[At the end of this post there are some links to sites which explain the Select Committee system, and which reinforce this blog's general message that their job ought to be to scrutinise government.]

It is of course exciting to be writing this just before the Murdoch empire is carpetted by the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. We’ll all watch and thrill to the circus as the people’s tribunes take bites out of the once-powerful.

An obvious question arises: why this inquiry when the police and judge-led inquiries are about to cover the same ground more forensically?

More to the point, why the Murdochery at all? The further a select committee ranges in its inquiries, the further it leaves behind its real job: the scrutiny of government. There are important governmental failures in the Murdoch affair, and they start at the top with the Prime Minister. One might argue that the entire political class is in question. The committee might more properly wonder whether ministerial behaviour (I mean both the political and the Civil Service branches) has been up to scratch.

The Home Affairs select commitee has had a go at some policemen – who are at least public officials – and not really distinguished itself, again in advance of proper inquiries.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it would make sense to hear these committees ask the Prime Minister how he can defend the intimacy and informality of his relations with the Murdochery. That would be right in the middle of their real turf.

More generally, we could be in real difficulty if select committees are to be seduced into thinking they are the right place for inquiring into everything which goes on in national life and which provides good theatre.

It perhaps made sense for the Treasury committee to look at state-owned banks (those are sort of public bodies). Perhaps Home Affairs should have looked at police: they certainly are public bodies. But even these are not ideal subjects.

The Treasury committee needed really to focus like a laser on whether banks are now well-regulated. The Home Affairs committee should focus on whether the police are properly regulated in their relations with the media (and as to wearing identification when they thump protestors, for instance). Culture, Media and Sport had plenty of similar stuff to get on with.

If the public has a right to see all and sundry grilled in public, then let public inquiries do that work.

Select committees explained:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/select_committee_faq.shtml

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-office/Brief-Guides/Select-Committees.pdf

http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/committees/select/

David Cameron said he wanted an administration of quiet effectiveness, and instead he’s got a historic loud muddle over his rushed NHS reforms and it’s a pretty typical debacle for Mr Cameron. 

We might have expectd it. Mr Cameron had a horror of wasting his first term (as Tony Blair’s autobiography confirmed he wasted his), and has undertaken a big slate of policy changes to be achieved quickly.  Besides, in some areas the deficit strategy has forced the pace.

Mr Cameron had always been thought to admire Tony Blair, the great triangulator and communicator. But it was an ambiguous fandom: a return to Cabinet chimed with some of Mr Cameron’s pre-election remarks, as he sought to distance himself from Sofa Government.

True to his word, the Cabinet has enjoyed renewed importance, partly because of the dynamics of coalition. But there may also have been a useful traditionalism in the thinking: Mr Cameron was chairman of the board, if not primus inter pares.

When Mr Cameron went to war, over Libya, he stressed the discussion and endorsement round the table. Perhaps it made sense to dip Lib-Dem hands in the blood. (For a sharp account of Cabinet government, see “Cabinet government”, The Better Government Initiative, December 2010.)

However, relations with Whitehall seem to be as difficult under Cameron as they had been under Blair, and for much the same reasons. They have provoked Blairite responses.

There was an initial love-in as Gus O’Donnell’s note on, and planning for, hung Parliaments, and the subsequent inter-party negotiations, went swimmingly. The Cabinet Secretary briefly became part of a trinity of GOD, DC and NC.

Last May, they strode down Whitehall between Downing Street and Westminster, as the incarnation of a new hep accommodation between the executive and the legislative worlds.

The sheer speed and suddenness of policy announcements then ensured chaos. The NHS, education, housing benefits, police and BBC were all subjected to rapid change which bore little resemblance to party manifestos, or – even where they did – deserved and didn’t get a decent, formal post-election discussion. Instead, the reforms were announced as though pre-ordained. Any scrutiny by Whitehall or the public looked like unseemly squabbling rather than stately deliberation.

We can leave a little on one side Iain Duncan Smith and his welfare policy as an area where Whitehall and the public knew very well where the incoming government might want to go, and where the latter presumably not only agreed but had laid down some plans. And Ken Clarke is presumably singing from the Ministry of Justice’s liberal song-sheet. At least so far, there is an admirable smoothness in these areas. Pensions policy seems to be receiving the proper Green Paper/White Paper routine.

Mr Cameron has learned from Tories as well as New Labour. Like Mrs Thatcher, Cameron knows all change, including decentralisation, must be forced from the centre. He may want to be a better Thatcherite than she was: he seems determined to re-model the welfare state. If he can’t shrink and privatise it, he will – like John Major – at least make the reforms which make these easier later.

Perhaps the Cameron strategy is to make muddled progress, but progress at least, and endure the loss of political capital caused by some climb-downs, and endure it now and on an ad hoc basis. That’s better than paying the political price nearer election time. The cuts and mini-riots become a handy distraction.

Much of the policy chaos seems to flow from hasty action by ministers such as Andrew Lansley and Michael Gove. Perhaps it’s a vicious circle: Cameron told his ministers to get on with it; the latter steam-rollered their departments; and the officials couldn’t very well protect their ministers from their own enthusiasm. 

In recent weeks, David Cameron has been reported to feel (very much as Tony Blair did) that Whitehall is dragging its feet over reforms. But ministries may very properly be more fussed about means than ends: propriety is their job. Cameron’s response has been to throw out his former insistence that he would work traditionally (presumably with the Cabinet Office and Whitehall) rather than with an official private office teaming with politically-appointed Special Advisers (SPADs). He wants his own Blairish janissaries checking on ministers and departments alike to ensure that Number 10′s strategies are followed. (The Guardian has looked at the issue  and there is useful almost stroppy blog from the Institute for Government’s Zoe Gruhn.)

The administrative and policy disarray has been matched by a more surprising failure of presentation. The Cameron Number 10 was reported to spew out briefings which flagrantly contradicted one another. It is said to be irritated by media accounts of ministerial muddle. So now we hear that The Grid (forward-looking message control) has been beefed-up so as to avoid presentational accidents. All in all, Blairite media-handling is now the order of the day. So much for frankness.

Oddly, David Cameron is even more opaque than Tony Blair, who made a mist of transparency. Even accounts of Cameron’s having a Tory-ish pragmatism are discounted by alternative narratives which seem as well or as little informed. The PM doesn’t really bother to inform us.

But we can detect a rush to Blairite management. This makes gloomy news because we had half a hope that Mr Cameron wanted to help form a modern way to govern Britain that built on the past rather than skirted round it.

I mostly agree with the mostly positive assessments of Rachel Sylvester (The Times, 10 August 2010), James Forsyth (The Daily Mail, 8 August 2010) and Philip Stephens (The Financial Times, 6 August 2010). But I think they miss the “better government” downside. Not least (I tackle it last, below), there seems to be a frankness deficit.

The good news is that we have a man who looks and sounds like a PM and we have a coalition situation which has revitalised Cabinet government.

The bad is that 1oo days of feverish activity has produced a lot of mistakes, especially as there’s a fair degree of arrogance about. And there is room for serious doubt as to the quality – the structure - of our current government’s policy-making and its commitment to its much-vaunted “quiet effectiveness“.

Here’s a list of things which have gone badly, so far. In ascending importance:

(1) Big moment gaffe

I didn’t admire DC’s populism in dealing with the Moat suicide. Sure, DC was disparaging those who saw Moat as a hero. But a  Christian or  liberal gentleman is still required to see that Moat was sad and mad rather than obviously bad. One can’t withdraw compassion toward him as DC suggested.  

(2) Diplomatic gaffes

I can’t see the point of David Cameron’s picking Turkey as the place in which to diss Israel, or India to diss Pakistan. Doesn’t good diplomacy and good manners (even manliness) require that one says tough things to one’s host rather than one’s host’s enemy? Blaming the Scot Nats (even if it was a long-standing view) for the Al Magrahi debacle was cheap and un-neighbourly.

(3) Initiative Blizzard

Here’s a partial list of proposals which look to have been lobbed at the public to show liveliness: Turning off the children’s database; snatching the kiddies’ milk; binning ASBO’s; dishing the Film Council;  realigning Ambassadors as tradesmen; dishing Labour’s planning system; dissing Qangoes. This looks like the New Labour behaviour we were supposed to be abandoning.

(4)  Bungling big reforms

On schools, University fees, NHS reform, police reform, planning and benefits we have fundamental reform being tackled at (I admit) varying speeds and with (I admit) varying degrees of open-mindedness. None of it looks like process designed to get widespread intelligent buy-in. (The benefits reform is a special case: IDS has a sort of special dispensation, and anyway has coralled special cross-party support for his CSJ initiatives.)

(5) Decentralisation

There is a lot of rhetoric but very mixed evidence of power shifting downwards and outwards from the centre. The centre still bosses people about (hospitals have been told to get rid of mixed wards, for example).  Whitehall will fix how much money pupils get as they choose schools, and GPs get as they buy medical facilities. Local authorities aren’t being given revenue-rasing powers. We have yet to see whether taxpayers will stop blaming central government when their tax gets spent in ways they don’t like, and especially when Post Code Politics kicks in.

Various considerations lob up.

(a) Consultation

All of the new ideas (I think) are subject to a new process, “Structural Reform Plans”, which constitute some sort of road map. Some have been tackled by White Papers which are open to (sometimes very brief) consultation. Some have been subject to consultation papers which will then lead to White Papers. But none of it looks like a consensual process with professional “actors” and government working together.

(b) Politics

It is quite possible that the Government wants to achieve some big stuff and thinks doing it fast and early is the most effective route, allowing “shock and awe” to see it through, and allowing time for the reforms to settle and work before an election. This is a high-risk strategy, but whatever else it is, it isn’t frank, or necessarily steady.

(c) The fiscal squeeze 

The overall ambition of fiscal reform may provide a rationale for getting this stuff done fast, so that the fit between the new, straitened budget and the new, lean state can be clearer.  But these reforms do not necessarily save money; indeed the reverse is often the case. So it’s harder to see the immediate hurry.

(d) The government has not let us see the strategy or tactics in much of its approach to policy, and still less to process. They may think only wonks care, and there’s something in that. But if ministers are aiming at good government, they should be proud to say so and show how their approach to business (the mean not the ends) fit a specifically “better government” agenda. Otherwise, the public, the Archipelago State, and the professions, will feel bused and manipulated. That can’t be clever.

Martin Kettle and Julian Glover are on the money (The Guardian, 19 May 2010). Nick Clegg on constitutional reform awkwardly compensates a new governmental caution with a claim to be transformative.  And Lord Falconer was surely right to tell Eddie Mair (BBC Radio 4, PM, 19 May 2010) that this was reminiscent of one of New Labour’s “big mistakes”: the trust-busting habit of “making huge claims”.

Above all, the deputy PM has oversold his willingness or capability to “hand back power to the people”. That’s just as well: The People don’t want more power. They’re British, for goodness sake: they want the easy dissidence of the well-governed.

On the up-side, the Clegg reforms may make our democracy a little more representative. But this is nearly the opposite of what heart and soul Big Society (and even “New Politics”) people want. Phillip Blond, the Red Tory, was quick to tell the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (20 May 2010) that doing good of this sort fell way short of the new “associative” (mutualist, bottom-up) politics he fancied. When democracy is representative, it is not direct.

Nick Clegg’s reforms don’t bear comparison with the acts of political enfranchisement of the last two centuries.  And anyway, the point of those was to channel and express the fact of the masses’ power through Parliament. The upshot was the deliberate, accountable, meritocratic and controlled elitism of representative democracy. The proposals of Tony Wright’s Commons Select Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons are in that tradition, and Nick Clegg says the coalition aims to enact them. David Cameron may be as keen, th0ugh his attempted scuppering of the backbenchers’ 1922 Committee is ominous.

Here’s the beef. It helps a lot if the coalition government wants or will encourage a revived Westminster and Whitehall. But if they don’t, Parliament can do the work itself.

At this moment, the biggest problem with our representative democracy is not that The People don’t have enough authority over Parliament, it is that Parliament has given away its authority over government. We perhaps ought to reform the electoral system, but doing so won’t much alter this crisis of the constitution. We almost certainly ought not to have a second chamber which is elected, but making that change may not make a big difference either.

Actually, the “New Politics” is quite likely to rebalance things almost by mistake. Sue Cameron in the FT (11 May 2010) quotes senior mandarins (Whitehall officials) endorsing this theory. Andreas Whittam Smith gives it credence (The Independent, 14 May 2010).

The rationale works like this: (as noted by Michael White in the Guardian, 20 May 2010) under Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair, power slipped from Westminster and Whitehall to Number 10 (and the broadcast media). Parliament, the Cabinet and the Civil Service all lost power. It is quite possible that a “balanced parliament” will empower MPs because votes will be narrower and because party managers may be inclined to use the coalition as cover for allowing MPs more freedom on some issues. It is likely too that a coalition government will empower the Cabinet since that will be the most obvious way of ensuring that senior people from both parties have dipped their hands in the blood. It is possible, too, that the Civil Service will gain in power as it helps forge the political acceptability and the practical workability of policy. Notice, for instance, how the coalition’s leaders like to be photographed with Gus O’Donnell, the country’s senior civil servant.  (But again, Mr Cameron sends mixed messages: giving economic forecasting to outsiders risks enshrining the idea that the Treasury and government utterance are alike unreformably partisan.)  

Most of what needs doing can be achieved by a bold coalition of Members of Parliament rather than a coalition of their leaders. We ought to remember that the House of Commons has nearly total command, if only its members get out their Blackberries, network properly, and grasp it.

We have over-mighty Prime Ministers and party whips, but haven’t gained strong government in exchange. Those failures are consequences of MPs having forgotten that they have an obligation to ensure that representative democracy works. They need to do that by boldly and sometimes bravely defending a hierarchy of responsibilities. These obligations can be ordered in matching and mirrored pairs: to their country and constituency, and to Parliament and party. These are richly conflicted, but a sense of what is good for Parliament – for the representational part of democracy - will often be a good guide to the other dimensions.

The Homes Office is a dysfunctional self-obsessed bunker. The Foreign Office is full of clever managers of decline. The Treasury is a tight-fisted bastion of Keynesianism. That was roughtly the message a casual viewer would have gleaned from the latest series from Mr Cockerell.

The shows did reveal rather more than that, but much of the richer picture consisted in big guns of the recent past banging away at whichever of their fellows they had fallen out with.

A lot of this was dangerously like Yes, Minister, in being a chronic mis-reading of the problem facing the Civil Service.  

What we didn’t get was any proper discussion of what reforms might be needed in the way Whitehall works and how it might relate to government and the rest of Westminster.

I am clarifying my own view that what we need is strong, small, elitist Whitehall which is charged with wider and more public work than we have known.

I think Whitehall should move beyond serving the Crown by serving ministers (and hiding behind their skirts). Instead, they should become more complex. They should continue their old work of advising ministers, but they should also have divisons which formally develop alternative policy options at the behest of Parliament. They should do less of the actual work of running government.

In effect, then, the Civil Service should stay independent, but work continuously for all sorts of potential governments and none, as well as serving the present government especially in helping to formulate policy and ensuring delivery.

The point here, in part, is to open up the Civil Service to far more scrutiny. The move would make it harder for departments to become bastions of particular orthodoxies.

Just as importantly, the political parties would be put under much closer scrutiny as they develop policy. Their work would be second-guessed by official policy professionals, especially for its workability.

This would recognise that politicians are – rightly - populists who seek general directions and tone in policy but who need both help and discipline as they make specific proposals.

The Home Office was for years thought to hate punishing criminals; the Foreign Office loved Arabs and Europe; the Treasury loved Keyenes. These cliches were never quite true, but that they built up at all was a sign that Whitehall was either misunderstood or was prone to monomania and perhaps a bit of both. Not good. 

I was irritated by the Cockerell shows because they seemed to me lazy (or possibly, chronically underfunded). They trotted out old material and added some more recent rather gossipy stuff.

We needed far more.

The thinking below draws on the chapters on government in my books, Mr Blair’s Messiah Politics (2006) and Mr Cameron’s Makeover Politics (2009).

Institute for Government trawls of the evidence show that the Civil Service is slimmer than it used to be, more trusted and admired by the public than one might suppose, and rather better managed (with reservations as to whether it looks quite so good when viewed from its own middle ranks).

The IfG is doing very important work in describing useful practical changes which need to be developed. My angles of attack are a little different.

Firstly, I think we need to describe to the public how modern Britain is managed, right now. Secondly, we need to make it much clearer the different sorts of job public servants do. Thirdly, we need to consider a role for Civil Servants as custodians of public policy, accountable to Parliament not ministers.  

In turn then:

(1) Mapping the Archipelago State
There is a huge need for a proper description of how modern Britain is managed. I think there is an Archipelago State. Whitehall is its largest island, but the scattered network of agencies, boards, commissions and Quangoes which are the real bulk of the system are vastly important and not readily seen or understood for what they are.

(2) Colouring in the Archipelago State
The Archipelago State grew Tospywise and is muddled. You can’t always tell the bits which advise ministers from the bits which devise policy from the bits which deliver it from the bits which run things from the bits which police bits of society from the bits which deliver public services. Accountability is difficult to discern. So my second call is: colour-code the different bits of the Archipelago State according to the sort of work they do. If that is unclear, make it so.

(3) A new role for the Civil Service
For all sorts of reasons (see below), one part the Civil Service should be the professional and statutory adviser to Parliament on policy matters. That is, the Civil Service should be a publicly-sponsored centre for policy assessment, both in formulation and delivery. This wing of the Service should develop plausible and operable policy scenarios for Parliament and Government to choose amongst and it should provide a public analysis of the state of policy delivery.

The objections to this reform would be that other bits of the Civil Service would be doing this work for ministers but in secret (rightly), and delivering policy for Government, whilst my new bits of the Service would be developing Government policy but in public and possibly in a way which undermines ministers.

The current system, has the Civil Service working (often in public) on the policies favoured by the exisiting Government, whilst my reform would have the Civil Service also, and separately, working on policy for the Opposition (and indeed for the public). 

In short, this reform would blow away the constitutional myth that the Civil Service is the creature of ministers, with no voice of its own.

My answer to that is: tough, and so what? We cannot leave it to a hotchpotch of think tanks, opposition politicians, interest groups and commentators to arm Parliament and the public with policy options.

The public nature of its policy development work would not amount to the Civil service having opinions as to the political or moral desirability of different policies. Its job would be to discuss in private and public  the workability of policies. 

The State should be capable of working up alternative possibilities, and should hire and mandate its own professionals in this work. This wing of the Civil Service would of course operate in the public glare, and that would be hugely energising. It should also be efficient in the sense of allowing Civil Servants to be devote time to understanding policies which opposition parties are likely to need them to introduce.

If you want a picture of the kind of farce the existing system produces, try the IfG document, Transitions: Preparing for changes of Government by Peter Riddell and Catherine Haddon.

A few reasons this reform is needed
Parliamentary and government life is likely to get more complicated if we see hung parliaments and great turnover of administrations between exisiting (and maybe emerging) parties; we are likely to see even more young and inexperienced ministers; we are likely to see quite profound management issues as we move away from the model of the big central state owing and running a vast welfare state aparatus.

Simon Heffer (in the Telegraph) and Anthony Howard (on Radio 4′s Today programme) both today (18 November 2009) poured a deal of scorn (in slightly different ways) on the Queen’s speech. (As in: why is it a good idea to have a nice old lady in a crown reading out horrid Labour’s suicide note, blah blah.)

Very few people bother to defend the old ways. Take how right Tony Blair turned out to be when he thought (one guesses) that abolishing the centuries-old office of Lord Chancellor and the House of Lords as home of the nation’s highest court could be done at a stroke and no-one much would mind.

Charles Moore (and a few old judges) minded, just as he disliked the way the new Speaker of the House of Commons wanted less mummery in the way he dressed. But few others do mind, and most probably more or less approve.

I find this sort of subject tricky. But the issues can have substance, and that is worth pointing out.

(1) The Queen’s speech
The Queen is notionally the head and font of all government, and her presence in the Palace of Westminster amongst her Lords and Commoners reminds us firstly that there are many parties to government and secondly that the nation is different (larger, more permanent) than any particular set of ministers.

(2) The Speaker
The Speaker owes his allegiance (as do we all) to the whole nation and to the state represented by the Crown though he may only do as the House of Commons dictates. He is dressed in a funny way to express his embodying the unchanging dignity of his office (just as a judge is).

(3)
The fact that the Lord Chancellor (ex officio, the most senior judge, and head of the judiciary, and chair of the House of Lords) was a political appointment served the purpose of ensuring that legal matters were at the heart of government deliberations.

(4)
The fact that some of the country’s most senior judges (the Law Lords) occasionally made the House of Lords the most senior court in the land produced the effect that the full might of the state was seen to be at the service of the law.

All of these cases produce fictions, and some might now be thought absurd. It seems that some effects (clothes, wigs, ceremonies) have gone from conferring dignity to evincing guffaws. That’s fair: styles change. It may even be that we can no longer use pretence as a way of bridging rather peculiar understandings – muddles and fudges.

Take the separation of the judiciary from the legislature. On paper, that makes sense and may turn out to work well. But the old way ensured that the tense negotiation between judges and politicians was encompassed pretty well within government. If we feel a need to move on, that’s fine. Nothing stays the same for ever. But let’s at least accept the merits of the old way. Let’s not kid ourselves that we are necessarily going to produce anything marvellous out of our new rationality.

Voters take the view that the Civil Service and local councils are full of self-serving job’sworths who need a huge shakeup. (Yes, I do partly blame the ridiculously over-rated Yes Minister.)

Sue Cameron noted (“Whitehall: service not a business”, FT, 4 November 2009) that Sir Christopher Meyer (our former ambassador in Washington) says that “we must not destroy the public service ethos which has already been so damaged”. She says he remarks that “Whitehall has been watered by consultants, special advisers and businessmen with ‘no obvious increase in efficiency’”.

One could go on and argue that business is brilliant (when it is brilliant) at making stuff and providing services. But it doesn’t do the kind of thinking – usually a difficult balancing act – which is involved in advising on policy.

In short, delivery is not remotely the same as deliberation.

That is perhaps why Mike Freer, the leader of Barnet Council, is so interesting when he writes about the increasingly bsineslike approach he is exploring. (“eCouncil should soon be taking off”, The Times, 4 November, 2009). He envisages councils being stricter in asking value-for-money questions. But the novelty of his approach is to explore ways of offering residents different services at different prices, along with help in doing more things for themselves.

You can see bags of pitfalls in this approach, and so can Mr Freer. His point seems to be that in the delivery of services, business seems to have more solutions than bureaucrats, and they have to be explored.

This is in line with thinking which began seriously with Mrs Thatcher.

But whether it is quite what David Cameron means by “post bureaucratic government” is another matter.

Isn’t it a matter of horses for courses? Making official policy is necessarily at least in part a bureaucratic function (quasi-judicial, deliberative, advisory). Delivering services was for years misconceived as a bureaucratic function and is now seen not to be.

(1) As the Financial Times notes, the four most recent Cabinet Secretaries (that is: the head of the Civil Service and head of the Cabinet Office) have all expressed concern at the recent drift of power into Number 10 (and the special advisers there and in ministries) and away from Cabinet and the Civil Service. (The FT mourns the process and suggests a plausible future.)  This is most clear in their evidence to a House of Lords committee inquiry into the “Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government“.

(2) It is worth being a little sharp about their relatively new expression of concern. As The Economist points out, they let the situation drift that way (and maybe connived at it) when they were in office:

“all four, under first Lady Thatcher and then Mr Blair and Mr Brown, went along with the reforms they now deplore.”

(3) Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair’s politically-appointed chief of staff, has submitted a thoughtful account of how the right amount of power could be returned to the formal institutions of the Civil Service (in the form of the Cabinet Office) and the Cabinet whilst accepting modern realities. He believes the Cabinet can’t be the place where detailed policy is discussed, but where it can and should be signed-off. He believes that the Cabinet Office must (a) stay very close to Number 10 and (b) co-ordinate and chivvy the rest of Whitehall but not second guess or over-ride it.

This seems logical enough and would be a recipe for strong ministers reporting to Cabinet for collective authority under the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, for his or her part, would know that through the Cabinet Office there was a coherent understanding across the whole system.

(4) It remains wholly unclear whether the political class has understood how important this all is administratively or electorall. David Cameron send very mixed signals and it is completely unclear who might lead the Labour party in the near future. Unfortunately, the track record of senior civil servants has been very poor: until very recently they haven’t pressed their own claim to have a voice in the matter. 

(5) The Institute for Government may be just the ticket. It may succeed in being where reforms can be discussed and pressed home.

It’s in two parts (after v brief remarks by MBG editor):
(1) Current proposals for the reform of Parliament
(2) Some shakers and movers on the reform of Parliament

MBG editor RDN remarks:
I have elsewhere argued that the House of Commons in principle is supreme and has total command over everything it does. MPs could grab control of Parliament and the Government any time they had the cohesion and courage to do so. The MPs (and the public) need not wait for Government or party initiative on any of this.

There is a rather circular argument that the current MPs have too little moral authority to initiate reforms. On the other hand, if they don’t it will be all the more arguable that they are showing no leadership.

It is great that almost all current proposals want MPs to have more power – discredited as they are supposed to be by a tinpot scandal over small sums of allowance money rather badly-paid legislators were told to pitch for anyway they liked.

(1) Current proposals for the reform of Parliament

MPs to elect Select Committees and chairmen
This is a high-impact low-risk way to increase MPs’ scrutiny of and power over Ministers and ministries

MPs to initiate legislation
It is hard to predict what this would achieve though it would presumably weaken the Government, which has the power of taking the initiative in legislation.

MPs to control parliament’s time-table
This would very much weaken the government’s power to get its way over legislation – which might be seen as weakening or strengthening democratic control and authority.

Fixed term parliaments
At the moment the Prime Minister has the power in effect to dissolve Parliament, provided he can command a majority in the House of Commons. This change would weaken the Prime Minister’s current power over the Government’s supporters and the opposition. There would need to be new rules to determine how to get rid of a very unpopular government before its due term.

MPs to face re-selection
This would weaken the power of the sitting (incumbent) MP but also of the party machinery which currently acts as gatekeeper. The Tories are already experimenting with “primaries”.

MPs face recall by constituents
This would strengthen the power of constituents over their Member of Parliament – and that would weaken the MPs’ ability to speak freely as a representative (rather than as a mandated delegate).

Smaller Parliament
This would make Parliament more manageable but it would increase the size of constituencies and increase the number of constituents each MP is representing (arguably making it harder for each MP to identify with a neighbourhood or take each constituent complaint as seriously).

PM by direct election
This would tend to the “presidential” aspect of the premiership and raise issues of accountability. At the moment, the PM is in the end a creature of Parliament and this approach would weaken that.

Ministers from outside Parliament
This would increase the “gene pool” for the top jobs but reduce Parliamentary control over the executive. It would also reduce the likelihood of MPs becoming ministers which might reduce their subservience to their party and Government managers. It might also reduce the attraction of becoming an MP.

Proportional Representation
In general this produces “fairer” representation, makes forming a government more a matter of party negotiation in private, increases the turnover of governments, weakens the MPs’ connection with a constituency and increases their dependency on a party (though it increases the number of parties in play).

Citizens to trigger referendums or debates in parliament
This would complicate politics, possibly in a good way, though it would increase the likelihood of populist “flair-up” issues taking a disproportionate amount of Parliamentary time.

A new less confrontational chamber for Parliament
Arguably British politics stuck in an unproductive tribal shouting match and the present chamber encourages that. Perhaps a post-class  and post-ideological needs a less confrontational chamber to express and allow an new consensualism to emerge. It might be even more boring to too may people, though.

Elections to the House of Lords
It is hard to see how to avoid making this into a new vehicle for party power, or for show-off independents. It is easy to imagine more imaginative selection processes, free of party power, to find talented, experienced people for the revising chamber.

(2) Some shakers and movers on the reform of Parliament

The time has come for Spectator readers to save the constitution from politicians
Fraser Nelson
Spectator
3 June 2009
(with PoliticsHome)

Discusses:
Voter recall of MPs
MPs reselection by constituents (every 4 years or whatever)
Office for Budget responsibility (being considered by David Cameron)
Annual departmental justification of spending
Larger MP salaries, maybe with no expenses
Whether the existing parliament ought to frame reform
PM to be directly elected
Some/all ministers appointed from outside parliament
Smaller parliament

The real cure for Britain’s political malaise
Philip Stephens
Financial Times
2 June 2009

Discusses:
Gordon Brown considering voting reform
David Cameron wants “Massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power change”
DC “thinks about” fixed term Parliaments
DC considers constituency recall of MPs
Stephens on decentralising: “They would prefer to strangle local democracy than risk their own popularity.”
Local business taxes to increase local democracy

David Cameron leads Alan Johnson in the new battle to be the boldest reformer
James Forsyth
Spectator
30 May 2009

Discusses:
How DC has a very radical reform rhetoric and less solid actual plans
Brown’s John Smith Memorial lecture, 1996: “New Labour wants to give power to the people”
Brown began premiership “proposing changes that will transfer power from the Prime Minister and the executive”
DC to Power Inquiry, May 2006: Power has gone to bureaucrats in Brussuels, judges and
Quangocracts
Cameron’s “speech on Tuesday” proposed “Citizen’s Intitative” and a 5 percent trigger for referendum
Proposed transfer of power “from Brussels to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy.”

This is a constitutional crisis. Dave dare not blow it
Fraser Nelson
Spectator
16 May 2009

Discusses:
Hansard Society say: Only 19 percent say Parliament is working for me
20,000 voters or 0.05 percent of voters hold power, an insider remarks: “It’s the swing voters in swing seats who decide the balance of power. We have computers to work out where they live. We can love bomb them.”

Why we need separation of powers
Andrew Turnbull
(Former cabinet secretary and head of the Home Civil Service)
Financial Times
2 June 2009

Discusses:
“Vernon Bogdanor’s important new book, The New British Constitution”
“More radically, we could follow French practice, which requires any deputy appointed to the government to stand down from the National Assembly. Or we could adopt the German/Swedish model of politically appointed, but non-elected, ministers.

“The Commons does not control which committees are established, who chairs them, who can table legislation and how time is allocated. All this is controlled by the government through the Whips office.”

The Plan by Daniel Hannan and Carswell:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-plan-twelve-months-to-renew-britain/3704883

The Power Inquiry
chaired by Helena Kennedy

(Conservative) Democracy Taskforce, chaired by Ken Clarke
(A summary)
by Hélène Mulholland
The Guardian
14 January 2008