of Commons sitting into July, but alas, they too adjourned on 20 July. UK MPs will be taking a shorter break than their Canadian counterparts – they’ll be returning to work on 5 September.

However, this still leaves us with six weeks of political void. No debates. No bills to ponder. No Oral Questions to entertain us. It’s enough to make one consider watching archived committee hearings of the Communities and Local Government Committee as they conducted an inquiry into the audit and inspection of local authorities.

Fear not, my political geek friends – someone has come to our rescue. It is with great delight that I share with you Prime Minister’s Questions – The Game.

This was brought to my attention curtesy of the kind souls at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. John Walker provided this entertaining review of the game, and at the end, there is the link to download the zip file. The game is free, simple to install and play, and quite endearing. It features real sound clips of UK House of Commons Speaker John Bercow calling everyone to order. You play as Prime Minister David Cameron, deciding how best to reply to the questions put to you by Opposition Leader Ed Miliband. Occasionally, you might also get a question from a backbencher. As Walker notes in his review:

It’s rather clearly a satire on the complete pantomime of PMQ, and its inherent pointlessness since the purpose of the event is for no one to actually answer anyone’s questions at any point. So it is for each question from Ed Milliband, you as David Cameron are required to pick the answer from a list that best sort-of-fits the question asked. None of which actually answer it, of course. Should you not have a question to match you can always try a special move, such as blaming it all on the previous Labour government.

A matching answer is one that in some way loosely references the question without answering it, while ideally insulting the opposition or boasting of your own party’s superiority.

The game’s developer, Mark Richards states in the comments section that:

There is one unique question-answer routine you can do in the game that causes a little upset and Mr. Bercow has to tell them all: “The public don’t like it. And neither do I.”

Anyone who follows UK politics regularly knows that this has become Speaker Bercow’s catchphrase.

I have played through the game a few times now, but haven’t managed to cause said upset. So for all of you out there suffering from PMQ/Oral Questions/Parliamentary Politics withdrawal during the ho-hum days of summer, you now have something to help you survive the next few weeks.

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Democratic legitimacy vs parliamentary efficiency

Former Prime Minister John Major’s recent speech to the Ditchley Foundation attracted media attention because of his proposals for Scotland, which I’ve written about here.

However, Major also put forward some very interesting proposals for reforming how Parliament works. This got brief mention in the press – primarily his idea of appointing to the House of Commons some MPs who were experts in certain fields. While an interesting and rather controversial proposal, without having the actual text of Major’s speech before me, I was hesitant to comment on what he had said.

Major’s speech is now available on the Ditchley Foundation’s website, and it turns out Major had more in mind than simply appointing some MPs. Major is concerned with Parliament’s efficiency and effectiveness, which he believes can’t be improved via normal democratic means – or may even be undermined by increasing democracy by electing Lords. Part of the problem, Major believes, is that there aren’t enough MPs who are experts in key areas such as science, financial regulations, etc., and because of this, Parliament can’t legislate as effectively as it should. Major proposes widening the pool of talent prepared to enter politics by removing certain disincentives such as paying MPs a fixed and generous salary, but doing away with living allowances. But that is simply the tip of the iceberg:

We need, also, to attract to the Commons men and women at the top of their profession.  It is one of the oddities of democracy that fundamental policy choices are made by men and women who, apart from the legitimacy of election and a native intellect, have no qualifications to make them.

How many MPs can bring direct knowledge to how banks should be regulated?  Or how hedge funds work?  Or are familiar with e-money?  Or nuclear energy?  Or the social and medical implications of embryology?

We would benefit from our legislators having more practical knowledge.

Of course we can hire specialist advisers, but that can never be as effective as influential, knowledgeable voices speaking with expertise in the Chamber, in the Committees, in the tea rooms, in Party meetings.

There is no solution to this dilemma that doesn’t cut across our traditions, and so I would do just that.  Why not elect fewer Members of Parliament and appoint, on a basis pro rata to votes cast in the General Election, a similar number of Members without constituencies?

I know the familiar arguments against this – a few years ago I would have used them myself forcibly – but, on reflection, I now believe enhancement of the talent pool is so vital it justifies the changes.

If the Commons baulks at a further reduction in its Members then, as Douglas Hurd and I have argued before, let us appoint unelected Ministers, answerable to Parliament, but without being Members of it.  Or, of course, let us do both.  Douglas and I have argued also for fewer Ministers and fewer PPSs:  we have far too many of each:  they could be severely cut back.

One of the issues Major has identified is the difficulty of attracting people from a wide range of professional backgrounds into politics. I haven’t found data for the 2010 general election, but of the 650 MPs elected in the 2005 general election, 39% listed their occupation as “Professions”, which includes barristers, solicitors, doctors, civil servants/local government, and teachers (both professors and school). Nineteen percent listed their background as “Business” and 35% fell under the “Miscellaneous” category, which includes white collar jobs, politicians/political organisers, publishers and journalists. Only 6% were manual workers. While Major raises an important point, is appointing, rather than electing, MPs the solution?

Major’s proposal to “elect fewer Members of Parliament and appoint, on a basis pro rata to votes cast in the General Election, a similar number of Members without constituencies” might well appall on first consideration, but this isn’t really any different from MPs appointed from lists under some forms of PR. The difference here is that those appointed wouldn’t just be party hacks, but chosen for their professional expertise in specific fields. While I personally don’t like the idea of party lists, I might be more amenable to the idea of MPs appointed because of expertise rather than party partisanship.

Major’s alternative to the above proposal is to do away with the current form of cabinet government, wherein ministers are MPs chosen by the Prime Minister to serve in cabinet. Instead, Major is proposing something similar to the US cabinet, which is composed of unelected persons chosen by the President for their expertise in key areas. While perhaps less objectionable to some than the thought of appointed MPs, this would perhaps be a less ideal solution since cabinet ministers don’t normally serve on committees, and since they wouldn’t be elected MPs, they wouldn’t be in the House participating in debates. This option, to me, isn’t any different than that of appointing specialist advisors, which Major dismisses because that could “never be as effective as influential, knowledgeable voices speaking with expertise in the Chamber, in the Committees, in the tea rooms, in Party meetings.”

Major has a few thoughts on reform of the House of Lords as well. He does agree that it needs reforming; he completely disagrees that electing Lords is the way to go:

The case for election is democratic legitimacy.  However, if we want an efficient legislature, the case against is far more compelling.

An elected Upper House would cease to be a revising Chamber and would demand more powers that could only come from the Commons.  There would be confusion and conflict.  We should be reducing the number of politicians and adding to their quality.  An elected Lords would add more politicians and reduce their quality.  That is a bad bargain.

Does anyone imagine that Chiefs of the General Staff, Cabinet or Permanent Secretaries, Captains of Industry, Chancellors of Universities, Professors of Medicine would stand for election?

Of course they wouldn’t, and elected replacements could never bring such a depth of knowledge to the scrutiny of legislation.  If the answer is more elected politicians, we are asking the wrong question.

Again we see that Major is drawing a line between democratic legitimacy and parliamentary efficiency. He posits that the argument for an elected Lords is that this would increase their democratic legitimacy, but that this would be at the expense of parliamentary efficiency, which is his main argument against an elected upper Chamber. An elected Lords would demand more powers for itself, moving beyond its current role of revising Chamber; there would be confusion and conflict between it and the Commons; and more importantly, by electing Lords, we’d be reducing their quality.

This relates back to the problem of attracting persons from more diverse backgrounds and occupations to stand for election. Very few are interested in giving up solid careers for the ups and downs of politics. This doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be interested in serving in some capacity, however, such as being appointed to the House of Lords. Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows that I do not think that electing Lords (or Canadian Senators) is necessary or even desirable, and so on this point, I agree with Major.

There have been calls by some to replace juries with panels of experts during complex court cases. The argument is that a “jury of one’s peers” simply cannot grasp the increasingly complex scientific and technical evidence presented during trials, both in high-profile criminal cases and in complex civil litigation in antitrust, securities, intellectual property, and product liability cases. It strikes me that Major is arguing the same thing with regards to Parliament, that elected MPs simply don’t have the knowledge, education and professional background to effectively make and pass laws dealing with increasingly complex scientific and technical issues. Because of this, he thinks it is important that there be some way to compensate for this gap, and that would be by appointing persons with the right expertise to play some role in the parliamentary process. The most obvious one would be to not elect peers, since this is already current practice and would be perhaps less objectionable than to trying to introduce the concept of appointed MPs or an unelected cabinet.

It is a pity that the media focused primarily on Major’s ideas about Scotland, because his proposals discussed here warranted more media attention than they received.

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Parlour games?

The Guardian’s Nicholas Watt recently wrote that the ongoing phone-hacking scandal and Prime Minister David Cameron’s closeness to central players in the Murdoch empire (e.g. Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson) leaves him vulnerable to having Nick Clegg “pull the plug” not on the coalition, but on Cameron himself:

This is where the eyes of Lib Dems really light up. If damaging details emerge Clegg could go to Cameron and say that his party is deeply committed to the coalition but it can no longer serve under him as prime minister. At this point Cameron has to decide: does he sacrifice his career to save the coalition, paving the way for another Tory to take his place as prime minister, or does he soldier on as leader of a deeply unstable minority administration?

Lib Dems are enjoying the prospect of bringing down Cameron. It would allow them to go into the next election saying they had saved two cherished British institutions – the NHS and the office of the prime minister.

In fairness, Watt admits that this is “the remotest of remote prospects”, “all very far-fetched and belongs in the world of a fantasy parlour game”. I would tend to agree with that, and wonder why Watt bothered to posit the possibility of this occurring.

There is no doubt that Cameron has been weakened by this scandal, and things could possibly get worse for him, as Watt notes. However, I wonder if the Liberal Democrats really would have anything to gain by forcing Cameron to resign.

The coalition government came about largely because of Cameron. There were, and are, a fair number of both Tory MPs and Tory supporters who would have preferred that the Conservatives govern on their own as a minority government, and believe that the party has made too many compromises in order to satisfy the Liberal Democrats. There are also a fair number of Conservative party supporters who have never really liked David Cameron, and who don’t think he’s sufficiently right-wing, if the comment sections on traditionally pro-Conservative media sites such as the Telegraph, ConservativeHome and the Spectator are anything to go by.

If the Lib Dems did present Cameron with an ultimatum such as the one Watt puts forward, and Cameron did decide to step down, I don’t know who might emerge as the new party leader. Someone the Lib Dems could still work with, such as George Osborne? Or someone far more “traditionally conservative” such as David Davis? There is no guarantee that the new leader would be as willing to continue with a coalition, and the Liberal Democrats could find themselves in an even more difficult situation.

The Liberal Democrats are still struggling in the polls. If they attempted a coup against Cameron, it seems to me that regardless the outcome, it would result in a general election. If, when presented with such an ultimatum, Cameron refused to resign, the Lib Dems would have to pull out of the coalition. A Conservative minority government could then easily be defeated in a confidence vote, resulting in an election that would most likely be won by Labour and that would also most likely see the Lib Dems decimated. If Cameron did agree to step down, and was replaced by someone far more traditionally Tory, it might become impossible for the Lib Dems to continue in the coalition, which would force them to pull out, which then would most likely lead to an election, or the new leader might decide to call an election to seek a new mandate. Either way, this would spell major trouble for the Liberal Democrats.

Watt may be right when he states that:

But nobody should forget that relations between Cameron and Clegg changed forever when the prime minister – in the eyes of his deputy – broke his words to allow the No campaign in the AV campaign to turn on him.

Clegg is not out for revenge. But any warmth he felt towards Cameron evaporated for good in the spring.

This does not, however, mean that the two cannot continue to work together. And I am not entirely convinced that the relationship between Clegg and Cameron has soured that much. The Constitution Unit’s interim report on the inner workings of the coalition, released in June of this year, indicates that the two continue to work well together. As stated in the press release:

Despite the political strains which have affected the coalition in recent months, the Constitution Unit’s research on how the coalition works shows that it has functioned very well in its first year. Viewed from inside, the ructions which have dominated the headlines have not destroyed the coalition’s effectiveness.

I agree with Watt that the prospect of this possible power play against Cameron by Clegg is extremely remote. I can’t see that there would be much, if anything, for the Lib Dems to gain from such a move. Cameron, as far as I can tell, remains conmitted to the idea of coalition government; many in his party, including many MPs, less so. And I don’t think such a plot is in the making, given that even more left-wing members of the Lib Dems are refraining from directly attacking Cameron. If anything, a weakened Cameron might well strengthen the hand of the Lib Dems within the coalition; ousting him would more likely than not leave the Lib Dems in a more vulnerable position.

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A Major proposal

(Update 18/07/2011: the full text of Major’s speech is available on the Ditchley Foundation’s website.)

Recently, former UK Prime Minister, John Major, delivered a speech to the transatlantic Ditchley Foundation in which he discussed the “folly” of Scottish independence.

Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find the full text of Major’s speech anywhere, but according to various media accounts, he proposed the following:

The present quasi-federalist settlement with Scotland is unsustainable.

Each year of devolution has moved Scotland further from England. Scottish ambition is fraying English tolerance. This is a tie that will snap – unless the issue is resolved.

The Union between England and Scotland cannot be maintained by constant aggravation in Scotland and appeasement in London. I believe it is time to confront the argument head on.

Why not devolve all responsibilities except foreign policy, defence and management of the economy? Why not let Scotland have wider tax-raising powers to pay for their policies and, in return, abolish the present block grant settlement, reduce Scottish representation in the Commons, and cut the legislative burden at Westminster?

This idea put forward by Major – that of giving Scotland full responsibility for everything except foreign policy, defense and management of the economy (but wider tax-raising powers) in exchange for abolishing the block grant settlement and fewer seats in the House of Commons – is interesting, at least for me as a Canadian. I couldn’t help but wonder if Quebec would accept a similar sort of arrangement.

From what I understand, the block settlement grant is something akin to the Canadian system of equalization payments. At the moment, most of the budget of the Scottish Parliament comes from a block grant from the UK Parliament. The level of the budget is determined by the Barnett formula. The Scottish Parliament has limited powers to vary the basic rate of income tax (up or down by three pence in the pound). This power has not been used to date.

In 2009, the Calman Commission, set up a few ears earlier to review the devolution settlement, including the financial powers of the Scottish Parliament, made a number of recommendations to give the Scottish Parliament a greater role in raising its own revenue. In particular, the Commission recommended that the Scottish Parliament be given greater powers over income tax and some other taxes and that the block grant be reduced. In the view of the Commission, this would increase the financial accountability of the Scottish Parliament. Under its proposals, the Scottish government would raise around 35% of its revenue, compared with around 14% under the current arrangements.

As stated above, the block settlement grant is determined using something called the Barnett formula. I won’t attempt to explain that here – anyone truly interested can find a number of papers on the matter online. However, to quote Wikipedia:

Simply put, any increase (or decrease) each year in public expenditure in England on matters devolved to one or more of the other countries of the UK leads to an increase to these other countries’ areas, in proportion to their relative population at that time. Expenditure is allocated en bloc, not per service (health, transport, etc.), allowing to each devolved administration the opportunity to allocate these funds as it believes appropriate.

This does sound rather like Canada’s system of equalization payments for the provinces. The equalization program had become, in the minds of many critics, an overly-complex mishmash of special deals and formulae that benefited some more than others and pleased no one. From 1982 to 2004, in general terms, the program used a complex but consistent formula of an equalization standard that was based on the average of the fiscal capacities of five provinces (British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec), using 33 different tax bases (including 100% of natural resource revenue). Budget 2007 (tabled in the House of Commons on 19 March 2007) included a new equalization program that is principle-based and formula-driven.

The equalization standard in the new program reflects the recommendation in Achieving a National Purpose: Putting Equalization Back on Track (the O’Brien report) and is based on the fiscal capacity of all 10 provinces. The overall program cost will be determined by the application of a complex formula, which is detailed in the Budget Implementation Act. Annual volatility associated with a 10-province standard will be addressed through the use of a weighted three-year moving average calculation for payments. The measurement of provincial fiscal capacity is simplified based on the recommendation of the O’Brien report. Instead of 33 tax bases, provincial fiscal capacity will be measured using 5 tax bases — personal income tax, business income tax, consumption tax, property tax and natural resource revenues. The new program also adopts the O’Brien report’s recommendation to exclude 50 per cent of provincial natural resource revenues, and provides provinces with the benefit of full exclusion without reducing payments to any province. The use of actual revenues also permits an important program simplification, as the 14 separate bases used previously can be consolidated into a single natural resource revenue base.

Of the provinces receiving equalization payments, Quebec receives the largest payment, CAN $7.8 billion for 2011-2012. It is less dependent on federal transfers than is Scotland on the block grant, however. Federal transfers to Quebec in total represent 23% of the province’s revenues (2011-2012 budget figures).

I should note here that the provinces – all of them – also receive money from the federal government via the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) and the Canada Social Transfer (CST). The Canada Health Transfer (CHT) is the Canadian government’s transfer payment program in support of the health systems of the provinces and territories of Canada. The CST is a federal block transfer to provinces and territories in support of post-secondary education, social assistance and social services, and early childhood development and early learning and childcare. However, it should be noted that the federal government has no way to enforce how a province allocates these funds. While they are targetted for the aforementioned programs, a province can spend the money any way it chooses.

All that to say that Quebec, like Scotland, receives an important chunk of its funding from the national government. However, Quebec, unlike Scotland, can set its own provincial taxation rates for personal income tax, corporate income tax as well as sales taxes and other various fees. What I wonder is if the federal government agreed to relinquish its share of federal income and corporate taxes raised in Quebec, as well as the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the province, and give Quebec full control over everything except foreign policy, defense, and overall management of the economy (setting interest rates, monetary policy, that sort of thing), would Quebec be willing to agreed to reduced representation in the Canadian House of Commons? More importantly, would this be enough to curb or quell the independence movement in the province?

It’s very difficult to say (obviously). On the one hand, Quebec nationalists have long called for more control over various programs such as immigration, and resent federal attempts to set targets or guidelines in areas such as healthcare (note to non-Canadian readers – healthcare in Canada is a provincial responsiblity, but is governed by the Canada Health Act, which is a federal statute which allows the federal government to intervene in some areas of healthcare policy in order to ensure that services are largely equitable across the country). The argument has been made in the past by some sovereigntists that even if Quebec did become independent, it would still retain use of the Canadian dollar and Quebecers would still be entitled to use Canadian passports, for example. Certainly an arrangement such as the one proposed for Scotland and the UK by John Major would make this a reality for Quebec, minus the full independence part of the equation.

But therein lies the problem. For those in Quebec who do want full independence for the province, even such a far-ranging agreement wouldn’t be enough. They’d want Quebec to have full control over its foreign policy, they’d want Quebec to be recognized at the UN and other international bodies, etc. And even among “soft” nationalists, I don’t know how many would really want to see their influence in Ottawa decrease substantially. Quebec currently has 75 seats out of the 308 in the Canadian House of Commons – roughly a quarter of the seats, which is fairly proportional to Quebec’s share of the Canadian population (23%). This is similar to Scotland, which has 59 seats – 9% – in the UK House of Commons, and represents 8% of the UK population.

Major doesn’t specify in his talk how many seats he thinks Scotland should be reduced to under such an arrangement; I would have to think that the number of seats would have to be such that they would have a much reduced influence on possible election outcomes. By that I mean, for the past 20 years or so, Labour had consistently won the most seats in Scotland (currently 41 of 59), and while it takes only one seat to make the difference between majority and minority government under FPTP, I would think that under the sort of arrangement proposed by Major, Scotland would see its number of seats at Westminster at the very least halved. Quebec would have to agree to something similar – losing at least half of its current 75 seats in the House. Would it agree to this in exchange for total control over almost everything else?

On the whole, Major’s proposal is an interesting one, certainly worthy of further debate. James Forsyth at the Spectator suggested that Major might have been floating this idea on behalf of Prime Minister David Cameron. The SNP has reacted positively to Major’s proposal. Would the next step then be a proper federal system giving England its own parliament?

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More on open primaries

In a previous post proposing ways to increase the role and power of backbench MPs in Ottawa, I suggested that parties use open primaries to select their candidates in each constituency. By this I meant letting all registered voters in the riding vote for which candidate they prefer, rather than limit the vote to members of the party only, which is current practice. I wrote:

When candidate selection is top-down, parliamentarians tend to reflect the values of whoever happened to be the party leader when they began their careers. It means parties are slow to sense, let alone respond to, changes in the national mood. I think we forget that once elected, an MP is to represent all of their constituents, not simply those who voted for him or her. If they owe not simply their election, but their selection as party candidate to the electorate at large, it will be increasingly difficult for them to “forget” about the voters once on Parliament Hill.

Recently, Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson has proposed that Canada’s Liberal Party consider implementing an open primary system to choose its next leader. Ibbitson writes:

Right now, the Liberal leader is directly chosen by party members. But it costs money to join and who would want to? People who belong to political parties aren’t entirely normal.

In the United States, you have to register to vote. Everyone who registers as a Democrat or a Republican has a say in that party’s leadership contest through the primaries and caucuses.

This weakens the party elite because outsiders such as Barack Obama (or Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter) can do an end run around the establishment by appealing directly to voters. Because the weaker a party gets, the more powerful its few surviving poobahs become; a strong party will have a broad base and a weak elite, the very opposite of today’s Liberal Party.

Renewal could come for the Liberals if a leadership contest galvanized hundreds of thousands of people to, say, take out a free one-day party membership so they could vote in the New Brunswick primary, which everyone would be watching because the Northern Ontario primary the week before had vaulted an unknown but charismatic minority candidate into the front ranks of the contest.

Yes, fundraising would be an issue, given the campaign-contribution limits; yes, the Conservatives might try to fix the contest (although that’s really not very likely). But think of the mailing list!

Or the Liberals could carry on with an old leader, a plethora of commissions and grasstops instead of grassroots. In which case, their party will die.

As I stated in my earlier post, and as Ibbitson writes here, primaries are common in the US, and perhaps partially explain why US political parties are such weak entities when compared to political parties in Westminster style parliamentary systems. Party discipline is very important in the Westminster parliamentary model of government because it is governments, not individual Members, who are held accountable. We don’t directly elect our head of government, or even the government – we elect a Parliament, and it is that elected Parliament which determines which party or group of parties will form the government, and that determines which party leader will end up being Prime Minister.

However, primaries could still work in countries such as the UK and Canada. They wouldn’t be as open as they are in the US, where the party executive has no real say in who presents themselves as a candidate for that party in a primary. Persons who wanted to put themselves forward as a candidate for a certain party would still have to be a member of that party, and ultimately, the party executive could veto any potential candidate they weren’t entirely comfortable with. However, once a number of candidates had come forward, the selection process would be opened up to all registered voters in the constituency (for a local candidate) or nationally, as Ibbitson proposes for a party leadership race.

The main concern for many is what Ibbitson casually dismisses in his penultimate paragraph, that other parties might try to fix the contest. I myself had wondered about that in the US system – surely if one is a die-hard Democrat, you would be tempted to vote for the weakest of the Republican candidates in an open primary so as to better the odds of the Democratic candidate winning in the election. And perhaps some party diehards would vote that way – if they even bothered to vote in a primary to choose a candidate for another party. But as Ibbitson writes, that’s not very likely.

Ultimately, as a voter, my main desire would be to have the best person representing me. In marginal ridings – meaning ridings that are hotly contested by two or more parties, I can’t guarantee that the party I prefer will win. Or it could be that the party I prefer definitely won’t win, and so in all likelihood, my representative will be someone from one of the other parties. Faced with this reality, then yes, I would want to ensure that each one of those parties ends up with the best candidate possible.

Parties could easily avoid a scenario wherein they might find themselves with a weak candidate selected by simply working harder to attract strong candidates. I’ve previously written about the problem of placeholder candidates – where a party will quite literally choose any warm body to be their token name on the ballot in ridings they normally have little chance of winning. There is also the problem of “safe” ridings, ridings which are almost always won by one party. In those ridings as well, parties will often run candidates who are favourites of the party executive or leadership, but who might not be particularly well-liked by constituents – including supporters of that party. Attempts to challenge that candidate’s nomination will often be undermined by the party executive. If there were open primaries in place, parties could no longer afford to indulge in either of these practices.

Ibbitson writes that “People who belong to political parties aren’t entirely normal.” This might strike keen supporters of political parties as an unfair assessment, but it is true that being a registered, card-holding member of a political party, at least in Canada, is not the norm. Even most people who are quite keenly interested in politics are not members of political parties (although they might be strong supporters of a certain party). I don’t have any current statistics, but in a detailed report on parliamentary reform (PDF) written in 2008, Thomas Axworthy notes:

Less than one Canadian in ten did anything to help a candidate, such as attending a rally or putting a sticker on their car during the Federal  Election  in  2000. Of  the eight to ten per cent of Canadians who were engaged more robustly in election campaigns, only about 1-2% per cent were consistently active members of a party, placing Canada at the bottom of the list of Western democracies. This tiny  minority of active party members is comparable to the United Kingdom, where two to three per cent of voters are active partisans. (p. 20)

Is it right to leave party candidate selection and party leadership selection in the hands of such a small group of people, who, when push comes to shove, are probably more concerned with what they think is best for their party, not the country, when they decide who their candidates and party leader should be?

(Update 24/08/2011: John Ibbitson has advocated open primaries for the NDP as well in this column. See also this post on the problem of declining party membership.)

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