There’s no point in democracy without debate
- High-quality legislative scrutiny is more important than ever
- If Commons debate is to have any meaning, then MPs have to engage with the whole process
- Parliamentary debate is about more than MPs being clipped for social media
Last week, the Commons’ Modernisation Committee published its latest memo on how it plans to drag the House into the 21st century. The memo noted the concern of MPs that ‘lack of certainty made it hard for them to use their time as effectively as they might otherwise be able to do’ – or as one new anonymous MP put it rather more candidly to Politico’s Playbook, actually having to sit through a debate to deliver a speech is ‘such a waste of time’.
The whole piece is well worth reading as it describes a weakness of our digital world where those who find debate 'such a waste of time' can go where there is no debate. This was always possible of course, but MPs were not supposed to be like that. Now they clearly are.
For some, that’s the future – debate, argument, rhetoric and persuasion, these are the relics of an inefficient past. Far better for MPs to troop in for their allocated slots, say their piece, then return to the really important work of answering emails. If they need to argue about things – well that’s what X is for. But if that view prevails, then Parliament’s central role in the constitution, in scrutinising the executive and holding them to account, in ensuring the laws we pass are even halfway fit for purpose, will wither even further. Like it or not, debate is a vital element in a democracy; we should think twice before we throw it out.
2 comments:
Very nice article, because it raises lots of knotty problems. Some types of debate and scrutiny are indeed flashier and more media-friendly. But this can equally well be done on X - it's about scoring points and changing opinions through memorable phrases and striking points. So it would be feasible, in some respects, to dispense with this function of Parliament entirely. Just have all the arguments on X, or similar, let the public show their feelings, and then MPs just turn up to vote. In fact, they could work from home, with voting records and contributions electronically linked so the public and the whips could monitor them, and that would be the abolition of Parliament as a physical space.
The main problem that I see is allowing slippery lawyers to draft legislation and bent governments to slip things past the electorate. What we need is some way of governments flagging up every thing they are planning to do, and then allowing decent MPs with common sense to challenge these. Starmer needs to be forced to tell the electorate exactly why he is giving away the Chagos Islands, making deals with the EU, and banning gas boilers. And then for people like Lee Anderson and Dennis Skinner - ordinary plain-speaking people, elected by the public - to go through it in detail, and in public. And if it's so detailed and legalistic as to be incomprehensible, to call him out on this.
Starmer will still do it, of course, but the quicker he is made to look like a pillock, the quicker the wheels will come off.
Sam - yes, we seem to have reached a stage where democracy could be democratic via modern IT systems. Voters could vote on almost everything and as you say, it would be possible to dispense with this function of Parliament entirely. It applies equally well to the EU of course.
It all makes Starmer seem ridiculously old-fashioned and he doesn't seem able to do anything about that. The pillock look seems almost inevitable because he is so easily found out by a world which doesn't sympathise with him. The political outlook he imbibed as a teenager doesn't provide any kind of cover for his stiff, unappealing and somewhat weird personality.
Post a Comment