Reforming our democracy

A great deal of time in Parliament last week was spent on completing the Bill that introduces considerable reform to our democracy. During the year before the last General Election I spoke to many West Briton readers. The majority were disgusted with MPs and disillusioned with politics. People told me that MPs abuse of expenses, large donations to political parties and politicians not doing what they said they would do all created a general sense that our politics was broken. All MPs were ‘in it for what they could get out of it’ rather than to serve their constituents and work for the common good.

So what has changed since the General Election last May? The new government is a Coalition – with two parties working together to tackle the huge problems left by the previous government. MPs expenses are published on-line as are what we say and how we vote in Parliament. All MPs have to register their interests and donations over £1,500 are also published. There has been a revolution in openness, with for example, all taxpayers money spent by government departments over £500 published online so ‘armchair auditors’ can challenge how their money is spent.

Parliament has been renewed by a huge influx of new MPs, many of which are older and have had real jobs in the real world before entering Parliament. Most MPs are ‘back bench’ MPs whose job it is to scrutinise the Government’s plans and hold them to account. Backbenchers have new powers in this Parliament to do this – deciding on issues to debate in Parliament and electing Chairmen of the powerful Select Committees.

Other significant reforms have happened. General elections have been fixed for every five years. At the next General Election the number of MPs will be reduced from 650 to 600. Votes will be fairer as they will have more equal weight as the number of voters in each constituency will be much more equal than today. The boundaries of each Parliamentary seat will be changed for every General Election to make sure that as the population changes they remain more equal.

While I am very disappointed that along with my colleagues representing Cornwall we were unable to secure an amendment to the Bill which would have prevented the potential for a Parliamentary seat to cross boundaries into Devon, there are enough people eligible to register to vote to 'keep Cornwall whole' so I hope that will be the case. We'll have to see when the new register of electors is published soon.

Finally, the Bill enabled a referendum on changing our voting system to AV. While I think there are far more important things we could be focusing on, I accept that a deal is a deal, and the Lib Dems made the referendum on the AV voting system the Coalition deal maker, so it must go ahead in May.

I don't believe that by changing the voting system in this way we will improve our democracy. I will be campaigning to keep our reformed system of ‘first past the post’ as I believe it is well understood by people who know how to vote to get the result they want.