Introducing Democracy to Britain

We Should Have An Elected Second Chamber

The House of Lords is there to represent the views of people who are already over represented. We still have hereditary peers, who are there purely by accident of birth. The Bishops of the Church of England each get a seat, making us the only country in the world, with a theocratic element to government, other than Iran. Party donors get a seat. It is said that a £3 million donation to the Conservative Party will guarantee you a seat. The justification for the chamber is that these people bring experience to parliament. However, Charlotte Owen was appointed to the chamber at the age of 30 and in the official register, under “Experience”, it states “There is no experience information to show.”. Overall, there is plenty of experience of being rich and of being born rich, of having friends in high places and going to private schools. There are lots of Lords with experience of being bankers, but very few nurses. There are lots of Lords with experience of being landlords, but far less with experience of living in cheap rented accommodation. There are some worthy people in the chamber, people who have done great charity work and had worthy careers, but they are very much the exception.
The decision about who is appointed is down to the prime minister and the monarch, taking guidance from The House of Lords Appointments Commission, but if the PM doesn’t agree with them, he just ignores them as Boris did with Lord Cruddas. Boris also ignored the view of the security services, when he appointed Lord Lebedev of Siberia, who had to have his title agreed by Putin. The system allows the PM to reward people for whatever they want. Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Frank Field (all previously Labour MP) were given seats, as a reward for campaigning against Corbyn and their own party and helping Boris win the 2019 election.
Many people are concerned about reform of the House of Lords, because we’ve seen it act as a check on the worst excesses of the government and don’t want to jeopardise that. It would however, be a much better check on the government if it was democratically elected and therefore had legitimacy. When we think about democracy in this country, it is all too easy to think of the democratic element of our system of government and assume that more democracy would look like more of that. The fact is that the House of Commons is a poor example of democracy and is almost entirely under the control of the prime minister. An elected second chamber doesn’t need to and shouldn’t follow this pattern.

Selling or Buying Parliamentary Access and Powers Should Be a Criminal Offence

When an MP makes a decision, their only influence should be what best serves their constituents and the wider population. Any attempt to affect an MPs actions in parliament, through threats or bribes should be a criminal offence. It should also be a criminal offence for the MP to accept a bribe. At present, when an MP breaks paid advocacy rules, in other words sells their influence as an MP, they appear before a parliamentary committee. In exceptional circumstances, they may be suspended from the commons. The suspension may trigger a recall, meaning that a by-election is called. This is completely out of step with the severity of the offence. If you sell what democracy we have, you should be punished with the full force of the criminal law. Fraud has a maximum sentence of 10 years. What fraud could possibly be worse than buying or selling access to government? This would also avoid the situation where Owen Paterson complained that his investigation did not follow the rules of “natural justice”. By dealing with such matters in the criminal courts, the normal rules of justice would apply. Criminalising such acts would also deter people from approaching MPs to buy access. At present, if an individual or company, approaches MPs to buy parliamentary or government access, an honest MPs would decline and state that it would be against parliamentary rules. If it was a criminal offence, an honest MP would call the police and have them arrested.

The current system of party whips pressing MPs to vote in a particular way, by offering them government or party positions and blackmailing them, based on information about their private lives, is completely undemocratic. The debacle where MPs vote to pour sewage into the rivers, when told to by the whips, then vote to stop pouring so much in, because the whips change their position, is not about serving the electorate.

MPs Should Not Have Second Jobs

The house of commons is based on the concept of “gentlemen” taking time out from their financial interests to run the country. Until 1911, MPs didn’t receive salaries at all. This amateur approach to politics suited the establishment, because it was only wealthy people who could afford to be MPs, ensuring that parliament was run in the interests of the rich. We still have a snobbery about career politicians, as if it’s better for someone who is busy looking after their own interests to be an MP, than someone who has devoted their life to making the world a better place. There is an argument that real world experience is useful in understanding the experience of their constituents, but the current system (like the House of Lords) means that the real world experiences of bankers, are far better understood by MPs than the real world experiences of nurses or shop workers. Due to the input of IPSA, which is the most generous pay body in the country, MPs earn £86K annually without taking on a ministerial position. If someone can’t live on more than three times the average wage, plus a generous expenses package, it’s hard to argue that they are in touch with the experiences of their constituents. You can argue that £86K won’t attract the best candidates, but you can also argue that we don’t want MPs that are just attracted by the money. There are plenty of good and capable people who would love the opportunity to help the country improve, who don’t require big salaries and second jobs.

Political Donations Should Come from the Local Electorate and be Capped at £5,000

Rich people and corporations pay for access to government and to affect government policy. This means that government’s top priority is not looking after the general public, but rather looking after their backers. MPs are supposed to represent their constituents, so it makes sense to only allow donations to political parties through constituents. I’ve plucked the figure of £5,000 out of the air, but it seems like a reasonable level of funding that would be at the top end of what an average person on an average wage could give if they were really committed to funding a party. This would reduce the level of political funding dramatically, but as it would do so across the board, it would be fair. Political campaigns would rely much more heavily on normal people giving up their time to canvas the electorate. MPs would have to put much more effort into gaining grass-roots support.

We Should Adopt Proportional Representation

In Europe, the “first past the post” voting system is only used by two countries, the UK and Belarus. Like Britain, Belarus has a democratic deficit. It’s the system that you’d pick if you wanted a parliament which could be controlled by the establishment. It creates a two party system, where voting for a smaller party, which is more closely aligned to your beliefs, is completely pointless. This concentrates power in the leadership of the two parties. Proportional representation would likely bring us more coalition governments. This would make it more difficult for any one party to push its manifesto and would require cooperation between parties. As such, it would prevent the big swings of policy following general elections. There are a lot of different systems which can be classed as proportional representation. Any one of them would be better than our current system.

The Monarch Should Be Apolitical

This is a hard concept to sell to the Great British public, because they have generally been gaslit into believing that the monarch is apolitical. The truth is that the monarch not only has political powers, but makes regular use of them. As mentioned earlier, there is the weekly meeting between the monarch and the prime minister. We don’t know exactly what goes on in these meetings, because we’re not allowed to. We do know that the late queen’s private secretary said that the queen used them to promote her view of how the country should be run. We also know that the late queen used the queen’s [now king’s] consent rules to alter legislation. We also know that Charles, as Prince of Wales, used his equivalent powers as Duchy of Cornwall, enthusiastically and often. They have used these powers on all sorts of matters, such as, watering down financial transparency laws and changing laws related to landlord, tenant relations. The only real justification for these meetings is that the monarch represents the country and has to keep abreast of certain sensitive matters, so as not to accidentally say the wrong thing. This function could quite adequately be achieved by a weekly briefing to the monarch by a civil servant.

The rest of the monarch’s interactions with government are generally justified because people enjoy the pageantry. This is understandable when it comes to ceremonies like the state opening of parliament. However, I personally think that this creates an image of parliament as being other-worldly and unrelatable to the common person. This separates government from the people, which is unhelpful when encouraging people to feel ownership of government. When it comes to the monarch’s involvement the Privy Council, which is not on view to the government, there really is no excuse for the monarch to be anywhere near the workings of government.