The Parliament 2005-2010 will not be fondly remembered by many. The expenses scandal has undermined popular confidence in our MPs’ honesty as well as their connection to the lives of everyday people. As a record number of MPs leave the House of Commons, much of the nation will be hoping they take their duck houses, moats, pornography and mortgages with them and never come back.
With a large new intake of MPs, this is a good moment for reform. It’s not just about reforming expenses, to bring transparency and break out of the habits of being within the letter of the rules but not within the realms of reasonableness. And it’s not just about cracking down on more recent examples of MPs tasking cash they shouldn’t. We should be taking the opportunity to think much more fundamentally about what we want our MPs to be and do.
Criticisms of a growing political class, funded by taxpayer cash and remote from the people who elect them, have been combined with outrage over expenses. Yet there is a risk that reforms made in response to the latter actually make the disconnection between the electorate and the elected worse, if we reach for heavy-handed regulation which pushes MPs further towards being “over-promoted social workers”.
We need to ask what we want our MPs to be – professionals who are reliant on their whips and party machines for favour, or elected representatives with more independence both from the taxpayer and the Executive. There are plenty of good ideas for improving the functioning of our democracy – elected select committee chairmen, recall ballots, open primaries and the like – but all of these follow from our understanding of what an MP should be. That’s the debate we should be having, and on which Policy Exchange will shortly be publishing a report authored by Paul Goodman.
Robert McIlveen is a Research Fellow at Policy Exchange.
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People get the MPs, and political system, they vote for. And they hardly ever vote for independent politicians. Your average punter would probably say they want more independent members but then vote almost exclusively on the basis of national party. If I stood as Conservative PPC it would be remiss of me to then vote against its programme for Government.
A mixture of both is desirable. The ideal is for the UK to have two legislative houses, one which is strongly drawn on party lines, and a second which harnesses independent expertise. This idea should be very much kept in mind by anyone who wants to reform the Lords.