Crowded houses

Why politics?", was the question I asked when I wrote my autobiography. The wider question is: whither politics? 

It is not easy to answer. There is an anti-political mood in our country. Party allegiance has declined. The end of the cold war and the defeat of socialism have broken the ideological bindings that held our political system rigid. The great giants - excessive trade union power, galloping inflation - have been slain. 

At the same time the role of parliament and government has declined. Parliament has shed too much power to retain its pre-eminence or its reputation. The Lords is in danger of becoming dominated by party nominees. The Commons has become a stage, not a forum. The dumbing down of parliamentary government has added to disillusion with our system. 

I watch with dismay as the government thumbs its nose at a parliament that is being bypassed, disregarded, treated as an irritation and "modernised" out of effectiveness. Soon I will leave the Commons. I will miss it as it was, but less so as it is becoming. 

Politics is rarely admired as a profession and perhaps this is as it should be. We direct the lives of fellow citizens, tax their incomes and, in the end, are doomed to disappoint their expectations. 

This is not new. Politicians come and go and their days in the sun are transitory. But what is new is that parliament itself is now being diminished as authority deserts it. 

When I was prime minister, I made it one of my central concerns to improve the performance of the public services. Many sophisticates scoffed at the Citizen's Charter because they did not understand it, but it has now been copied in many other countries and has achieved improvements in many public services. 

We must now improve the openness and accountability of the government to parliament and people. We need, through the committee system, to make legislative procedure much more open and to monitor the progress of legislation, after it has reached the statute book, so that we can rapidly repeal legislation that is not achieving its effect. A toothless parliament goes with unaccountable government. Only a parliament with teeth will yield genuine accountability. 

I pause before elaborating further, conscious that I could have done more myself during my own years in Downing Street. But what I did or did not do in office does not alter the underlying dilemma that the executive is becoming stronger and parliament weaker. 

Last July, Lord Norton of Louth published a report for William Hague which proposed changes to the parliamentary year, the carry- over of legislation between parliamentary sessions, a reduction in the numbers of ministers and members of parliament and more legislation in draft form. Such changes are needed - and more besides. 

I would like to see the government set out proposed legislation for longer than one parliamentary session so that measures may be published in outline form, consulted upon and evidence taken in public upon their practicality. 

This would be a classic task for a pre-legislative committee of Lords and Commons meeting together. It would enable the shortcomings of proposals to be identified before government was committed to them and should ease the drafting of legislation and improve its quality. It is also a more democratic way of proceeding and, if carried out properly, would rebut conclusively concerns about electoral dictatorship. Some legislation may be needed urgently and could be unsuitable for such a leisurely approach, but even in those circumstances a fast track could be constructed. Such legislation should minimise the vast number of amendments that now accompany all bills. It would give MPs time to focus more upon key issues and expose unworkable ideas: neither the poll tax nor devolution would have emerged unscathed under such scrutiny. 

One area of great controversy over recent years has been the enactment of treaties agreed by the government - most obviously, European treaties. A real dilemma exists: government puts its name to the international agreements that it negotiates and then asks parliament, which has not been part of the negotiation, to agree the treaty unchanged and legislate to bring it into force. This is - in strictly democratic terms - a very questionable procedure. 

I would advocate a standing committee of both Houses to take evidence in public upon such negotiations both before and after they are concluded. It will not drown out the voice of controversy but it would be a great improvement on present circumstances. Moreover, the slow pace of the timetable for the preparation and enactment of European treaties would enable such a procedure to operate. 

A similar innovation would be worthwhile where significant domestic constitutional reform was concerned: I have in mind such areas as devolution, changes to the electoral system, structural changes to the judiciary and local government reform. In each case the purpose would be the same: to allow consultation and representation; to expose and debate the implications and effects of such changes; and to permit fundamental reforms to sink into the consciousness of the voters before they are enacted. It is, after all, their country. 

The innovations I suggest would slow down our legislative process, but that is no bad thing where fundamental changes are concerned. I agree with Norton that the Commons has become too big and unwieldy. The number of MPs could be reduced with advantage to no more than 500 - perhaps, as Norton suggests, in staged reductions. 

The effect would be to increase the average electorate to the size of the larger seats but - having had one of those for more than 20 years - I know that is manageable. It would also enable the number of ministers to be reduced. We have far too many who are undertaking functions only because their time as minister needs to be filled. 

A reduction of one fifth to one third in the number of ministers is quite possible, especially if ministers in the Commons were empowered to address and answer questions in the Lords on their responsibilities and vice versa (without, of course, the right to vote other than in their own assembly). 

This would be novel but it has distinct advantages. It would remove the unsatisfactory situation of "double banking" ministers to accommodate each House and end the present procedure in which ministers in the Lords respond to debates upon matters with which they are not familiar. 

All this would improve the quality of legislation and the independence of MPs. Too high a proportion of recent intakes to the Commons are narrow in experience and, because ambition quells conscience, they often fail to protest against wrong-headed policy. As we move towards an all-professional Commons we see more clearly the virtues of the amateur for whom politics was merely a part of his life. They still exist, of course, but they are a dinosaur breed. It is a weakness in our system that the professional politician too often believes he has the field marshal's baton in his rucksack. 

Parliament will change. It always has. If the public-spirited men and women who wish to serve in it can re-establish its moral and political authority, we will all be in their debt.

(Courtesy The Sunday Times, London)
 
 

The people speak up When you are in the opposition like Major, it's easy for you to say that you'll do this and that. But when you come to power it's a totally different scenario. And anyway in the Western countries this thing called transparency can be found to some extent, whereas here our politicians won't do that. Ministers have to be available to the people in parliament, but that doesn't happen here. Once they are in Parliament they just try to evade."  - a housewife  We can't all go to parliament and that's why we elect our members. So once they are there they have a duty to be open about what they do and we have a right to know what's happening in parliament." - M. Nizar. We have too many MPs anyway and the reduction would mean that we would save a lot of money. Besides we need that money. There are so many things that have to be done and we can do without all those MPs. Anyway things would have been better if we had better access to our parliamentarians." - a teacher Interviews by Uthpala Gunethilake

 

Quotable Quotes:   Dilrukshi Handunetti interviewed some political figures on what they had to say in this respect....... Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was of the view that the foundation of any government should be transparency and more transparency coupled with a trust-building exercise.  " In this sense what is proposed by former British premier John Major is good. Such proposals should however come when one is in government. More representation does not mean the increase in the number of heads. It is qualitative representation," he noted. UNP General Secretary Gamini Athukorale claimed that some of the salient proposals of the autobiography also reflect UNP thinking. " We have also proposed the reduction in the number of House members, ministers and advocate more transparency and accountability. It is only through a highly transparent system that people could gauge the representatives and their work. Those who propose such a system are people who have nothing to hide," he said. Publicity Secretary of the JVP Wimal Weerawansa said that true transparency could not be expected from capitalist political forces. He opined that the JVP had set an example by spearheading anti-corruption, pro-transparent politics for the first time in this country. " All these ideals are good. But in a world governed by market forces, ideals remain ideals and not reality. The JVP has called for the reduction of parliamentarians and a smaller cabinet- not this saga of unlawful enrichment with its backdrop facilitating such politics." PA Matara district candidate and Deputy Minister of Cultural Affairs Dallas Alahapperuma is the man who introduced polythene-free politics to his electorate- Kamburupitiya and held a massive joint platform with the UNP and JVP candidates of the area to set an example for a new political culture. " I think it is my humble contribution to politics, and therefore I can claim a right to call for transparent and accountable governance. I think 18 million people can do with less legislators and more transparency. People should be allowed to truly scrutinize their legislators. Affairs of government, agreements, legislation, financial and policy decisions are all a part of it. It is through such a mechanism only that we can create a better country and political system." Kegalle district UNP candidate Kabir Hashim lauded the comments by the former British Premier and said that such ideals should be adopted by Sri Lanka as well. " What is disheartening is the hypocrisy. When you are in the opposition, you map out strategies and pledge to abolish, amend or create new things. But once you form a government, all these are forgotten- all proposals for transparency blown away and the rot sets in." Mr. Hashim said that a programme to evaluate parliamentarians periodically as well as policies and programmes were necessary to make 'transparency' a reality.

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