I hadn’t really clocked the significance of this, but the new Speaker will be elected by secret ballot.  One of the questions on the PH100 survey this week asked if we thought that Parliament could be improved in a number of ways, including via the use of secret ballots.

To coin a phrase – NO NO NO.  If this entire expenses fiasco has taught politicians anything, it surely must be that transparency and public scrutiny are the most effective ways to keep people honest.

As a party worker, going through MPs of other parties’ voting records was one of the most tedious jobs I had to do.  I’m not even sure it added to the political debate, and I’ve argued before that more free votes is one of the key ways to restore accountability to our elected representatives.

Using a secret ballot to elect the Speaker who will have to oversee a root and branch reform of MPs’ working practices does not seem to me to be a good place to start.  If David Cameron is serious when he uses this phrase about MPs’ expenses, I’d like to see him apply the same principles to the operation of the Houses of Parliament.

Related posts

• The Governor’s Eyebrow (1)
• Politics: change required (2)
• Not moving the goalposts (3)
• Living in the real world (0)
• Does he have the guts? (2)

Tags: Accountability, Elections, Responsibility

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 3:33 pm , written by Fiona Melville and is filed under Democracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.