It struck me when reading the post by my colleague, Vincenzo Rampulla, on Nick Clegg’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that there is something else missing from this debate that was almost entirely absent too from the commentary on the expenses crisis last year.
Really it’s the first principles of making the sort of administrative changes IPSA has led, and constitutional changes, now being sought by the Coalition government: the role of MPs in 2010, and beyond.
The work of an MP has evolved and it seems incredulous that changes to how the offices of MPs are financed and, right now, how many people an MP should represent, are being pushed through without proper discussion; in parliament or amongst the general public.
Surely we should be asking what, in the twenty-first century, MPs are for, seeking to reaffirm why the public need them, and agree somewhat on what they are expected to do, before we determine how many are needed and how we provide funds for them to carry out their duties and represent their constituents?
The evolution has seen a massive increase in casework and the huge demands of extensive scrutiny and pressure led by mass media, and latterly, new media. The British public – but particularly those people that rely upon governments more like the last than the ideological service-cutters currently residing in Downing Street – deserve to openly discuss where the focus of their representatives’ work should be before they are told they have to get in the queue behind more people.
Shortly before parliament was dissolved in April, retiring Labour MP, Mark Todd, in a criticism of parliament’s failure to address this core issue, conveyed the nature of change:
First, what are the understood functions of a Member? In Churchill’s definition, published in the 1950s, the role was threefold, and in order of priority. I have edited it to remove the explicit sexism from his text. He said that the roles of a Member were: to exercise judgment in the interests of Great Britain; to act as a representative, but not a delegate, of his or her constituents; and to serve his or her party’s interests.
The Select Committee on Modernisation’s report on the role of Back-Bench Members, published in 2007, set out the following functions. Unlike Churchill’s, they are not in priority order. They were: supporting their party in votes in Parliament; representing and furthering the interests of their constituency; representing individual constituents and taking up their problems and grievances; scrutinising and holding the Government to account and monitoring, stimulating and challenging the Executive; initiating, reviewing and amending legislation; and contributing to the development of policy, whether in the Chamber, Committees or party structures, and promoting public understanding of party policy.
He goes on to highlight one such moment in time that accelerated change:
An MP serving between 1935 and 1950 said that, ”before 1939, unless there was some controversy afoot, I rarely received more than twenty letters a week…But after the election of 1945, everything was changed…suddenly the MP ceased to be a politician and potential statesman and became an official of the welfare state. Thousands wanted houses; old people wanted pensions; ex-service men wanted jobs; everybody wanted something and ‘write to your MP’ became a cliché”.
But it wasn’t the only instance – change has been both rapid, and inconsistently distributed amongst constituencies.
IPSA has set out its stall. Instead of taking the moral and long-term approach, the new independent authority took the populist approach of clamping down on ‘expenses’ (and this did need action even if I may not have chosen the exact same route to doing so myself) without considering the very real need to provide finances for MPs to act in their constituents’ interests. The media were allowed to get away with a characterisation that most MPs were on the take rather than a sensible dialogue being cultivated about the need for (fairly paid) staff with the resources to do their jobs. I sense no movement here.
But the Coalition’s intentions to reduce the number of MPs present an opportunity to discuss why – beyond a simplistic, yet dubious, argument of savings to the public purse – British people’s representation should change, not least as the reforms are not linked to a democratisation of parliament’s upper house. I suggest to the prime minister that this country needs effective representation, not less representation. Debating and consulting on the role of MPs would help determine whether I, or Mr Cameron, is right. If the expenses crisis taught us anything, it is that Britons very firmly expect more of their MPs. It is hard to see how the Coalition’s reforms can possibly provide this.
