Firstly, that a sensible discussion about the size and scope of the state must start from a clear understanding of what it does and how much we spend on it. And secondly, that only when people understand what things cost can they decide whether they are an essential or a nice to have.

It shouldn’t be difficult to find a list of what the government spends our money on. But it REALLY is. The first government site on google when you search for “uk government spending breakdown” is number 6 in the results. The top five are all a private undertaking. And the one from the government is from the ONS which is incredibly unintuitive and you have to know the technical jargon for what you’re looking for.

So here is another little idea. How about a really simple site from the Treasury, using the data which is already supposed to be published, detailing what each department spends, on what. Later, we could perhaps add why they spend it (which would take us into another of our ideas, a regular review of all spending with a view to reducing it by a targeted amount).

I recently heard some fascinating figures on aid spending (and this is very generalised, but makes my point). Apparently, most people think that we spend around 20 per cent of our total government expenditure on aid and development. It is not even projected to reach the 0.7 per cent agreed by the UN decades ago until 2013. Similarly, Peter Kellner of YouGov has written (using the BBC licence fee as an example) a great piece about placing figures in context.

As Stewart Pearson and Louise Mensch are both fond of saying, knowledge is indeed porridge.

It was like being a teenager again early this week, for all the wrong reasons – newspaper splashes like this. Depressing and pointless:

Tories at war over EU - Observer

Nick wrote extensively on the vote itself last week. But there are some wider points. Firstly, the motion which was put down was not government policy – so of course the government was going to impose a three-line whip on it. In fact, I think this was short-sighted of them – in opposition, there was much talk of more free and one line votes on non-binding, committee stage or backbench motions. But allowing one for the first time on this would have sent a message (wrongly interpreted) to those who put it down.

Secondly, what did the motion actually seek to achieve? It was entirely non- specific – what do they want to renegotiate? Going into an argument without knowing what you want out of it is not going to get you far. Related to this is a point I’ve made before – simply complaining about the EU and principles of sovereignty will not make voters see it your way. Being specific, identifying a problem that actually bothers people and then  linking it to the EU if that is actually the problem (as Douglas Carswell often does very effectively) is much more likely to work. But then again, that would require those demanding the vote to be specific – which they can’t be…

Because of my third point. They can’t be specific because no-one actuallyknows what they want to change. There are loads of mutterings about the Human Rights Act (not actually related to the European Union), or health and safety, or straight bananas or whatever. But so much of the time, these are spasms of grumpiness based on Daily Mail headlines, and not on fact. You need to prepare before you start making demands.

George on Wednesday made a point that hadn’t really articulated itself in my head before. In opposition, it’s very easy to rail simplistically against this or that. In government you have the chance to actually do something about it. But you need to be strategic. Beating the government on one vote (while it didn’t happen) wouldn’t have changed anything. There would still need to be all the preparation, investigation, drafting and strategising.

I confess that I find the whole EU debate deadly dull. But there are some principles I think we should apply to it. If we are serious about our free-market values, we should encourage a multi-speed Europe. By that, I mean that, beyond some fundamentals, if some countries want to sign up to some things but others don’t, then let them. For example, one area which is often mentioned for repatriation of powers is employment law. One attendee was horrified that Germany would have to maintain the EU regulations when we wouldn’t, and Germany would therefore feel that we had an unfair advantage. But surely the point is that if Germany felt that their implementation of the EU regulations was bad for Germany, they too could choose to withdraw from some of them.

Strangely, many of the EU’s principles externally are about competition. Internally however, it often seems to want to create a sort of collectivist blur of standardisation. Surely it should encourage political as well as economic competition?

My final point is this. The change to the rules of succession which was announced yesterday is not before time, but despite the dire warnings of trench warfare within the Commonwealth, it has been agreed swiftly, neatly and without much fuss. Because it was sensible, it was timely, and the participants were prepared. Lessons should be learnt.

For the record, I am firmly in favour of free publication of raw data. No doubt there are some errors (I recall a mad panic during late 2005, when someone emailed the Cameron Campaign office to ask why David Cameron had voted in favour of joining the euro. Fortunately it was an input error, and it turned out that, unsurprisingly, he had done no such thing); no doubt there are some things ministers and civil servants would rather not make public; and no doubt there will be some things that end up being misused.

Set against that, however, is the fact that we, as taxpayers, already own that information. It does NOT belong to the government and they should, as with many other things, operate under the presumption of openness and release it. Also, departments and other public bodies already collect it all and have it – they use it for various things, so why can’t we?

There is a ridiculous tension – which doesn’t need to exist – between those who want to basically data-dump and open it all up for free, and those who want to control it and charge for it. You can in fact do both. If you publish it freely, you enable anyone and everyone to use it; and their use of it will, in time, save money and resources in the future.

Most of us will never do anything with any data published; most of us have other things to do. But most of us will, at some point, take advantage of the work that others will want to do. For example, I have just finally given up on Orange after 14 years of loyal use of the same tariff (I know, I know). I had never really looked for a different tariff or a different network. But I found several great websites that explained all the options; and an hour of inspecting what I could choose from has meant I will have the same number, on a different network, and with a better deal.

That’s a tiny and not very important example. But – mass use of data is the best weapon we as little people have against vested interests. I once heard the founder of Dr Foster, Tim Kelsey, explain why he had set up his healthcare statistics company. His mum was a nurse, I think, and had mentioned that there were some consultants that ‘you just knew’ not to refer to because their success rate was low compared to others. That’s a disgrace; we shouldn’t have to call a friend in the know, we should all be able to look it up and see who is best for us.

It’s important that this government delivers on its promises to open up data. Partly because it said it would, and I’m always in favour of people doing what they promised. But mostly because it’s a hugely effective way to drive down waste; I have heard – though I can’t find anything to back it up – that the knowledge that expenses data, or departmental spending, or general outgoings, are going to be published instantly reduces the amount that is spent by an appreciable amount. And finally, and most importantly, because publishing the data, that we own and is already collected, in a usable form will allow uses and bring benefits that we’ve never even thought of.

Janice Turner of the Times has written some extraordinarily moving pieces about her parents and their experiences of social care in the UK. One of the things she suggests is a sort of TripAdvisor for care homes –  she herself doesn’t have time to do it, but someone does, and much of the underlying data is already sitting in government computers. All they need to do is publish it; people will use it, add to it, give it light and shade, and make it useful to people who need it.

Opening up the data in and of itself is only a first step. But the ingenuity of humankind, the dedication of some, and the demand of many more will all come together in an almost perfect illustration of the potential of the Big Society to allow more of us more control and choice. It’s not very interesting to most people, it’s certainly not a big flashy ad campaign or impressive and high-powered taskforce; but it has the potential to transform how the state serves us.

Yet while Conservatives have been willing (although progress has been slow in Government) to support employee-ownership models in the public sector, there is less talk about it in the private sector. This is disappointing.

Not only is there a clear economic case as employee-owned businesses (EOBs), according to research by the Cass Business School, given that they survived the recession pretty well (eager job creating commentators should note that EOBs have increased employment numbers by more than 12.9% compared with 2.7% for non-EOBs after the recession) – but there is also a clear political case, which I hope to detail here.

Firstly, EOBs breed greater levels of responsibility in their staff – they have to. If employees are to own their businesses they have to understand how they work, the essential structures that make them successful and the painful decisions that need to be made to keep them going (whether that be pay freezes or job cuts). This greater understanding of the challenges of business would be useful as it would help people to understand the similar challenges of government.

At present, many people do not understand the difficult decisions that are being made by the Government such as on deficit reduction, because usually they are not given the authority to do so in their own lives such as through their work. Giving people more responsibility in one sphere will spill over into others, making them vote for more responsible governments and not be so easily seduced by those with flashier but less credible messages.

Secondly, for the “tax cutting” Tories, EOBs are more likely to create workers who appreciate the need to make business as competitive as possible and are likely to want to create tax environments which champion those principles. If you own a business and are trying to compete at home and across the world, then you don’t want to see your business paying buckets of tax away to the Government which could be re-invested into the business (or put back in your pocket).

Often because people see business tax cuts only go back into the pockets of shareholders or in the bonus payments of a privileged few, they do not see why they should support a competitive business tax policy. After all, they only see the benefits indirectly (if at all sometimes). A greater level of EOBs is thus likely to create amore pro-business electorate.

Thirdly, for pro-Localism Tories, EOBs would help to encourage more people to support the localism agenda. If you help to take decisions within your business or are part of a participatory environment at work, then you are more likely to support decentralisation of powers because you have seen work, at work.

Moreover, knowing that getting more people involved can work, you are more likely to participate outside of work in your local neighbourhood or at council level to ensure it does work.

Because in so many businesses decisions are taken only by a few at the very top, this has created a culture in which people do not have direct experiences of participatory decision making. This is a barrier to the Localism agenda which the current make up the private sector supports.

These are just some of the political reasons why the Conservative Party should be embracing the EOBs agenda. In the future, I would like to come back to some of the economic arguments, but for now, it is important to make the political case.

David Cameron has a fantastic opportunity in the wake of the economic crisis to champion new forms of business such as social enterprises and EOBs – he should seize it and with it, help to sow the seeds for future electoral victories to come.

The first thing to remember is that both Coalition parties proposed equalising constituencies AND significantly reducing the number of MPs – the Tories by ten per cent, and the Lib Dems to 500. So in fact reducing the number of MPs to 600 is not even as much as they promised. The number of constituents who an MP represents is important – I have no truck with the complaints of some who say they represent a particularly difficult constituency, as firstly they chose to stand there, and secondly there are all sorts of extra staffing allowances available (something I only found out recently), and fair representation is a cornerstone of our democracy.

The second thing to remember is that, if this government is serious about devolving power, fewer MPs will be needed. And on that note, I reiterate that as well as reducing the total number of MPs, they should have reduced the number of ministers as well. However. Unlikely to happen so let’s leave that there.

The important bit is what MPs are supposed to DO. And what they are supposed to do is represent all their constituents in Parliament, hold the government to account and legislate in sensible, measured ways. They are not social workers and they should not have to spend their time fixing problems that government departments, councils and businesses cause. I know that’s also unlikely to happen but I think it’s important to remember what MPs are supposed to do when we consider how many of them we need.

As power is devolved to councils and communities, Westminster loses power. While I’ve been round the houses a bit on this one (the historical background being that as Westminster has grabbed power from councils, Brussels has grabbed power from Westminster), if we are serious about returning personal, local control to where it can best be exercised, it is only sensible to reduce the number of MPs.

As I have argued before over the AV referendum, the ‘costs us less’ argument over the number of MPs is not really one I would make: if we want a good, effective, responsive democracy, we should be prepared to pay for it, but I can see how the politics of ‘we’re all in it together’ works on this. i do, however, think the cost argument opens up all sorts of potential avenues of attack, many of which are unfair. Several MPs I have spoken to recently are genuinely taken aback by some of the vitriol that has been directed at them personally over MPs expenses – despite the fact that their claims are low and in many cases they were only elected in 2010.

I don’t have in my head a ‘perfect’ number of MPs, or of constituency size. But what I do know is that it is a promise that was made by both parties and fair election boundaries are a hugely important part of accountable democracies. And one other thing I know is that the proposals from the Boundary Commission will set the scene for a massive bust-up.

MPs are going to have to go through a re-selection process of some sort. In many cases, things will be resolved amicably (ish) behind closed doors. But it’s a huge opportunity for sitting MPs to get going on membership drives so that when the time comes, they have a hefty base of support in their proposed constituency.

While the ideas from CCHQ on targets for new members were perfectly sensible, it might just be that this is the most effective recruitment tool that any party will ever find…

So in such a crowded marketplace, what do websites unaffiliated with government do to stand out?  Social startup Digital Democracy has an idea; or rather, it has three.  Digital Democracy’s strategy, evolved since it’s pilot phase launched 6 months ago, is to be open, non-confrontational and local.

The site’s emphasis on ‘openness’ sets it apart from other online campaigns organisations – all campaigns are user submitted, and there is no vetting of campaigns.  Instead of choosing a campaign to champion in the media, Digital Democracy lets its users (anyone in the country) decide what the most important campaigns are.  In this way the site could draw comparison to ePetitions systems like the government’s, were it not for a small but crucial difference.

This difference is seen in Digital Democracy’s desire to produce a non-confrontational dialogue on issues –users can either support or oppose any campaign posted on the site.  This produces what Digital Democracy’s creators claim is more useful than an ePetition – a conversation about the solution.  It also tackles the problem quite obviously facing the new government site – petitions immediately mirrored by counter-petitions by people opposed to the original petition.  The goal of establishing a conversation with MPs and with government from the outset helps to foster communication and cooperation, rather than aggression or faceless signature collection.

Finally, Digital Democracy stands out from the crowd by doing something which many believe represents the future of the internet – localising.  Although the site caters for large national campaigns like many of its rivals, its real power lies in local campaigns.  When a user enters their postcode they’re show the boundaries of their constituency on a google map, along with all the campaigns going on in their area.  Users’ local MPs are regularly notified of all the campaigns his or her constituents have supported (or opposed) and given the opportunity to respond to them all on the site.

This informal online engagement between (and amongst) local people and their MPs allows people to be drawn in who might be too busy to go to community meetings or not inclined to be in touch with their MP directly.  This large and growing demographic is often caricatured as selfish and apathetic; so disengaged from their community that they barely know their neighbours.

In reality most people have strong opinions about their community, as well as ideas on how to improve it.  However, our political system still fails to take advantage of the technologies we all use every day to engage with people about the decisions affecting their lives.  Digital Democracy shows that there is no technical reason for this backwardness – its system lets you openly and collectively engage with your neighbours, community leaders and MP online, about whatever issue you want.

Digital Democracy has the potential to become much more than a method of airing your grievances or collecting support for a campaign – valuable though those functions are.  With the right support it could point the way toward how we bring community politics kicking and screaming into the 21^st century.

To see what Digital Democracy can do, go to www.digitaldemocracy.org.uk – the site is free and open for anyone to join.

Well, once it had recovered from the first day’s surge of interest… When the police stats website first went live, it too crashed under the weight of demand. I spoke to someone who had been involved with that one, who said that there was no point paying for the capacity required for the first day because it wouldn’t be needed in the long-term – which I think is entirely the wrong way round. If you are expecting a huge surge of interest in something like this, it has to work from the word go; because if not, people become disengaged.

Given that the previous petitions site had had so many people on it (didn’t the one to have Gold as our national anthem have more than a million signatories?), you’d have thought that they might have been better prepared this time round. But no.

Anyway that’s not really my point – though it does feed into it. You see, if you make people feel like you’re ignoring them, unless they are REALLY committed then they won’t come back. And if the moderates don’t come back – either because they’re happy with the current situation, or because they don’t feel that strongly one way or another, all you get is the extremes – who are louder and more insistent; I think there’s a lesson here for everyone on the need to ponder whether you’re getting a balanced picture of a given topic…

The current top twenty e-petitions include three campaigns to bring back the death penalty, and three on withdrawing from the EU. I’d imagine there are more on both topics which have fewer signatures as well. This is the same problem as I’ve described with charities before – there are various organisations with great ideas and objectives, but because they are relatively small and replicate other ideas, they don’t carry as much weight as they could.

I like the idea of e-petitions. I like that we as citizens can make our MPs discuss things, and put their views on the record. But if you’re serious about the issue, as opposed to making a name for yourself, you have to work with other groups. You have to therefore be content with perhaps not achieving absolutely everything you want – but a focused weight of numbers is what will make the difference.

I don’t want to bring back the death penalty, as I’ve written before. But I don’t in any way have a problem with debating it and explaining why it’s a bad idea. While we may all grumble about governments not listening to us, at least these e-petitions will force them to tell us why not – and perhaps, if our politicians treat voters like adults, perhaps we will also be sufficiently grown-up to understand why they say what they do.

One of the (many) things we did was a Q&A with Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development who as I’ve said before is one of my favourite ministers. Part of what he was talking about was the new DfID Global Poverty Action Fund, which aims to fulfil the UN’s Millennium Development Goals in specific countries, through work on supporting service delivery, empowerment and accountability, and conflict, security and justice.

One of the areas our partners were concerned about was a reduction in direct funding to NGOs, as 65 per cent of DfID funding is now delivered to the Rwandan Government in Budget Support. This means that the government spends the money (with agreed accountability to DfID) to deliver services rather than individual and independent organisations.

As you must be aware, I am very much a localist, Big Societal kind of Tory. In the UK, the government does all sorts of things that it should not. But – of course – Rwanda is not the UK and until fairly recently the government did not do all sorts of things that it should have done. Building the capacity of a government to deliver effective, impartial and improving services is hugely important in helping poorer nations to grow and develop. In Rwanda, about five per cent of the UK’s aid total will be spent on increasing accountability of the government to its citizens.

I had various discussions about the rights and wrongs of the principle of this over the last two weeks. I remain of the view that it is a vital component of why we have an aid budget in the first place – to build the capacity of states to operate on their own eventually. Having accountable, responsive and responsible governments is absolutely key in ensuring that nations can fulfill their potential. All over Kigali, there are big indicators of government presence – signs on schools, on government buildings, public education adverts (including those warning against the infamous Sugar Daddies/Mummies), new roads, traffic police… And this is a good thing, particularly in an area which has historically seen chaos and instability, and which has suffered particularly from a lack of effective and cohesive governance.

So those local charities and NGOs which we’ve been working with (along with all the others) have to ensure that they work with their government’s intentions – Vision 2020 is the Rwandan government’s strategic plan, and every organisation was aware of it. They need to ensure that they deliver effectively – there’s no point in just handing over cash to make the same mistakes or fail to change anything. And they need to ensure that governance, accountability, development and growth are part of how they operate every day.

As this very interesting article (via @IanBirrell) points out, in many failed/ing states, the government has effectively withdrawn from most of the things it should do. I don’t wholly buy into the author’s support for the Crisis Caravan, but the idea that incoherent, uncoordinated, ad hoc interventions are less effective than good, responsive governance certainly makes sense.

However, the words we are used to hearing about the emasculation of the Commons seemed largely irrelevant yesterday.  A media titan, long feared by politicians of all parties had been compelled to testify before a committee of the House of Commons.  The mighty baron, this symbol of global media domination, described it as the most humble day of his life. 

It is now their choice whether to rest on the laurels of this accomplishment or use their increased standing to consider ways to further empower Parliament.

The ‘Murdoch hearings’ showed how powerful the Select Committee system can be if used correctly.  At present, they are more like institutions with a well of potential than institutions with any substantial record of achievement.   But that potential is considerable. 

At present, select committee reports can too easily be ignored by Government Ministers.  All too often, they represent a one day headline, with little or no lasting change to Government policy.  Few people would argue that the position of a Select Committee Chairman is of the same level  of seniority as a Cabinet Minister and not too many newly elected MPs would say that their ambition is to become Chairman of a select committee.  Too many critical select committee reports look like the legislature merely nipping at the heels of the Executive.

Steps have been taken to strengthen select committees and help diminish the power of the whips.  But even more can still be done.  Select committees should be given the staffing that will allow them to properly hold Government to account.  At present, a small staff is effectively faced with the entire Civil Service machine.  Select committees are under-resourced compared to their equivalents in the US and in Europe.  This has a real knock on effect on their ability to hold the Executive to account.

Select committees also need more legal power to call witnesses (it is a scandalous contempt of Parliament that the Chief Executive of Kraft refused to appear before the Business Select Committee).  They should be able to further scrutinise Departmental spending and hold Government to account to a much greater level.  It follows that, as the power of select committees increases, so the prestige of a select committee post also increases. 

However, reforms to further empower the Commons should not stop with reform of the Select Committee system.  Whatever your opinion of the appointment of Andy Coulson, it is clear that discussions about the appointment were very much behind closed doors.  Parliament was, at no stage, involved in the discussions about the appointment of a very senior political official.  Such a process would be frowned upon in many other Western democracies. 

Isn’t it about time that we introduced the concept of pre appointment hearings?

They would, at a stroke, enhance the power and prestige of Parliament and introduce some badly needed transparency into political appointments.  If Andy Coulson had been involved in the process of a pre appointment hearing, talk about assurances given in private would no longer have been relevant.  Those assurances would have been made in public and MPs would have had the ability to scrutinise a candidate’s suitability for the role. 

It was often said that Alastair Campbell had more power than most members of the Cabinet.  Surely it is right that the appointment of such a powerful figure is at least endorsed by elected representatives first.  This should, surely, also be the case for senior quangocrats (who have the ability to spend many millions worth of public money).  And pre appointment hearings should also come with real power and real sanctions.  Such a system would move the Commons from being a bystander when important decisions are taken to being a central player.  And transparency and accountability would be the order of the day.

The Commons should be using yesterday’s show of strength as a platform for further enhancing the power of the legislature in relation to the Executive.  Bold and radical reforms would help ensure that the House of Commons plays an increasingly important part in public life.

Whether the government actively seeks ideas – such as when it sought extra pairs of eyes to pick over Gordon Brown’s last Budget, or when the e-petitions site worked – or whether citizens proactively submit them (for example, all the hundreds of people who write to Ministers and MPs every day) shouldn’t matter. But I suspect it does, because if the government is asking for opinions and ideas, it means it is actively thinking about the issue, and as we all know if a government doesn’t have to think about something, it tries not to.

The supermarket answer? Well, it tracks, monitors and – crucially – crunches enormous amounts of data – how people use its site, what they buy, the times and places they have their order delivered. But also, it recently sent out a survey asking what its customers thought – of the delivery process, the check out process, the contents of the online shop, the call centre, the drivers, the food itself once delivered… and anything else we fancied telling them.

Is there a lesson there for the government? Yes there is. The government has stacks and stacks of data. Some of it is pointless, some of it is unusable, some of it is immensely valuable and, in the right hands, can provide valuable insights. And sometimes, the government doesn’t understand how we use public services – so it should ask. Politicians can’t improve things if we don’t tell them how.

The second supermarket insight is that they then sent a follow-up email with some of the suggestions made during their survey, saying that some things would be implemented, some would be looked into and some weren’t currently possible. I was actually quite surprised to get this email (entitled “You spoke. We listened.”)  I don’t think I have ever had any information back after taking a survey. It was a pleasant surprise, and quite interesting to see what other people had suggested.

And the lesson for the government? If you’re going to attempt to engage, it can’t be a one-off. In fact, I’d say that this needs to start small… So perhaps, given the CCHQ members survey that went out last week, they should ensure that everyone gets a summary of the responses to that and any actions that will be taken as a result. Then next time there is a crowd-sourcing exercise, they should at least email a thank you to everyone, and hopefully a summary of suggestions and what will be done (if anything).

Government and public service is not – or shouldn’t be – a consumer-type exercise. It’s about far more than that. But its most basic expression should be accountability to those who pay the bills – and that means governments need to think as if they really do have competitors snapping at their heels all the time.